Art in Odd Places
(AiOP) 2021: NORMAL

May 14 – 16
14th Street from Avenue C to the Hudson River

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. April 19, 2021. Art in Odd Places (AiOP) 2021: NORMAL, is set to celebrate its 16th festival, Friday through Sunday on May 14-16, along 14th Street from Avenue C to the Hudson River. Curated by artist Furusho von Puttkammer, NORMAL challenges what has been and what never was. Boldly pushing its way through pandemia, where social constructs warp to reveal discriminatory realities, corporations relentlessly claw at tax-payer dollars while citizens are made homeless, and the police continue to brutalize the black community, NORMAL confronts the term with artistic work that redefines the word and the traditional ideas behind it.

This year's festival features 60+ artists’ projects with over 100 artists. Within them, cultural vigilantes, forgotten manifestos, utopian fantasies, avant-garde performances, and work that aligns with anti-elitist nature.

With public access as one of AiOP’s propelling forces, this year's curator von Puttkammer shares her inspiration behind this year's focus: “This year’s focus is meant to highlight how restrictive and destructive NORMAL actually is for most people in this country. The art world has become inaccessible and elitist. We take art outside of the galleries and museums and bring it out onto the streets of New York City. In the past couple of decades, art has become increasingly removed from everyday people. AiOP rebels against that and acts as a tribute to the DIY Punk nature of old-school NYC performance art. We’re accessible in multiple ways; free to artists who apply, free to view, and free to attend. We are here first and foremost to bring art to the masses.” 

At this time when cultural presentations are being reevaluated, NORMAL brings together the great work happening in physical and online platforms – to bridge the much-needed gap between the two. Working with digital partners PopWalk and Pollinate, NORMAL will explore making the festival available in real-time on 14th Street in situ and virtually.  COVID-19 does not have to kill cities — just our old idea of what cities were, how they worked, and who they were for.

All AiOP 2021: NORMAL projects will follow the current CDC and NYC COVID regulations, including but not limited to social distancing, contact tracing, travel-related quarantining, vaccinations, sanitization, and wearing masks. 

Art in Odd Places 2021: NORMAL

A selection of high-res photos can be found here. 

CURATOR

Furusho von Puttkammer is a multimedia artist, independent curator, and music video director whose practice highlights the lives and work of marginalized people. She has worked with artists such as Gavin Rayna Russom (Black Meteoric Star, LCD Sound System), Lanee Bird, Albert Diaz (SAMOS), Zachery Allan Starkey, The Lesbian Herstory Museum, and Bernard Sumner (New Order). von Puttkammer is also the founder of the nomadic performance art night No Material, which showcases emerging artists of all genres in NYC. She graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a BFA and Honors in Fine Arts. This will be her third year working with Art in Odd Places, her first as a curator.

PARTNERS
Popwalk is an exhibition platform for site-specific art videos. This smartphone application allows artists to exhibit their digital works, including performance, animation, video, etc in specific locations. The map function on Popwalk leads users to the locations of artworks and unlocks the works for viewing when the user has arrived at the location intended by the artist for viewing the artwork.  Recordings of the various performances from the festival will be uploaded to the Popwalk platform, becoming a site-specific archive of the event. By exhibiting the works from the festival on Popwalk, many more viewers will be able to experience the works in a way that reflects the original context and experience of the work. 

Pollinate is a community-driven art platform connecting individuals to practiced artists and rich creative experiences. Pollinate utilizes digital technologies to engage communities unifying the artist and art lover. Both on and offline, Pollinate works to elevate the art experience, making it accessible to the new generation of collectors. In collaboration with AiOP, Pollinate will capture the story of each performance and installation to help amplify the narrative to all audiences, regardless of physical boundaries.

WHAT
Art in Odd Places 2021: NORMAL is the 16th annual NYC festival featuring performances, symphonic manipulations, visual installations, video, sound, and more in public spaces. ALL EVENTS ARE FREE. For more information about AiOP's history and artists' project descriptions and schedules, visit the website: artinoddplaces.org

WHEN & WHERE
May 14 – 16, 2021, various locations along 14th Street
from Avenue C to the Hudson River

WHY
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) is an annual festival that presents visual and performance art in public spaces along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October. Active in New York City since 2005, AiOP aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. Using 14th Street as a laboratory, this project continues AiOP's work to locate cracks in public space policies and to inspire the popular imagination for new possibilities and engagement with civic space.

AiOP is a project of GOH Productions.