COURTESY EYEBEAM
Eyebeam, the nonprofit organization that provides residencies to artists working with technology, will move to a ground-floor space in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood this fall. The organization, which is currently located in Sunset Park, will have its first public event—an opening party—at its new location on November 30. Its new address will be 199 Cook Street.
This is the second move since the organization’s founding, in 1997. Until 2014, Eyebeam had been based in Chelsea, where it had been one of the first art spaces to set up shop in what is now a crowded neighborhood for galleries and nonprofits. In 2013, Eyebeam had initially planned to move to the BAM Cultural District in downtown Brooklyn, but the organization then decided instead to go to its current home in Sunset Park.
Roderick Schrock, the director of Eyebeam, told ARTnews that the move to Bushwick was primarily to be closer to the neighborhood where many of its artists-in-residence—and many of its visitors—are based. “The organization is nothing except people, and that includes our residents, alumni, and community,” he said in a phone interview. “This is an opportunity for us to really open our doors and embrace that realization in a tangible way.” To further reach its community, the new Eyebeam, which Schrock has nicknamed “Eyebeam 3.0,” will have a space dedicated specifically to its public programming.
Since its founding, Eyebeam has fostered a number of important technology-related art projects, among them some of Cory Arcangel’s net artworks and the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, which is now held annually at arts institutions around the world. In Bushwick, the nonprofit will continue to promote the “very experimental approach” that has characterized its 460-plus alumni’s work, Schrock said.
As Eyebeam prepares to open its new space, the nonprofit will also start an R&D Program for the Future of Journalism, which will allow three to four journalists and technologists to create arts-related projects. The yearlong residencies will provide the selected journalists and technologists with financial support and allow them to make use of Eyebeam’s resources.