MAD Announces 2012 Fun Fellowship Recipientts

The Fun Fellowship was established in 2011 by the Museum of Arts and Design in recognition of the vital role nightlife practitioners play in the city's creative community and artistic endeavors. Now in its second year, The Fun provides four artists or artist collaboratives with financial and logistical support to help them advance and realize their latest nightlife-related projects. MAD announces that this year's FUN Fellows are Ladyfag, FCKNLZ, CHERYL, and Babycastles.

The Fun Fellows were identified through a complex, competitive process. MAD invited 100 individuals from the art and nightlife communities to each nominate a candidate. From this group, 35 individuals and collaboratives were selected as semi-finalists by a collection of their peers, and the winners were chosen by a jury comprised of curators, nightlife luminaries, critics, and previous Fun Fellows. "We wanted to make sure we're not trying to force nightlife practitioners into the fine arts sector, but rather expanding the sector to better accommodate the practice," said Jake Yunza, MAD's Manager of Public Programs and founder of the THE FUN fellowship.

THE ARTISTS AND THEIR PROJECTS

FCKNLZ
A beauty and lifestyle artist collective specializing in mistakes, FCKNLZ will present a theatrical restaging of club kid appearances on TV talk shows from the early 1990s. Using original footage from shows such as Donahue, Geraldo, and Jenny Jones ("So what exactly is a club kid?") as their source material, FCKNLZ will rework the transcripts into a 30-minute performance, casting actors as hosts, club kids, and audience members. Their new versions will be filmed in front of a live audience at MAD, evoking the historical "golden age" of New York nightlife while examining how nightlife is portrayed in the media.

CHERYL
Presenting a series of mobile dance parties this summer, the four-member, semi-anonymous, often cat-masked artist collaborative CHERYL will use social media and other platforms to encourage public revelers to follow their location in New York City as they hop from spot to spot in their party van, both capitalizing on long lines and crowds at existing gatherings and instigating their own spontaneous events city-wide. THE FUN will enable CHERYL, which revels in the joyous power of dance-induced psychosis/euphoria, to participate in non-traditional outdoor party spaces.

Ladyfag
Through constructing new models for the nightclub experience, Ladyfag will invite groups of individuals from the nightlife community to participate in a "Dayclub." The "Dayclub" will include events that are visible but not accessible to the general public, offering viewers an opportunity to observe nightlife culture outside of the context of hedonism. These events will challenge viewers' assumptions about what nightclubs truly are while showcasing nightlife's cultural value as a unique and influential artistic medium. At other times, the "Dayclub" may be fully open for the public to enter and enjoy the energetic and creative environment to be found inside.

Babycastles
Exploring innovation in interactive media and human interaction, the collective Babycastles will host a 3-day series of video game controller hacking workshops at MAD in collaboration with Keita Takahashi, game designer of Japan's Katamari Damacy. They will include panel talks, screenings and sessions focusing on one-button games, hardware hacking, and arcade cabinet design and construction, and will culminate in a fantastical nightlife playground party, involving highly physical arcade games, designed by Takashi.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

THE FUN is organized by Jake Yuzna, Manager of Public Programs and Tracy Candido, Program Associate.

THE FUN fellowship projects will begin the weekend of August 24th with Babycastle, continue in September with Ladyfag's Dayclub, and FKCNLZ will present for five consecutive Saturdays beginning October 20th. Full line up will be presented on the Museum of Arts and Design's website at madmuseum.org/series/fun-0.