My City Was Gone|What is ever lost? Mapping Place and "Space with Freespace

Matthew Slaats is not a fellow who is ever wanting for a way to fill his down time.  He concluded the Hyde Park Visual History Project last October with a long awaited interactive projection at the Hyde Park Drive In and now he's fully involved in the Midddle Main Revitalization effort, working to leverage artistic activity to invigorate the cultural and economic life in a stretch of Poughkeepsie's Main St.

Matthew's work is interactive and participatory.  His impulse is toward community building and he engenders that in activities which are engineered to pool the knowledge, experience and creativity of a given community.

His latest project is an online and real world project called Freespace.  The website of Freespace seeks to generate a network of sites of of significance - of personally held significance as opposed to significance on an institutional or national scale.  The nature of the project is open ended and will ultimately be determined by the aggregated character of submissions by the public, and the site will map those locations and experiences and individual's experiences tied to that location.   As stated in the website's About section, the impetus for the project arose out of a visit to the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park as a way to spur a sort of National Park System that reflects the American experience of the common individual.  The project is a cataloging of the relationships built between people and place.
When Matthew sent the link and an invitation to participate I was reading James Fallows' article How America Can Rise Again in The January 2010 issue of The Atlantic and the pairing felt particularly synchronous.
In the article, Fallows questions several individuals on the state of the nation's well being and tracks the attitude that's been ingrained in the American psyche since its infancy that the society's high point has passed and the downhill slide is underway.  Fallows' inquiry takes stock our current state and indexing the values of today's society against the real and perceived visions of our history.  Freespace is a similar activity, codifying the involuntary habit we all have of staking claims on our surroundings based on our experiences and emotions.  Freespace charts this new territory in land we all already to navigate it with new insight;
it's just one particular approach on remaking the concept of the commons.  Stake a claim, then open it up for your neighbors to enjoy and share.

Hyde Park Visual History Project Premieres Oct 17 at the Hyde Park Drive In

After two years of hustling and armed with some 2000 images gathered from residents of Hyde Park, Matthew Slaats is ready to present his interactive Hyde Park Visual History Project at the Drive In theater in Hyde Park.

Matthew was in Beacon on Saturday and gave me a quick rundown on this tail end of the project and the added technically interactive twist he's incorporating into it.

The projected collected images and accompanying sound will be influenced by movement of bodies in a set location on the grounds of the drive in. 

Here's Matthew's description from the project's Facebook event page:

The Hyde Park Visual History Project, developed by artist Matthew Slaats, is a community‐centered artistic project that engages the elaborate evolution of the local landscape and its inhabitants through images and sound. Serving as a dynamic meeting point for the community, the arts, and the history of Hyde Park, NY, the project builds an understanding of place through donated images, home movies, film, and audio. The collected visual and auditory material will be presented at significant sites in the community throughout the summer of 2009, culminating in an installation at the historic Hyde Park Drive In Theatre. For these installations, images of the past and present will meld into brilliant moments of color, all of which is supported by a sound track developed from recordings of children describing their hometown. Audience and environmental movement will control this interactive installation, becoming the driving force for the installation.

The Project Presentation will take place from 8 - 11pm on Saturday, Oct 17 at the Hyde Park Drive-In Theater on Rt 9.  If you try to find this on google maps, it'll send you way up state, but I've marked it on a map right here.

Be sure to check out Matthew's blog on the project which chronicles its development and his thoughts that have emerged through his interactions with the public of Hyde Park and their memories of the place.

Matthew Slaats presenting material from the Hyde Park Project tonight in Staatsburg, 8pm

Matthew Slaats will be giving a presentation on the Hyde Park Project (the project's original blog is here.)tonight at the Staatsburg Library beginning at 8:30 pm.  The Staatsburg Library is located at 70 Old Post Rd.

Slaats has been collecting and digitizing a visual history of Hyde Park in the form of old photographs and films and he will be showing some of the material from the project tonight.

Details on tonight's presentation can be found here.

Marking Time opening tonight at the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, NY at 6 pm.

Matthew Slaats is among the artists participating in the Marking Time exhibit opening tonight at 6pm at the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, NY. Marking Time presents the work of Hudson Valley artists who participated in the 2008 NYFA Mark Program. The participatine artists are: Dawn Breeze, Lisa Breznak, Laura Cannamela, Giovanni DiMola, Mimi Czajka Graminski, Tana Kellner, Greg Lock, Karl Saliter, M. Scott Schaffernoth, Carla Shapiro, Matthew Slaats, and Chad Weckle. Matthew will be doing a performance at tonight's opening. The exhibit will be on view through March 28.

