Past
Grantees

MARK KENDALL received $15,000 for the documentary LA CAMIONETA Life and Death on the Road. For the greater part of the twentieth century, entrepreneurial businessmen from Guatemala have bought old school buses from the United States, driven them back to their country and used them to compensate for the lack of adequate public transportation provided by the state. They refer to these converted school buses as camionetas. What began as a modest industry confined to urban areas took over even the most remote areas of the countryside and became a national phenomenon. Camionetas are the most accessible and common form of transportation for Guatemalans. As these buses are individually owned and not financed or supported by the state, competition between camionetas for passengers became quite high. Over the past few years, the camionetas and the men who drive them have become primary targets of an escalating wave of violence, gang extortion and a spree of assassinations that have plagued the countrys transportation system. Because the drivers carry cash, gangs extort daily protection money and often kill those who cannot or outright refuse to pay. The annual number of assassinated bus drivers has steadily risen with each passing year. This film looks into the plight of the drivers of camionetas.

REBECCA KINGSLEY received $10,000 for The Last Colony, a documentary about Americas ambivalence toward its capital city of Washington, D.C., where the fight for democracy hits home and the battle over political self-determination intersects with historic issues of race, power, and the constitutional balancing act between federal and local government. With the current issue of the repeal of D.C.s gun laws framing this debate, the film explores the historical struggle for District self-government as told by its foot soldiers: leaders of the African American community who brought the issue of home rule into the folds of the civil rights movement, and thus the national arena; activists who galvanized their community to participate in local issues; government officials who were on the frontlines to pass legislation, giving Washington representative government; and journalists who have studied the complexities of the Districts local history as it relates to its status as a federal city.

THE KITCHEN, New York City, received $16,000 in support of emerging artists commissions. The Kitchen is dedicated to supporting new work by innovative artists working within, and across, the fields of music, dance, theater, video and film, digital art, and literature. The Kitchen is known for its commitment to experimental new work and for providing instrumental early support for artists whove gone on to worldwide prominence. Its mission is to provide emerging and under-recognized performing and visual artists with the space, financial support, and technical resources to develop and present new work. Jerome support is directed to commissioning fees for 13 projects by emerging, New York City-based performing and visual artists. The commissions are paid up to six months in advance of the artists presentations. The artists commissioned are engaged in challenging, experimental practices and work in a broad spectrum of media and disciplines, ranging from music, dance, and theater to video, sound, and mixed media installation.

THE KITCHEN, New York City, received $17,000 to support commissions for emerging artists to develop new works for exhibition and presentation. Founded in 1971, The Kitchen is dedicated to supporting new work by innovative artists working within, and across, the fields of music, dance, theater, video and film, digital art, and literature. The organization is known for its commitment to experimental new work and for providing instrumental early support for artists whove progressed to later prominence. Jerome dollars are directed to commissioning fees paid to the artists to subsidize the creative process.

ALISON KLAYMAN received $16,000 for Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, a documentary about Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei. Controversial, creative and fiercely outspoken, Ai Weiwei is thought by many to be Chinas preeminent contemporary artist and its most public critic. Born into Chinas revolutionary intelligentsia, Ai Weiweis biography often parallels the course of modern Chinese history, and his current activities as an artist and activist provide penetrating insights into the social impact of Chinas rapid economic and political ascent. In China, Ai is alternately heralded as Ai Shen (Ai God) by his more than 68,000 Twitter followers, and vilified by elites for his dogged criticism of governmental corruption and human rights abuses. The contemporary art world celebrates his brilliant conceptual sculptures and installations, most recently exhibited in the Turbine Hall at Londons Tate Modern, as well as his architectural works including his role as design consultant on the 2008 Beijing Birds Nest Olympic Stadium. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry begins in 2008 at the cusp of Ais international renown as an artist and activist. It continues through 2009 and 2010 as Ai becomes more and more engaged in defying oppressive government practices and policies in China. The film ends at the Tate Modern in 2011, where Ai WeiWei and his son walk amongst a sea of porcelain sunflower seeds that symbolize the sum of Ais past efforts and his hope for the future, the power of mass connection and mass participation.

