APEXART, NEW YORK AND ME

APEXART, NEW YORK AND ME
It is not an easy task to describe one month of experiences in apexart’s non-working residency in NYC, but at the same time it presents a delightful opportunity for me to talk about it.
This was my first visit to NYC and actually my first stay in the USA at all. Even though I arrived with much theoretical knowledge about the country, mainly from literary and art resources, I came to NYC without any story behind me about the city. It is not that I do not believe in other stories or that they could influence my own in that manner, but because I wanted to find my own story, my NYC. I had a very good reason standing on that path of my decision, because it was highly motivated by the intelligent residency concept innovated and developed by apexart. And it proved itself as a true one.
Even though the residency structure is designed for the resident to put aside working, on the other hand this concept allowed my personal and academic experience to have a significant level of creativity growth and creative thinking. So, I am now back to my homeland (nostos), but the NYC story has not finished yet, because it is still opening fresh new doors in a sense of great motivation for my further academic and artistic work. I highly appreciated the residency program on a personal and professional level, because it supports the motive of how to continue on in fresh and constructive way.
The extensive residence schedule gave me a rare opportunity to achieve the sense of myself as a collector of the huge energetic potential of the city itself. In that context, I was present not only at the “heart of Manhattan”, but also found paths to explore and to find many other and different elements which are not parts of it. So, long NYC streets, Roosevelt Island’s silence, Tunnel tour in Brooklyn, Morgan Museum and Library, the Cloisters, Edgar Allan Poe’s house in the Bronx, Harlem’s ambience, Beacon’s atmosphere and Dia: Beacon’s heritage, Washington DC, Corcoran University and the Hirshhorn Museum in DC, a panel discussion in DC about profit and non-profit gallery concepts, the NYC Ballet, daily dances in the NYC subway, the exceptional privilege to sit in on Boris Groys’ seminars, Laurie Anderson’s exhibition at Location 1, Coney Island, the open talk with Jayson Keeling, Edwin Ramoran, Carlo McCormick and the public at apexart (http://apexart.org/events/residentalien2.htm)…, daily routine, places, people, rainy, sunny and snowy days, people’s smiles, talks, my dog-friends Baci, Moca and Blackie… they are all part of my huge visual experience. But what the most important - is – it is its influence on me achieving a personal, deep touching level. And all that has much with Odyssey’s metaphor and psychological dimension of the traveler, regarding inner metamorphosis.
So, I became deeply interested in finding the most particular way to contextualize each of these precious details (visual and inner), which became an inevitable heritage of my NY; is it to become word, document, photography, poetry, narrative, story, essay, photo-essay, memory, archive… Regarding this, my residential archive is very rich and weighted in aesthetical sense, too. It was not easy to leave NY with such a huge “luggage”. But I love it just because it is so, because if it was different, I could have taken with (and in) me very little. That is why I truly believe that the time is approaching for me to canalize such pleasant experiences to others and to the world itself. Because, what had been taken once has to be given back again. There, where it truly belongs.
In that context I would like to strongly emphasis that the apexart residency concept, even though it is non-working in a classical sense, is not a vacation nor a leisure trip. I found this concept of a non-working residency to be educational, charmingly creative and highly intellectual. But moreover, its international dedication to intellectual exchange makes the residency concept an honorable function for the resident holder. And it is its unique dimension that it excludes each further chance for its repetition for a whole lifetime. I am honored to have taken part of apexart’s residency and regarding that, part of the most cosmopolitan city that “never sleeps”. And I am deeply grateful for that.
Sofija Grandakovska