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The flexible warehouse space at OZ Arts provides artists with an opportunity to create unique environments that engage curious audiences. MAPs is a fascinating, immersive experiment for both the artists/makers and the visitors. —Lauren Snelling, Artistic Director, OZ Arts Nashville
Photograph by Sarah McDonald
Emily Holt’s Pod at abrasiveMedia
gallery was so small that only one person could fit inside. You would be forced to confront the art. Also, most artists don’t have the financial means to make room-sized experiential art, but a four-foot cube can be made for cheap. Then, when you connect these tubes into a tunnel, something exciting happens. The whole becomes greater than the parts. The exhibit forms a narrative that no individual artist or curator can foresee. What is a Modular Art Pod? What is not a Modular Art Pod? A Modular Art Pod is a tiny room, anywhere from four feet cubed to ten feet cubed, with entry and exit doors, containing art. In most cases, the room is part of the art. The walls can be made out of anything. Building materials for the OZ edition include foam, PVC pipe, cardboard, squirrel traps, electrical boxes, quilts, doll houses, packing tape, and much more. It’s modular because the pods are built separately and can be connected in any order.
What’s not a Modular Art Pod? Work hanging on the wall. Unless it is hanging on a tiny wall . . . inside an art pod. You are curating a collection of artworks to be displayed as a tunnel in an installation style, but the presentation and concept seem to defy the usual art-on-walls connotation of “exhibit.” Is it an exhibit? How do you categorize this type of participatory art event? Good question. You could call it an exhibit, immersive art, interactive art, experiential art; they all apply. MAPs publicly debuted at abrasiveMedia during Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston in February 2015. Were you certain that it was going to work? What efforts and challenges were involved in coordinating artists to participate in your project? We intended the abrasiveMedia show to be in many ways a
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