JOSH KOURY & MYLES KANE were awarded a grant for The Making of Planet X (working title), a feature-length documentary that follows the making of an amateur sci-fi film called Planet X, which begins hundreds of years into the future. An ill-fated spacecraft falls victim to corporate espionage, leaving it stranded in the far reaches of the outer solar system. Alien combatants surround the crew of research scientists and move in. This is the setup for Eric Swain and Troy Berniers newest film, Planet X. Their attempt to bring this epic fantasy to life is wildly inventive and utterly bizarre. They are truly fascinated by the transcendent nature of movie-making itself, where their dreams of being space travelers, charming leading men, and even successful filmmakers, are all quite possible. Eric and Troy embody a specific balance of naivety, grand intention, and shortcomings, which allow them to transcend their faults and become a poignant and entertaining reflection of their sci-fi influences. This documentary tracks these true-life scientists-turned-amateur filmmakers during the three years leading up to the release of their largest and most intense production to date.

HERE ARTS CENTER, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for theatre artist AARON LANDSMAN, Brooklyn, New York, received $6,000 in support of the development and production of City Council Meeting. The mission of HERE is to build a community that nurtures career artists as they create innovative hybrid live performance in theatre, dance, music, puppetry, media, and visual art. Aaron Landsman, as part of the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), is developing City Council Meeting, a participatory multi-media performance event for six performers using compositional techniques and concepts from experimental theater and visual art-based performance. The finished piece will take the form of a theatricalized local government meeting, consisting of scripted and improvised interactions among performers and viewers, webcast live each night, with viewers able to participate online as well as in person. City Council Meeting is performed participatory democracy.

PENNY LANE & BRIAN L. FRYE received a grant for a feature-length documentary, OUR NIXON. Throughout Richard Nixons presidency, three of his top White House aides obsessively documented their experiences with cheap Super 8 movie cameras. This unique visual record, created by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin, was seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, then filed away and forgotten. OUR NIXON presents those home movies for the first time, to create an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency from its idealistic beginning to its tragic end. The film is structured as a tragedy, driven by dramatic irony. The story unfolds through the points of view of the three aides, with over 30 hours of footage from 1969 to 1972. They filmed big events: the Apollo moon landing, antiwar demonstrations, the Republican National Convention, Tricia Nixons White House wedding and Nixons world-changing trip to China. But the primary story arc is provided through interviews with the three men themselves, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin. In these interviews, collected through intensive archival research, they explain why they served Nixon and how they were let down, betrayed and ruined by him. These interviews put into sharp relief the heartbreaking navet of their home movies, and echo the experience of a great many Americans who supported Nixon only to be betrayed by him in the end.

SHAUN EL C. LEONARDO, performance artist, Astoria, New York, will travel to San Diego, California, and Guanajuato, Mexico, to attend a special training session in movement to inform his performance. Leonardos work explores the confusion, desperation and, often times, failure people experience when attempting to either locate themselves within popular cultures or aspire to unattainable ideals.

PAUL LINDEN, sculptor and installation artist, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Insjn and Ume, Sweden, to study with two internationally acclaimed Swedish traditional wood carvers and take a course(s) at the Sterglntan College of Handcrafts, learning techniques of Swedish folk craft. This opportunity will allow Linden to develop his knowledge and skill at wood carving using hand tools.

The LOWER MANHATTAN CULTURAL COUNCIL, New York City, received a two-year grant of $46,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City literary and visual artists in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 Workspace program. Through progressive cultural planning, innovative artist residency programs, a multitude of funding and training opportunities, and the presentation of many free events in the visual and performing arts, the Council takes an integrated approach to enriching New York Citys creative capital. Its signature artist residency program, Workspace, offers nine months of free access to individual studios for talented, emerging artists selected through an annual open call process. Workspace provides up to thirty emerging visual artists and writers the space, time, and resources to develop new work. Workspace utilizes an open plan studio structure to foster community among its artists in residence. In addition to studio space, artists are given stipends for materials and supplies, valuable opportunities to network within the arts community, and access to additional resources and services to help strengthen their careers.

ABBEY LUCK was awarded support for The Observer, an animated short about an alien mind that mutates information as it is interpreted and physically manifests data as an infectious disease. The accumulation of data is shown through the point of view of the alien. The creature travels on a rotating landscape. She stops periodically to observe the behavior of alien microorganisms by touching pools of light with her single eye. In these circles are microcosms of organisms whose behavior illustrates different aspects of life, such as reproduction, evolution, communication and competition. The Observer begins simply as a wanderer, with no purpose in mind. However, as she increases the amount of information in her head, she begins to put together a picture of her surroundings. Her illumination is illustrated with a visual symbol system unique to her alien race. She translates the information into an esoteric language that manifests as a gelatinous liquid in her clear, bulbous head. Eventually, she travels back to her community of creatures and disseminates the information by releasing the liquid onto a large pool of light. The idea of the film is that information is subject to mutation during interpretation by the observer, and can be spread to others like a virus. This abstract depiction of meme contagion blurs the borders between information and infection.

