The Festival Of Phools
Dates
July 19, 2022Over three days in July of 2022, Eyebeam is bringing together the first cohort of The Democracy Machine: Artists and Self-Governance in the Digital Age, our ambitious, multi-year cycle of trans-disciplinary art and transformative invention. We will raise a toast in person to celebrate our artist fellows, who have decided to be called Phools, Hindi for flower. Phools is the self-chosen name of our fractal fellows who are building radical, reciprocal models for sustainable equity inspired by nature.
Over these three days, they will finalize their year-long project of creating a new model for institutions working alongside artists to create more equitable forms of sustainable equity in community. They will share how they worked as a team, hand-in-hand with Eyebeam, to flip the institution/artist relationship on its head, creating new, experimental forms of co-creation.
An in-person gathering in their celebration will be held on July 19th, with materials from the events made available asynchronously afterwards.
People
Marlène Ramírez-Cancio ( EMERGENYC , Brooklyn Arts Exchange )
Marlène Ramírez-Cancio is a Puerto Rican cultural producer, artist, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. She is the Founding Director of EMERGENYC , an incubator and network for emerging artists-activists in New York City and beyond, focused on developing the voice and artistic expression of people of color, women, and LGBTQAI+ folks. Offering varied entry points into art and activism, EMERGENYC prioritizes process, discovery, and risk-taking, fostering a brave space of experimentation for artists who aim to build solidarity across differences and challenge dominant narratives through artistic cultural resistance. In 2021, she brought the incubator to BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange , where she is currently part of the leadership staff as Director of EMERGENYC and Practice Lab.
Neta Bomani (Phase 1, Fractal Phool)
Neta Bomani is a Brooklyn-based teacher, computer programmer, Black feminist scholar, zine maker, and abolitionist whose work questions the notion of freedom. Her anti-art practice is informed by her interest in “parsing information and histories while making things by hand with human and non-human computers.” She makes work for an intergenerational audience of Black people who are “engaged in thinking more critically about their Blackness” in order to engage them in a “conversation about technology and how socio-technological phenomena mediate our subjective experiences as Black people.”
Sebastián Calfuqueo (Phase 1, Fractal Phool)
Sebastián Calfuqueo is a Mapuche artist and activist and part of the Mapuche collective Rangiñtulewfü and Yene Revista whose work in installation, ceramic, performance, and video investigates race, gender, and social class. Their art practice proposes a decolonial view and a critical reflection of the social, cultural, and political status of the Mapuche subject in contemporary Chilean society and Latin America.
Marton Robinson (Phase 1, Fractal Phool)
Marton Robinson is a nomadic artist and activist whose work explores the Afro-Latino experience and challenges the conventions of blackness in art history, mainstream culture, and “the official national narratives” particularly in Costa Rica. The artist is interested in the idea of home and its construct.
DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren (Phase 1, Fractal Phool)
DeLesslin “Roo” George-Warren is a citizen of the Catawba Nation, an artist, performer, and researcher interested in conflict, colonialism, democracy, and indigenous futures. The artist engages their tribal community on issues such as language revitalization and food sovereignty and collaborates to “transform existing scripts and reweave them into a more resilient, more sovereign Catawba Nation.” The “strands” of their practice come together in yękαpįsαwačαre, “which implies both making art and helping someone else develop skills.”
Arushi Vats (Phase 1, Critical Writing Fellow in partnership with Momus)
Arushi Vats is a writer based in New Delhi, India. Her essays have been published on online and print platforms such as Art India Magazine, Runway Journal, Alternative South Asia Photography, LSE International History, Critical Collective, Write | Art | Connect, Scroll, Mint, and The Quint; and in publications by Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, India. She has written curatorial notes for Galerie Mirchandani Steinruecke, Mumbai; Reliable Copy, Bangalore; Aicon Contemporary, New York. Her short stories are published in nether quarterly, Gulmohar Quarterly, and Hakara Journal; Poetry has been published by PIX Quarterly, India and Anchorless Press, Canada.
