Assembly

Launching: Thursday, January 12 | Public hours: Thursday – Saturday, 12-6pm

Assembly is a nine-month pilot program operating from the Recess satellite space in Downtown Brooklyn. To expand upon our mission to connect artists and publics, Assembly will offer arts-based diversion programs which present alternatives to incarceration and other adult sanctions for court-involved youth. When participants complete the program prosecutors may close and seal their case avoiding an adult record.

The program is presented in partnership with Brooklyn Justice Initiatives, who recruits program participants at the court level, and Shaun Leonardo, the program’s lead teaching artist, and organizer. Leonardo will be joined by Salome Asega and Sable Elyse Smith who will serve teaching artists in the spring and summer, respectively.

In addition to this dedicated program, Assembly will grant each artist the opportunity to activate and add to the front gallery space cumulatively, working toward an evolving installation rather than a static exhibition. Program participants will have the opportunity to create a final project and curate a final exhibition combining their own work with that of the artists.

Assembly Gallery Activation: Shaun Leonardo

For the initial cycle of the program, from January–April, 2017, Leonardo’s own body of work will occupy the street-level, public storefront gallery. Leonardo’s videos, drawings, and documentation of his performance art will be present in the gallery and will also be used as a jumping off point for discussion during the educational diversion programs.

At the core of Leonardo’s project—as it unfolds both in the front gallery and during program sessions—will be a seamless treatment of artistic and educative practice. To this end, the formal layout of the adjacent classroom and gallery will be porous, and an ideology of alternative pedagogy will pervade the entirety of the space. Leonardo will have custom seating and storage fabricated to redefine the priorities of critical inquiry and to provide a counterpoint to furniture typically found in learning institutions; rather than connoting uniformity and institutional homogeneity, the furnishings and arrangement of the space will welcome a variety of subject positions and learning styles. Visitors to Assembly will, therefore, be encouraged to adapt new positions and language in order to describe a justice system that rejects popular notions of criminality.

After his three-month gallery activation, Leonardo will remain the lead educator of the Assembly diversion program for the full duration of the nine-month pilot.

Viewed Above: Mirror / Echo / Tilt - production still. Photo by Melanie Crean