Missing: UN/MUTE Residency
un/mute. An international group exhibition of collaborative works by 28 artists across multiple disciplines, un/mute is the culmination of two online residencies launched in 2020 to provide European and NYC-based artists an opportunity for critical exchange and collaboration during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The residencies, 10001 and 10002, paired artists who have never met before and challenged teams to overcome the limitations of lockdowns as they connected across artistic mediums, language, culture, generations and time zones to find new forms of expression and meaning within art. Video recordings of the artists’ conversations and collaborative processes serve as archive and inspiration.
Partnered on team "PROFILE", Barbara Maria Neu (Austria) &
Kris Grey (NYC) built a relationship during the eight-month online residency that yielded an original collaborative video piece and an installation for exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum.
While clarinetist and performance artist Barbara Maria Neu and inter-disciplinary artist Kris Grey could not travel during the pandemic, a single piece of pink fabric travelled via the mail between New York City and Vienna and their ideas and instigations travelled via Zoom. Miss(ing) is the culmination of the artists’ discussions about the transcendental qualities of music and art — how each can transport the audience from their Zoom rectangles, physical locations and present circumstances. Through repeating forms, a lexicon of gestural sequences and a familiar-yet-surprising clarinet composition, the artists explore intimacy and connectivity through video and life-size sculptures that invite the audience into the artists’ private spaces and into recalling the experience of being around others. From the start of their conversations, Neu and Grey understood Miss(ing) to be a continuous work — as manifested in this installation, at such time the artists can meet in person and into the future. As Neu remarked, “this work can go on our whole lives.”