MA-YI THEATER COMPANY, New York City, received $8,000 in support of the development and production of new works by emerging New York City-based playwrights. Ma-Yis mission is to produce challenging and forward-thinking new works for the theater by providing a nurturing home for artists where they can hone individual and collective skills, and investigate new ways of working together while engaging their communities and dialogues about the changing world. Founded in 2004, the Writers Lab is a venue for Asian American playwrights to work and receive feedback from their peers. It provides tailored support to its members and ushers plays through defined phases of development. It encourages each writer to identify and nurture a highly individual voice and aesthetic.

MABOU MINES, New York City, received $30,000 in support of its Suite Resident Artist Program. Mabou Mines is an artist-driven collaborative pursuing the vision of its founding artists by using fresh perspectives to re-explore classic theatrical works and create new ones. Mabou Mines is also dedicated to fostering and developing the next generation of artists through the Suite Resident Artist Program, which is open to small companies and individual artists who are interested in investigating compelling performance ideas. Suite is organized as a two-step process. In the first year, Artistic Directors of Mabou Mines serve as mentors for eight to 12 emerging artists, helping them develop their projects over a six-month period. In the second year, four former Suite artists are invited to return for more intensely focused residencies, aimed toward the creation of fully realized productions. Suite offers emerging artists the opportunity to work in residence at Mabou Mines, and receive mentoring from the Artistic Directors, stipends, rehearsal and performance space, and administrative and technical assistance. Participants attend monthly meetings, creating an artistic community through shared ideas.

GIA MAROTTA, playwright, New York, New York, will travel to Rwanda to conduct research for a new, trilingual full-length play that explores the different trajectories of the AIDS epidemic in the United States and Rwanda. The trip will help her develop cultural authenticity, boldness, urgency, and humility within the play.

ANDREW MARTIN received $2,300 for Canoe, a 4-minute experimental film about the dark, dismal and chaotic interactions between a man who canoes down a shallow river and the people he encounters along the way (an older couple, a young boy, a woman and two men). The film consists of only one shot that contains no on-set sound and no dialogue. The filmmaker describes this project as the lead characters personal hell, reflecting on his darkest fears of the afterlife. Will he be punished for living his life as an atheist by seeing his loved ones punished by dying over and over again?

MARY MATTINGLY, visual artist, New York, New York, will travel to Los Angeles, San Diego/Tijuana, Yuma, Tucson, Mexicali, El Paso/Juarez, Santa Fe, San Antonio, and Brownsville/Matamoros, traveling the route of the Mexico/US borderline, from San Diego/Tijuana to Brownsville/Matamoros, to explore the effects of migration, immigration, and political and social stresses associated with competition for land, food, water, and shelter in the immediate area. Much of her work focuses on creating mobile forms and documenting obstructions that hinder movement.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, on behalf of composer KATHY MCTAVISH, Duluth, Minnesota, received $7,300 in support of the development and production of a new immersive sound and video environment and performance, graffiti angel/holy fool. The mission of Springboard for the Arts is to cultivate vibrant communities by connecting artists with the skills, information, and services they need to make a living and a life. McTavish is a composer and free-improvisational cellist. In both live performance and recorded work, she blends cello, found sound, electronic effects, and abstract still-motion film to explore a synesthetic world. In graffiti angel/holy fool, she will create live, multimedia performance, cinema, and web landscapes.

Jerome Foundation renewed its general support of and membership in GRANTMAKERS IN FILM + ELECTRONIC MEDIA, Oakland, California, in the form of a $3,000 commitment. Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM), an affinity group of the Council on Foundations, is an association of grantmakers committed to advancing the field of media arts and public interest media funding. It is a resource for grantmakers who fund media content, infrastructure, and policy, and those who employ media to further their program goals. It is also a resource for funders who wish to learn more about media.

MILKWEED EDITIONS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $20,000 in support of the publication of three books by emerging writers. Milkweed identifies, nurtures, and publishes transformative literature, and builds an engaged community around it. Its 2011 list includes three paperback reprints and 15 new titles, including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Milkweed Editions is committed to publishing emerging talent, and to developing nurturing relationships with writers. Jerome support is directed toward books by emerging authors based in New York City and Minnesota.