Modern Art’s work as part of the City of Lancaster’s PACE Neighbors Program will be on display at Franklin & Marshall’s Phillips Museum from February through May of 2023. Featuring the Phonotel, Maps of Neighborhood Delights, Narrative Delights, Analog-gram, and the ART bARTer mart, the project explores how we think and use our neighborhood in light of this era of technological saturation.
Opening reception on Thursday, February 9 from 4:30-6:30 pm. See you there!
It’s been an honor working with this talented group of community artists: Teatro Paloma, Matty Geez, Sir Dominique Jordan and Shauna Yorty, as part of the first cohort to go through Lancaster’s PACE program. (click on the link to learn more about each of our projects.)
Through a series of surprising, curious, and unconventional installations, events, surveys, performances in and around my studio in the West End, I’ve worked to reintroduce my neighbors to the beauty and magic of their neighborhood— the people in it, the spaces, and the small, magical things we often miss when we are connecting only via screens. I’ve been working to engage people’s attention from a structure outside of an algorithmic architecture —unmediated by an institution—and one that they don’t have an obvious category for. This can catch people off guard, giving them an opportunity to think about, and interact with their neighborhood differently. Ideally with poignancy, humor, delight, and agency, rather than rage, angst and frustration with an imperfect world.
Through the collaborative projects of Welcome to the Analog Neighborhood, I’m exploring how participatory art can lead neighbors in the collective art of community building. I encourage participants to experience their essential role in the neighborhood, to take ownership of it, to care about it and care for it. Whether it’s following a map of delights around the block, imagining secret portals to other worlds, checking your phone into a hotel, putting a line from a poem on a sign in your window, writing love notes, listening to a record with a stranger, making, sharing and talking about art, these projects open doors that beckon people to enter, engage and enjoy.