The round up

For fear of missing anything that's flown in my inbox recently, I'm combining them in one post:
Globatron.org has posted an interview with Emil Alzamora on his work, life as a sculptor in Beacon, NY, his love of the Piazza, and how making art is like taking a crap - a sentiment shared by Martin Creed (actually, Creed refers to it in this interview, but the previous link manifests it in visual form.

Eleanor White is taking part in a three person show along with Erin Walrath and Natasha Cohen at the Art Barn in New Fairfield Ct. The Art Barn is located on the former estate of Louise Nevelson There's an article in the Stamford Plus about the exhibit. Pieces of Her opens Sunday, September 7 with a reception from 4-7pm. The exhibit runs through October 4.

In case you're interested, Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea made it to Manhattan on Monday.

The Hyde Park Townsman has an article on Matthew Slaats' Hyde Park Project, the culmination of which which is now being set to coincide with next year's Hudson River Quadricentennial events. Also, Matthew's interactive project for WOMS 2008, Call and Respond will continue through Sept 13. Call 845.228.8918 to pose a question or respond to a question.

Simon Draper is the featured artist in the Sept 08 issue of Chronogram, which chronicles, in own words, his humble beginnings as a wee Welshman to becoming the Prof of the Privy and formulating the creative juggernaut that is Habitat for Artists.

Charlotte Schulz's work is included in a group show at the Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco. The exhibit, Voices of Metaphor: More Stories, opens Saturday Sept 6 and runs through October 18. Other artists included in the exhibit are: Amy Cutler, Fay Ku, Shazia Sikander, Ruth Marten, Liliana Porter, Yuka Yamaguchi, Yelena Yemchuk, Rachell Sumpter, Baseera Khan, Crystal Liu, Henry Darger, Rob Matthews, Sara Stites and Seonna Hong.
Charlotte will be present at the opening reception which takes place on Saturday from 4-6pm.

Windows on Main St Curator Statement: Matthew Slaats

Matthew Slaats is an artist living in Staatsburg and he's been involved with some projects in Beacon in recent years. Matthew's strong affinity for sport is represented in his work as is evident in his performative and cooperative projects. Matthew is currently involved in developing the Hyde Park Project that ultimately will merge elements of collective community memory and advanced technology in a decidedly unstuffy art viewing venue; the Hyde Park Drive In.
His focus on active interaction with various audiences in his artistic practice is well suited for a project such as WOMS. (Honestly, I'm not trying to make this sound like a press release. It's just coming out that way.)
Here's Matthew's statement about his approach to the Windows exhibit:

The engagement of community and context is at the center of my artistic and
curatorial practice. My interest lies in understanding places and people
on a multitude of levels many of which are imperceivable. The goal is to
engage on a much deeper level by asking questions and expecting answers.
The artists that I have invited work on these levels. They go beyond just the
creation of an object or an image, but to a place were participation is vital to
the completion of the work.
The objective of these efforts is to make meaning. Meaning that is developed through action. The action being the artist and the community partaking in a conversation where mutual understanding is achieved.

The artists that comprise Matthew's selection for this years Windows are Ryan Burghard, at Mountain Tops (144 Main St.), Tom Hughes, at Iron Fish Trading Co. (167 Main St.), Megan Metcalf, at Main St. Salon (211 Main St.), Karen Brummand (469 Main St. -next to Go North), and Jenny Price, at Jacqueline (469 Main St.) Details of all of the artists' works, will be posted in due time at the WOMS blog.
Matthew is also contributing an interactive piece of his own to WOMS this year. Call and Respond:

Call & Respond is an interactive telephone project. Cards displaying a telephone number will be distributed throughout Beacon. Participants can call the phone number to hear a message that will change every few days. After hearing the message they
will be able to respond as they see fit.
During the run of Windows On Main, messages will be collected and then be available to be heard at Go North Gallery.

Citizens of Hyde Park, bring out your videos

Poughkeepsie base Matthew Slaats is embarking on a project that will cull together the home movies of past and present residents of Hyde Park, NY in order to create a visual history of the town. The gathered footage will be presented together in a video installation in Hyde Park this Spring.
Matt will be accepting donations to the project at the Hyde Park Free Library every Saturday from 10 am to noon. Every Saturday through March 2008. The Library is located at 2 Main St., in Hyde Park, NY. Inquiries can be directed to the artist at mbslaats@gmail.com or 845 889 8181.
Matt has started a blog to track the progress of the project. More information can be found on the blog including how the Hyde Park's drive in theater inspired the project and the technical aspects of how he plans on combining the donated footage.
The Hyde Park Video Project has received funds from the NY State Council on the Arts via the Dutchess County Arts Council. The Hyde Park Free Library sponsored the project's application for the grant.