Marfa Open Artist in Residence
Marfa Open AiR was conceived as a way to allow the energy of the Open Festival to stay alive all year long. The goal of Open AiR is similar to that of the Open Festival, on a smaller and more individualized scale. Instead of focusing on creative collaboration between a group of artists, Open AiR allows one artist [or artistic collaborators] to fully explore and produce a specific project or idea with the support of Marfa Open House. Artists in Residency at the Open House will be given our space and full use of our tools and facilities to create and exhibit series of new works. Our preference is for projects that are at the early stages of inception so that there might be some discoveries or insights gained while spending time here in Marfa.
If you already know exactly what you want to do then that’s not nearly as interesting to us. We’re interested in projects that are outside an artists typical works and usual mediums. We encourage you to come here and see what the desert has to say and go from there.
Basically we invite artists to come to Marfa for 3 or 4 weeks where they’ll live in a private room in our main gallery space. While they’re here they’ll have full use of our entire space to create new work over the course of their stay. In addition to providing the accommodations we also show our support by assisting with supplies and materials needed to complete the project. At the end of the residency we host an exhibition of the work should the artist choose to show/perform/present the work.
There are no hard and fast rules or obligations or requirements in place other than we hope our visiting artists find some sort of artistic inspiration while they’re here.
Interested in becoming the next Artist in Residence? Submit a proposal.
Past Residents
The Artist In Residence program at Marfa Open had its debut in July 2019
LIV MERSHON
CALEB LM / SEE ELEM Instagram
DOM RABALAIS
JOE SALINAS
Joe is a filmmaker. His website is https://www.joesalinasfilms.com/
HEATHER LaFORTUNE
https://www.instagram.com/lafortune_artisania
CAROLINE PARTAMIAN + ETHAN PRIMASON
Over the course of their residency, the artists developed the Sonic Transmission Archive, a large scale interactive sonic collaboration.
Inspired by the sounds of Marfa and its surroundings, they created an immersive audio environment utilizing material collected from their daily sound walks. This multichannel work is amplified through reverberating plates of sheet metal, engraved with a series of sonic characters developed through a ritualized practice of active listening. The show was installed from August 2-11, 2019 in our main gallery.
Caroline Partamian is a musician, visual artist, and curator influenced by her training in dance. She works specifically with the concept of abreaction – the extraction of dormant memory stored within a muscle, resurfaced through physical movement, of which an individual was previously unaware; these memories span the spectrum and can take many forms – traumatic, erotic, or comforting. By focusing on the process rather than anticipated result, her work encourages what can be revealed when one becomes conscious of their kinetic movement in the process of creation.
Ethan Primason is a sound artist, recording engineer, radio producer, and musician. His works and practices are heavily collaborative and guided by anthropological and ritualized approaches towards sound, transmission, improvisation, healing, and storytelling. His recent projects have been informed by deep listening, ecomusicology, sonic ethnography and sound collage.
Sonic Transmission Archive
The Sonic Transmission Archive (STA) is a mobile and place-based audio project by Ethan Primason & Caroline Partamian aimed at conveying the collective human voice while simultaneously investigating the human impulse to transmit into the unknown. The project will launch a digital archiving and transmission platform which will collect, randomize, and transmit sonic contributions in perpetuity.
STA is a large-scale interactive sonic collaboration that interfaces directly with the individuals from communities visited by the artists, as well as virtually engaging with participants from around the world. By prompting and collecting sounds, experiences, and ideas in a open and unbiased structure, the hope is to provide a platform which illuminates the agency and power of voice as the representative force of our larger collective community. The ultimate goal for STA is to transmit this growing sonic time capsule into interstellar space as a modernized, reflexive, and democratized representation of humanity, shaped and formed directly by the voices within.
Ethan Primason & Caroline Partamian are both deeply inspired by the intention, development, and realization of the Voyager Golden Record, launched by NASA in 1977 as a multidimensional transmissive archive designed to communicate directly with the cosmos. However, as individuals living and working in the Twenty-First century, they recognize the inherent flaw regarding the design of a fixed representation of human history conceived by a small and homogenous group of scientists and academics.
As Sound Artists with backgrounds in Anthropology and Radio, they are fascinated by the link between history and the potential of extraterrestrial, spiritual, and sonic communication. They see Transmission both as a physical and metaphoric representation of a participatory and accessible unconscious, a platform that grants one their own space to communicate honestly and freely into the unknown.
Check out their last installment of the project.
Interested in becoming our next artist in resident? Submit a proposal.