Sean McElroy in Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s The Art of Luv. Photo by Maria Baranova.
We recently saw a showing of Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble’s new work The Art of Luv (Part 1) and it got us thinking. We arts nonprofits often ask others to love us — come to our show, write a good review, make a donation, give us that grant — but we don’t always think enough about what we are doing to show love to others. We want our supporters to be generous, but are we being generous enough ourselves?
IM has been guilty of this as well, so this year we have decided to be more radically generous as a company: to give without being asked, ask only for what we need, show more love directly to artists, and offer more transparency about what your dollars are supporting.
Specifically, we have decided to keep only 10% of the proceeds of our year-end campaign for general operating expenses and split the remaining 90% equally among the artists in our AGENCY program. We mean it. We will keep these funds in separate restricted account in our books and write a check to each artist as direct financial support for their projects.
We love every single one of these artists deeply, and we hope you will join us in supporting them this holiday season with a radically generous tax-deductible donation*.
If you prefer to donate by check, please make checks payable to Immediate Medium and send to:
Immediate Medium
P.O. Box 1138
New York, NY 10276-1138
*Immediate Medium, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and all donations are tax-deductible to the full extent permitted by law.
AGENCY Program Artists
Blake Carrington
Blake Carrington is an artist who has recently done live video performance for Patti Smith + Soundwalk Collective, staged the solo exhibition The Year We Make Contact at CAC New Orleans, and is currently working on a new series of inkjet paintings generated by sound from a psychoanalysis session.
Lisa Clair
Lisa Clair is a writer/performer and curator of The Performance Project @University Settlement. Her new alien/lounge act What's YOUR Problem? is set to premiere in Brooklyn, NY in April 2015. More info at lisarafaelaclair.com.
David Commander
David Commander creates modern toy theater experiences that range from short politically-charged pieces (recently seen in the 2014 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival), to his upcoming full-length collaboration with Rob Ramirez (co-creator of An Evening with William Shatner Asterisk).
Photo by Eve Comperiati.
Jim Findlay
Jim Findlay is a performance maker who is currently working on Vine of the Dead — a piece about ritual and contact — which was in residence at Baryshnikov Art Center and will have an extended run in fall 2015.
Photo by Paula Court.
Siobhan Gandy
Siobhan Gandy is a Brooklyn-based performer most often found creating and or producing work with Immediate Medium. She received her BFA from NYU (Stella Adler conservatory and the Experimental Theater Wing), studied corporeal mime at the Decroux school in Paris, and is currently developing a new work called A Society Circus based on the life of Congolese pygmy Ota Benga.
JJ Lind
JJ Lind is a maker of performances and videos. He is currently developing two new works exploring love, ancestry, and legacy that will have work-in-progress performances in 2015. The Electric Indian, his work investigating the history of the Cherokee Nation and his hometown of Vinita, OK, will be further developed for a run in 2015.
Photo by Maria Baranova.
New Saloon
New Saloon is a Brooklyn-based theater company made up of Madeline Wise, Milo Cramer, and Morgan Green. They will show 7 minutes of their new piece TROPES (working title) on January 10 at CATCH/COIL and a full-length version in April at the Invisible Dog. More information at newsaloon.org.
Photo by Diana Mino.
Rob Ramirez
Rob Ramirez is an artist and programmer whose next project is a curated karaoke media extravaganza in collaboration with CATCH performance series in Brooklyn in Spring 2015.
Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble
Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (aka Tei Blow and Sean McElroy) is a musical priesthood that explores the metaphysics and mythologies of love and desire at the end of the 20th century. Their newest work The Art of Luv (Part 1) will be presented as part of the 2015 Under the Radar Festival's Incoming! Series on January 9 and further developed through the Performance Space 122 RAMP residency program and Gibney Dance's brand new Performance Lab.
Photo by Maria Baranova.
Jillian Sweeney/Jeffrey Cranor
Jillian Sweeney and Jeffrey Cranor are a choreographer and writer/director duo who recently presented their new dance theater work Vulture-Wally at Incubator Arts Project. Their upcoming project is an exploration of the potential for the self slipping away, and takes its inspiration from soft shoe dances, R&B music, missing persons reports, and ghost stories.
About the AGENCY Program
The AGENCY program is designed to share the collectively hard-won knowledge of diverse artists with one another and allow individual artists and informal groups to have greater “agency” in moving their projects forward. Support from the AGENCY helps free them from the administrative and bureaucratic demands of sustaining an organization and provides a mechanism for them to fund, make, and market their work more easily.