FEAST #13 Call for Proposals

Brooklyn’s FEAST (Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics) will hold its 13th event on April 14th, 2012 at the Church of the Messiah in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We are accepting project applications around the theme of Cultural Labor. The deadline for applications is March 29th at 11:59pm.

As we look forward to the coming month of May, two distinct but overlapping commemorations are on our minds: the ancient festivities of the May Day holiday that celebrate the rebirth, growth, and potential of spring and the more historically recent International Workers’ Day, honoring those whose labor produces the social and material world we inhabit year round. The record-breaking warmth of the winter has softened the seasonal distinctness of this year’s spring. Yet the ever-increasing uncertainty and inequality generated by the contemporary labor market—in the arts and otherwise—has fortified the second significance of May Day. In an era when the logic of austerity increasingly favors private profits over public goods and social networking technology makes us all creators of cultural products, what it means to work or to be a worker under our current conditions remains an open-ended question.

For our next FEAST, we welcome your explorations and interventions concerning the position of Cultural Labor in our communities. In a changing and often immaterial landscape, how do we continue to reshape, revalue, and reclaim our production and labor? For those of us whose labor is explicitly artistic, cultural, or communal, how do we effectively incorporate the material histories of May Day into our present practices? FEAST Brooklyn welcomes project proposals that address the idea of Cultural Labor whether literally or figuratively.

FEAST is a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging art makers. At each FEAST, participants pay a sliding-scale entrance fee for which they receive a supper and a ballot. Diners vote on a variety of artist projects and at the end of the night, the project with the most votes is awarded funds to produce the project. The work is then presented at the following FEAST. Since 2009, FEAST Brooklyn has produced 12 dinners, funded 30 of projects and raised nearly $20,000. Meanwhile, similar models have emerged all over the country, building a network of organizations committed to rethinking how art is financed and experienced communally.

We encourage all artists, thinkers, and organizations at any stage in their career to apply. Up to this point, the projects that have received funding represent a diverse cross section of contemporary artistic and social practices. From urban gardens to mobile party vans, public sculptures to performances, no project or medium is incongruous with FEAST. We encourage artists to think outside their everyday practice and produce work that speaks to the community. Unlike conventional grant programs, artists receive funding immediately and are therefore enabled to make timely work as soon as they can.