Idea Fund for Big Ideas!

Great news!

PLAND has been awarded a project grant from The Idea Fund!

The Idea Fund is the second re-granting initiative supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, following the lead of San Francisco-based Southern Exposure’s program, Alternative Exposure. The Idea Fund is a Houston-based enterprise supported by Diverseworks, Project Row Houses, and the Aurora Picture Show.

As the Idea Fund’s website boldly states: “The Idea Fund is committed to new, risk-taking forms that help to define new practices in contemporary art.”

Also: “The Idea Fund favors projects that exemplify the unconventional, interventionist, conceptual, entrepreneurial, participatory, or guerrilla artistic practices that occur outside of the traditional frameworks of support.”

Read more about The Idea Fund here: http://www.theideafund.org

With our grant of $3,500 we intend to support a week-long summer work party as well as a visiting resident artist or collective. Here are some excerpts from the awesome grant that Nancy wrote:

PLAND: Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation is an off-the-grid program that supports the development of experimental and research-based projects in the context of the Taos mesa.

PLAND focuses on open-ended projects that facilitate collaboration, experimentation, and hyper-local engagement. We do not hold expectations about prescribed outcomes. We privilege process over product. We believe artists can do amazing things when supported and encouraged in new contexts. We believe that no context exists like that of the Taos mesa.

PLAND is initiating project-based residencies to transform our parcel of land into a more inhabitable outpost while challenging artists to create, experiment, and produce their own work within this unique context. Inaugural PLAND residents are encouraged to marry survival-based goals with big ideas, aesethetic decisions, social engagement, and experimental methods.

I would add that:

PLAND finds its inspiration in a legacy of pioneers, entrepenuers, homesteaders, artists, and other counterculturalists who – through both radical and mundane activities – reclaim and reframe a land-based notion of the American Dream.

As we enter into a new year, big ideas promise big action. Stay tuned for more exciting developments with PLAND.

Thank you, Idea Fund, for your support of this exciting project!