In autumn of 2020, at the start of COVID’s second wave and the resulting mass quarantines, the artist co-op Temp Files began their biweekly virtual meetings to support the generation of temporal digital works. Digital/performance artist Tusia Dabrowska and curator/multimedia artist Michelle Levy recognized a need for a platform that could both support time-based artists in generating new work during this difficult moment and provide an ephemeral audience experience. Further, this time when everyone, en-masse, was turning to virtual space, created an opening to more readily self-organize to fill gaps in institutional support that existed before the pandemic.
A digital residency in a global pandemic reconceptualizes the exteriority of “residing.”
The co-op’s biweekly dialogues, the heart of the digital residency, foster an exploratory approach to generation at the intersections of text, performance, and moving image. Through overlapping feedback cycles, the co-op members support each other from each work’s inception, through production, to showcasing of the works, one at a time. Their encouraging accountability structure and consistent feedback allows each of the co-op’s seven artists to take an experimental approach to creating new works to be temporarily exhibited on the Temp Files website. The cooperative, in its current iteration, includes founders Dabrowska & Levy, plus Emily Brandt, Rah Eleh, Kara Hearn, Sunita Prasad and Rachel Stevens.
While most of the artists in Temp Files did not initially know each other, the duration of the residency has been central in creating genuine community. The pacing helps this too, since not all artists are on the same exhibition timeline. Each month, one artist is in the conception phase, while another is in the production phase, and another has her work exhibited via the Temp Files website and Instagram. During the conception and production phases the collective offers critique, mutual aid, or whatever else is needed. Since not all members of the collective are at the same pressure points, there is plenty of time and space to focus on each person’s process, and to offer support in whatever way is needed at the time. The timeline for making new work is quite compressed. But with the support of the collective, and the ephemerality of the finished products, there’s a playful generativity that buoys each artist.
Each finished, never-before-seen work is visible to viewers, online, for just one month, creating a feeling of liveness. Audiences can expect the launch on the first Monday of each month. Though each project is only up for a short time before disappearing, a corresponding interview between the artist and another artist from the collective, remains up as an archive of their work.
Viewers are encouraged to subscribe to the Temp. Files mailing list to receive announcements of new work.
Season 1, Temp. Files are:
Emily Brandt is the author of the poetry collection Falsehood, as well as three chapbooks. She’s a co-founding editor of No, Dear, curator of the LINEAGE reading series at Wendy’s Subway, and visionary at landscape.fm. She’s of Sicilian, Polish & Ukrainian descent, and lives in Brooklyn.
emilybrandt.com / @emilythebrandt
Tusia Dabrowska works at the intersection of storytelling, performance and media. Her projects often begin with investigations into in-between states, hybrid beings, and communities in flux. Presented at EdgeCut, Circle1, mhProject, BRIC, Gibney, MAD, PrintScreen, TAFNY; residencies: Signal Culture, BRICworskapce, KonventZero.
www.tusiadabrowska / @tusiadabrowska
Rah is a video, net and performance artist. Her multimedia and multi-character work investigates how race, gender, and nationalism are performed and experienced through various technologies in language, and across culture, time, and space.
@elehrah
Kara Hearn is an interdisciplinary video artist whose work is centered on managing the vulnerability, awkwardness and discomfort of being alive. Her work has been screened, exhibited, and performed across the United States and in Europe.
www.karahearn.com / @karaelisehearn
MICHELLE LEVY is a Brooklyn-based artist and storyteller investigating the mediated spaces where identity is constructed. She has presented and performed work at venues including La MaMa Galleria, Dixon Place, NURTUREart, Spectacle Theater, and Theaterlab in New York; Machine Project in Los Angeles; and internationally in Krakow, Szczecin, Warsaw, and Prague.
www.michelle-levy.com / @lovy_mish
Sunita Prasad is a New York City based artist working in film, video, and performance. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Centre Clark in Montreal, Homesession in Barcelona, and Vox Populi in Philadelphia, as well as group shows at venues including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Smack Mellon and UrbanGlass in New York.
www.sunitaprasad.net / @sunitadee
Rachel Stevens is a New York City based artist and researcher working with social ecologies, critical geographies, moving images and archives. She has shown at venues such as Kunsthalle Galapagos, LMCC and Socrates Sculpture Park in NYC, Viafarini (Milan) and ZKM (Karlsruhe), and is an editor of Millennium Film Journal.
http://rachelstevens.net/ / @agent_stevens
Follow Temp. Files on Instagram @TempFilesVideo
