Past
Grantees

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS, New York City, received a two-year grant of $46,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City and Minnesota-based playwrights in American Voice activities. The mission of Playwrights Horizons is to support and develop the work of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to produce their new plays and musicals. Throughout its 39-year history, Playwrights Horizons has served as a launching pad for emerging writers as well as a home where established writers can bring their new work. American Voice activities include evaluation of script submissions, cultivating relationships with writers and scouting for new writing talent, developmental readings, and musical theater workshops. The theater strives to provide each writer with an individual development process that suits his/her specific needs and the needs of the work. Programs are managed with the understanding that writers create new works with the ultimate goal of fully realizing them in production. Playwrights Horizons takes very seriously its role in developing new works and laying the foundation for a successful production at Playwrights Horizons or elsewhere.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a one-year grant of $107,000 in support of the 2011-12 Many Voices Fellowship Program and the Jerome Fellowship in Playwriting. The Playwrights Center champions playwrights and plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works. The Center is a national resource for script development, and provides a range of services for writers at all stages of their careers. Playwrights Center Jerome Fellowships are awarded annually to emerging playwrights who receive funds and services to aid in the development of their craft. They must live and work in the Twin Cities area for the year of their fellowship in order to fully participate in the program. Stipends support writing time for the playwrights, who also receive readings and workshops, connections with other institutions and programs, and professional development support. The Many Voices Fellowship provides stipends, education, and opportunities to develop new work with theater professionals. The program is designed to increase cultural diversity in the contemporary theater. It awards five fellowships to artists of color who are interested in developing their playwriting skills and creating theater in a supportive artists community.

MARLO PORAS, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Thailand to research the idea of making a documentary film about Christina Arnold, who escaped the Children of God Cult when she was 21 years old and now leads a nonprofit organization that is focused on preventing human trafficking. To gain a more personal understanding of the anti-trafficking movement, Poras will attend the summer study program in Thailand sponsored by Arnold through the Prevent Human Trafficking Institute (PHT). This will provide him with the time to experience Arnold in action and understand the focus of her work as the basis for his intimate film portrait of her.

A grant was awarded to ANN PRIM, St. Paul, for Little Words, a narrative short that is the first story of The Vellum Trilogy, a collection of three fictional vignettes written by Ann Prim in the fall of 2009. Each story of The Vellum Trilogy takes a brief but intimate look into the lives of gay women writers and painters. The view is a private glimpse, where life and art intersect and memory is a story of interior landscapes. The Vellum Trilogy was conceived to be seen either as a single work or as three individual short films. Little Words is the story of a young writer, Rhys, who values her private world of words over all else. She is a Post-Modernist outsider who methodically strips from her life that which interferes and distracts. Beginning work on her second novel and awaiting word on whether her first novel will be published, she leaves her lover only to encounter someone who completely fractures her solitude and gives her the opportunity to reassess her reclusiveness.

GILAD RATMAN, New York, New York, will travel to Iasi, Romania, and surrounding areas, to research the heavy metal scene there, engaging questions of global culture, territory, and locality. As a teenager growing up in Israel, heavy metal music was associated with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. The music became the soundtrack for the fall of the Iron Curtain and his generations nave belief that capitalism would bring liberty. Ratman is working with Vector Association, a cultural organization in Iasi, to help him locate Romanian heavy metal bands, such as Open Fire. The research is for a future experimental video project addressing marginalized identity through the lens of heavy metals passion and subversion.

MICHAEL REANO, St. Paul, Minnesota, will travel to Los Angeles, California to visit and reconnect with filmmaking mentors in Los Angeles, California. He will interview filmmaker James Benning about his experimental work and his shift from film to digital video and will continue his research for a documentary project on ex-Chicago Tribune film critic, Michael Wilmington. Reano, working in the non-fiction film genre, looks for the epic in everyday lives. This study time will provide him with an opportunity to meet with two artists that have had an epic impact on his work

RED EYE THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $30,000 in support of emerging artists participating in and served by the 2010 New Works 4 Weeks, Works-in-Progress, Isolated Acts, and Critical Core programs. Red Eye originates its own work and supports the efforts of hundreds of other artists. Company productions are distinguished by a core aesthetic that intertwines textual, visual, and sonic layers in ways that allow audiences to fluidly move through sprawling psychological landscapes on journeys to the outer edges of the imagination. New Works 4 Weeks is a multidisciplinary festival that links the performance components of two Red Eye programs: Works-in-Progress and Isolated Acts. Both are about process, and about providing artists with access to space and other practical resourcesfinancial, technical, and administrativenecessary to develop ideas for performance. Ideas are explored in a creative laboratory setting. Reflective protocols in the area of critical response provide useful feedback to the emerging artists.

