Voiceover

A public intervention by Nayda Collazo-Llorens

October 25 – November 16, 2008

Viewable from dusk until midnight, Thursdays through Sundays

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 25, 2008, 6PM – 8PM

Artist’s talk: Saturday, November 8, 4:30PM

Tribute to Edgardo Vega Yunque: Saturday, November 15, 3PM – 7PM

MediaNoche, Manhattan’s Uptown gallery devoted to new media, presents Voiceover, a site-specific public intervention by Nayda Collazo-Llorens.

A constant flow of text moving across the storefront windows of MediaNoche engages the public to explore aspects of memory, language and displacement. Viewable at night from the street, nearby buildings and passing trains on the overpass, Voiceover is a non-linear textual piece projected onto the windows of the gallery, located at the Northeast corner of Park Avenue and 102^nd Street.

A lyrical, textual composition, Voiceover is based on Collazo-Llorens’ research of the archives and oral histories section of PRdream.com, a web site on the history, culture and politics of Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Fragments from these oral histories are combined with texts from public spaces, literature, the media, as well as the artist’s own writings.

The projected words become transmitted signals, simultaneously truncated and expanded, pointing to multiple narrators while triggering viewers to connect to their own experience. The ephemeral quality of the projected light and the fleeting texts suggests the fragility and transient nature of memory and story telling.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Nayda Collazo-Llorens was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and is a visual artist based in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She received an MFA from New York University in 2002 and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston in 1990. She works in various media, including works on paper and canvas, video, and installations, exploring the way in which the mind processes information.

Recent individual exhibitions include Route/Journal at LMAKprojects (Williamsburg), Brooklyn, NY, 2007; Navigable Zones at Project 4, Washington DC, 2007; Mindscapes at Space Other, Boston, 2006; Roaming, CSV Cultural Center, NYC, 2006; and Configuraciones, Galería Raíces, San Juan, PR, 2005. Notable group shows include the IX International Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador, 2007; 12th International Media Art Biennale, Wroclaw, Poland, 2007; None of the Above: Contemporary Works by Puerto Rican Artists, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT, 2004, and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, 2005; and Here & There: Six Artists from San Juan, at El Museo del Barrio, NY, 2001 and Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, TX, 2002. She was an Artist in Residence at Location One, New York, NY, 2004-05, and a 2006 Grant recipient from the Urban Artist Initiative/New York City. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art Net, Art US, Art Nexus, Art News and NY Arts, among others. More information on the artist’s work can be found at www.naydacollazollorens.com.

Nayda Collazo-Llorens appears courtesy of LMAKprojects, New York.

*Please note that there will be a tribute to Edgardo Vega Yunqué who recently passed away in his home in Brooklyn, New York. The homage will take the form of a continuous, non-stop reading of The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle, one of the most recent of the accomplished author’s 18 novels.

ABOUT MEDIANOCHE:

Director’s Statement

Our media practice is rooted in community, utilizing technology as a tool for transgressing the dynamic, cultural space of Spanish Harlem in order to engage, incite, and transform the dialectics of alternity and marginalization.

MediaNoche, a project of PRdream.com

MediaNoche is the place where art, technology and community converge.  We offer artists working in new media exhibition space and residencies in order to provoke a dialogue that blurs all lines of marginality and alternity.

Unique among arts and technology groups in New York, MediaNoche is directly linked to the oldest Latino community of the city, Spanish Harlem, and has showcased a roster of local and international new media artists.