Dig It

There’s going to be another Project Digs.
Digs The Third, as it were.
Triply Dug.

Tentatively Saturday January 20th and Saturday January 27th. These dates will be confirmed soon and then you’ll be reminded of them with confounding regularity.

If you’re not familiar with Project Digs you can check out my little web page from the last Digs at http://josiemorway.com/digs/



To sum up briefly (because you can read the whole dang mission statement at the address above) Project Digs is the large group show that I have been organizing, with the help of a lot of energetic friends, in Providence since April of this year. It's a show of artwork, projects, plans and undertakings of various sorts. Really various; from sculpture and painting to floorplans and installations and performances. The conception of Digs (and the implication of the name) springs from an interest in the living/working space in which most projects are hatched and executed and loved and battled. Our aim is to close the gap between making work and showing work by bringing art and dialog into a variety of these living and working spaces-- be they apartments or cubicle farms-- and away from the traditional and sterile world of galleries and museums. We hope to open up wide discussions about how we live and work, how we seperate and segregate the spaces in our lives and their purposes, and how we might reclaim public space and shared environment for more creative, productive purposes.

Even more importantly, we seek simply to bring artists of all sorts together; to talk, share ideas, and start new collaborations.

While we've shown lots of completed projects and fantastically finished works of art, I'm always interested in showing "in progress" projects, leaving room for discussions of process and potential.



Project Digs 1 took place in my house, a three story Victorian split into apartments of different sorts on Providence's West Side. Digs 2 took place in a rehabbed house further south, which was completely empty, restored, and for sale. Half way through planning the show we learned that the house was being sold as condos and that while initially described as "affordable", they were actually not. This led us into a small whirl of controversy and good conversation about gentrification and so forth. Also it was so hot and humid during Digs 2 that I died twice during the hanging (I guess someone always dies when there's a hanging) and a third time on opening night.

So now, for contrast:
Digs 3 will take place in a recently rehabbed, big, beautiful, January-cool home for sale by the Greater Elmwood Neighborhood Association in South Providence. If you’re not familiar with GENS, you can check out their website at www.greaterelmwood.org (Also I made their website. Score.)




GENS mission is to “revitalize neighborhoods by transforming under-served urban places through rebuilding livable neighborhoods, community assets and resident opportunity.” Essentially they’re a major local player in the fight for neighborhood improvement without gentrification, safety without sterility, evolution without moving towards anonymity. Also they make honest-to-goodness affordable housing (which they sell through an ingenious lottery system, with restrictions that guarantee any apartments rented in said houses remain affordable). I have also heard an insider rumor that they might be working on a bike advocacy program that would make bikes part and parcel of affordable housing, which would be fab if it were to come to fruition.




The GENS house will offer us more space than ever to show our work, as well as a great opportunity to meet with people who are keeping our neighborhoods livable for everyone, including... like... us.

There will be a theme, albeit loose and bendable to your whim, for this Digs. The theme is "Place".

Make of this what you want.
The theme of place comes up, rather obviously, because Digs has always been about place, and because we've never defined a theme before and I think it'll help the cohesion (or accentuate the divisions) within the show. Consider however you wish: Place and space, home, work, neighborhood, mental space, urban place, public square, breathing room, cell reception, source, bedtime, punctuation, gaps, gasps, blinds and finds.




I do not want this to automatically be a conversation about gentrification or environmental politics (though if that's what you want to talk about so be it). "Place" is an integral component in artwork in many more subtle and fascinating ways, and it's being examined and toyed with by infinite, ingenius troublemakers worldwide ("worldwide" is also a good word about places that should go in my list above. Like between source and bedtime.) The idea of place and space is of contant concern to so many artists who want to examine and redefine either our entire relationship to our physical environment, or simply the place of art and artmaking within that environment. See some sweet links below.




Bring it on.
Consider this a call for artists. If you are in the Providence area, or would like to get yourself and your work into the Providence area, contact me and show me what you've got. We will offer a generous amount of space to each artist who shows... we don't want to see isolated singular pieces of finished art, we want to see bodies of work, ongoing projects, obsessions and innovations. Show me show me show me.



I also welcome (demand and whine for) feedback about the show planning as well as the theme.
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Here are some links to get you started thinking about place in a loopy and penetrating way:
GlowLab
Especially this Glowlab article
Also maybe you should read something about Psychogeography
Dig some strange maps
Or if you're into Brooklyn

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"Place for me is the locus of desire. Places have influenced my life as much as, perhaps more than, people. I fall for (or into) places faster and less conditionally than I do for people. I can drive through a landscape and vividly picture myself in that disintegrating mining cabin, that saltwater farm, that little porched house in the barrio. (My taste runs to humble dwellings nestled in cozy spaces or vulnerable in vast spaces.) I can walk through a neighborhood and picture interiors, unseen back yards. I can feel kinesthetically how it would be to hike for hours through a vast “empty” landscape that I’m dashing through in a car - the underfoot textures, the rising dust, the way muscles tighten on a hill, the rhythms of walking, the feeling of sun or mist on the back of my neck. " -Lucy Lippard, from The Lure of the Local