JENNIFER REDFEARN received a grant for Sun Come Up, a character-driven documentary that follows the relocation of some of the worlds first environmental refugees, The Carteret Islandersa matrilineal society of 3,000 people living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. The Carteret Islanders inhabit six pristine islands, 50 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea, and share a rich tradition of music, dance, and storytelling. For centuries, theyve lived on a diet of fresh fish, bananas and vegetables, and without cars, electricity, or running water. Their carbon footprint leaves one of the lightest impressions on the planet. Now, however, a modern crisis has intruded upon them, and their idyllic community is on the verge of dramatic change. Their small islands stand at the frontlines of climate change. Rising seas contaminate their fresh water and gardening land, erode their shoreline, and contribute to severe and unpredictable weather. The Carteret Islanders currently face three urgent problems: increasing population, decreasing access to food and water, and the rapidly shrinking land mass of the islands. Sun Come Up follows charismatic and passionate relocation leader Ursula Rakova and a group of young people from the Carteret Islands as they search for a new place to call home.

RHIZOME, New York City, received a grant of $13,500 in support of the Commissions Program: Supporting Emerging New Media Artists. Rhizome supports the creation, presentation, and preservation of contemporary art that uses new technologies in significant ways. It offers multiple programs and resources. The Commissions Program provides direct financial support to emerging artists to create original works; offers opportunities for career advancement; and preserves significant artwork that is of value to a wide community of artists, arts professionals, students, and scholars. Proposals submitted in response to an open call are reviewed by an independent jury.

The ROCHESTER ART CENTER, Rochester, Minnesota, received $20,000 over two years in support of the 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series. The Centers mission is to foster an appreciation and understanding of contemporary art through the organization and presentation of exhibitions and the creation of innovative educational programs and interpretive materials that effectively engage regional audiences with contemporary art. The 3rd Floor Emerging Artists Series is devoted to emerging artists working in Minnesota, founded on the principle of critical engagement with new practices in contemporary art. The Center has presented over 20 exhibitions reflecting the broad spectrum of concepts and working methodologies of emerging artists in the state. Each exhibition is a solo show mounted for a period of seven to nine weeks. A brochure with a critical essay and color plates from the artists portfolio accompanies each exhibition. Artists present an opening lecture to inform the public of their concepts and practices. Artists are selected by an independent panel and the program director in response to open call submissions.

JESSE ROESLER, Minneapolis, received a grant for The Starfish Throwers (formerly Give Me Your Hungry), a 60-minute documentary that aims to explore ways that several driven and daring individuals have taken the war against hunger into their own hands in unexpected, innovative and sometimes controversial ways. Allen Law is a retired Minneapolis schoolteacher who will hand out over 170,000 sandwiches this year. Mary Risley is the founder of Food Runners, a San Francisco based food redistribution organization that delivers more than 22,000 pounds of food each week to shelters and group homes. Greg Pettengill is the founder of Guerilla Gardeners for the Homeless in Orlando, Florida. Give Me Your Hungry will chronicle the stories of these individuals who are on the front lines of the war on hunger. Roesler will weave their stories together into a larger narrative on ending hunger in Americaone act of food sharing, redistributing or growing at a time.

DUSTIN ROSEMARK, Rochester, received support for Blue Hands, a series of experimental films exploring a new animation process the filmmaker calls the Cyanograph. Blue Hands will consist of six to eight, twenty to thirty second films created to mimic certain films within the Edison Library. Rosemark is immensely interested in the films that make up the Edison Library, a collection of works produced between the 1890s and 1920, which eventually came under the control of the Motion Picture Patents Company, owned by Thomas Alva Edison. The films are among the earliest ever created and are of great importance to the history of cinema. They deal with simple subjects such as Record of a Sneeze (1894), The Kiss (1900), Feeding Seagulls (1900), or Freight Train (1898), and are best described by the term actuality films. Rosemarks films will be similarly minimalist in technique and subject, but will also be very specific, as they will focus exclusively on hands in the act of creation. Rosemarks cyanographic process will also be a feature that distinguishes Blue Hands from the Edison filmsa painstaking and very involved motion picture version of the blue-tinted photographic Cyanotype. The films are intended as a commentary on contemporary film craft and an expression of Rosemarks personal identity as an artist/filmmaker.

ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM, New York City, received a two-year grant of $64,000 in support of Roulettes commissioning program, which awards four commissions each year to emerging composers based in New York City and/or Minnesota, and emerging artists performance fees in the Contemporary Music Series.Roulette supports composers and intermedia arts through presenting a substantial and diverse program of experimental contemporary music and intermedia, commissioning new work, paying decent fees to artists, and finding audiences interested in learning about developments in experimental music and new media. Roulettes concert series is a major steppingstone for emerging artists making their first professional statements. The commissioning program identifies and supports young creators of promise whose explorations promise valuable contributions to the development of contemporary music. Commissions are awarded by a group of prominent composers and Roulette staff, and reflect a diversity of musical styles and traditions. The commission allows the composer to make a piece that will be presented to a knowledgeable and exacting audience at Roulette.

