Micro-Grant Proposals

10/19/13: C.U.T.E. Collaborative and miranda arts project space hosted a Micro-Grant Dinner on Saturday October 19, with all proceeds going to an artist whose proposal received the most votes by attendees.


Congratulations to our winners, Purchase Chamber Orchestra and Christina Healy. Thanks to everyone who participated and attended the event!


Here are the proposals presented that evening:
Why Not Share?
Marcy B. Freedman
One-on-one, face-to-face interactive performance piece with intention to give away all of the money received if selected. At a time and place TBA, the artist will be seated at a table announcing her intention to give away money. Anyone wishing to receive money will sit and chat about why he or she should NOT receive the money. The artist then evaluates the participant's case and decides to share or not share.

Conduct Us: Concertized Performance Art
Purchase Chamber Orchestra
Bridging the gap between audience and musician through a concertized performance art piece at the miranda arts project space. How would an ensemble react if the heartbeat were in the hands of a member of the audience? How would this participant react to having an interactive new world of sound at their fingertips?

Ecofeminism
Lindsay Garcia
Ecofeminism is the movement that equates the treacherous treatment of the environment by man to the way women have been treated through the ages. By playing out various roles of women in the woods, Garcia investigates the cliché in art history and culture of the woman in the natural world.

On the Inevitability of Failure
Chad Coumbes
In real world situations and scenarios, meeting failure is inevitable. It is from our failures that success is both found and created. Coumbes plans to take the ideas investigated through previous works and applying it to a short film. It would take various ideas regarding failure and coping with it as it applies to relationships or lack thereof.

The Russian Market Women
Katherine Jackson
Every month a small group of elderly Russian women drive a van from their home city in Murmansk (above the Arctic Circle) to a small town in Arctic Norway called Kirkenes.  They are bringing their latest collection of Russian crystal, woven shawls, silk cloth, handmade nesting dolls, and other artifacts, to sell at a fair in the Kirkenes town center.  
In order for them to participate in the fair, they need a permit, since they are bringing goods for sale across a national border. For a number of years, the Norwegian government granted them permits, and at the present, Norway is doing so again.  But from 2009-2012, the permits were not granted.  The town of Kirkenes protested and the permits have been re-instated - but no one knows for how long. 
I am trying to raise funds to pay for plane fare to Kirkenes, where I have been invited to spend some time documenting this story.

Collective Memory
Christina Healy
My work explores the ways in which we cope and deal with personal trauma. 
 I use houses as a metaphor for the mind and attempt to create spaces where negative memories can be stored and locked away. Participants would each communicate to me a list of imagery (objects, people, places that they associate with negative memories), that would be used to form an image lexicon, taking form in a deck of cards, with each card containing a different memory-association image. On day of the collaboration, participants will be randomly dealt a set of five images from the deck of cards, which they will then be required to use in the creation of their own memory collage. This project is really about the act of collective action as a way to deal with personal dilemmas.