SALLY ROUSSE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany, to engage in an aesthetic dialogue and reflection with dance artists of the Forsythe Company. Rousse will explore a potential collaboration and continued exchange with Noah Gelber, an American born choreographer currently working in Germany as a choreographic assistant with the renowned Forsythe Company. This study will serve to deepen her choreographic practice mixing classical and modern ballet as inspired by the approach of The Forsythe Company.

FRANK SANDER, Duluth, Minnesota, will travel to Yunnan Province, China, to document the daily life of the Bai minority in a remote mountain village in the Yunnan Province of China. Sander will partner with He Lujiang, a professor at the University of Dali, China, to understand the devastating effect that the mass exodus, of the rural Bai and other minority farmers moving to the city for income, is having on the village cultures. He will be able to live with a Bai family for a direct and intimate experience of this culture to inform a new documentary work.

JENNY SCHMID, Minneapolis, received a grant for VLD SK8R GRL (Veiled Skater Girl), a 20-minute live action and animation video that engages the layered meanings of the headscarf as a contested political and cultural symbol. This project aspires to present a compelling visual depiction of the powerful young Muslim woman through the cultural filter of the headscarf. Schmid believes the West focuses on the headscarf as a symbol of oppression, while this clothings function and fashion are much more complicated. As the Iranian protests demonstrate, womens political power is not limited by their choice of dress. The headscarf, however, remains a point of contention, especially in Europe where the debate around limits on wearing the headscarf have become very public. The revival of the headscarf might also be embraced as a statement of unity against ubiquitous Western influencean event that is taking place both militarily and culturally. Schmid believes that the Western media has hyped this symbol as a one-dimensional threat; it has become a polarizing flashpoint. She will travel to Istanbul, Turkey, where East and West converge, and use it as an allegorical backdrop for this projects conceptual foundation. Her hope is that VLD SK8R GRL will play a role in creative resistance to assumptions and controversies surrounding the headscarf.

The JAMES SEWELL BALLET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $12,000 in support of the commissioning of new works by two emerging choreographers within the Ballet Works Project. The mission of the Ballet is to create and perform works that connect artists with audiences and to advance contemporary ballet. The 2010-11 Ballet Works Project will be larger in scope and build upon the success of the past two seasons of staged productions of new works. Sources for choreographers invited to participate include New York City and Minnesota choreographers not associated with the company and company dancers who have choreographic interests. Each choreographer will have 40 hours to work with company dancers to develop and complete new works. The Ballet seeks to build a culture and audience that understand the importance of vital producers of new dance work who push the envelope and move an art form forward.

ANAL SHAH, St. Cloud, was awarded a grant for ChalChitra-RailYatra, a 60-minute experimental documentary tale about Railways and Cinema, the marriage between the two, by way of revisiting images of railways in Indian Cinema interwoven with a personal journey of the filmmaker aboard various trains in India. India has the worlds largest railway network; it is also the biggest film industry in the world. While one is a mode of transportation, the other is a medium that transports us. We stand in long lines for their tickets. The Train takes us on a journey, which may provide the longest tracking shot of the Indian landscape. The Movie, on the other hand, suspends our disbelief and takes us on a journey of its own diegesis. Both of these vehicles, individually and combined, blur, break, bridge and ultimately redefine the notion of borders and boundaries in the collective experience that constitutes and continues to evolve as the Indian Psyche. Structurally and visually this film will shunt seamlessly between the two parallel tracks. One will trace the memory of trains in films as seen through clips/shots of archival material accompanied by the filmmakers commentary. The other will be the filmmakers own personal journey with a camera aboard trains through an intimately observed cinema verite approach. The first track evokes history and memory, while the other invokes reality.

PURVI SHAH, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Chennai, India, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and San Francisco, California, to study Sanskrit poetics and Vedic charts in order to deepen her own poetics and poetry in English. She will explore profound modes of structuring sound and language; see how complex philosophical ideas can be transmitted and embodied in words; and learn more about the relationships of grammar, meaning, and mathematical repetition. While not a poet who often employs formal meter and poetic forms, she has long been drawn to the rhythms in language, its sounds, and the power of auditory elements of poetry. This study will enable her quest to produce a simultaneous philosophical, auditory, and meditative poetry.

An experimental dance company based in New York City, JILL SIGMAN/THINKDANCE, received a grant of $8,000 to support the creation and production of The Hut Project. Jill Sigman presents work that exists at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual installation, often employing non-traditional environments, formats, and ways of engaging the viewer. This project marks a departure for Sigman from the traditional cycles of dance production, and is informed by shifts in her aesthetic, her evolving artistic process, changing financial realities, and a desire to find a form for her artmaking that makes it sustainable in its current economic-social-cultural context. The Hut Project is a series of artistic experiments centered around her studio space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. These experiments will lead to a culminating production in 2010. The experiments within The Hut Project are focused on themes of sustainability, shelter, survival, and real estate. The activities within it include small studio-based performance events, open rehearsals, live art installations, video artifacts, physical durational rituals, and after-parties with music. At the core of this series of activities is the construction of a series of huts, small structures made from found materials.