Neat Series' INsideOUT Presentation

Neat Series began our INsideOUT presentation by marching some of our signs onto the theater stage and playing our "You Must Relax" video. Foley then clicked on the first slide of the presentation,



telling the audience that she applied to work within Holman's group as a digital media artist to continue refining the performance of text through video in her "talking artifact" projects. She also spoke to Salpico's desire to use the residency time to refine notions of text as incorporated into her performance work, and noted that both members of Neat Series shared a similar intuitive approach to "performing text through action."

Salpico took over the mic and talked about how we came up with the name for our collaboration via an anagram generator,



and talked about the connection between words (tools of poets and writers) and our work.



Neat Series had two questions at the focus of our creative inquiry within the residency. The first related to the processing of information (or messages).



Salpico spoke about two of our word-based intervention projects:







The second question related to our shared approach as artists to making work with a sensitivity informed through connections with community as collaborators. We wanted to draw attention to the interdepended "ecological" system surrounding our work at ACA.



We viewed the internal and external community as collaborators in our projects and documented their contributions to our actions.



We created new works which were inspired by the work of peer and Master artits, and we created (and attempted to create) experiences which showed our appreciation for them or underscored messages of giving to or sharing with others as part of community.



We played Ben's apple-biting ringtone for the audience.



And we showed a snapshot of the blog to the audience, inviting them to read and see more of our work.



We got some incredible feedback from people attending the event. One person suggested we apply for another residency program within the Alliance of Artist Communities. Associate Artists and ACA staff members told us their funny stories of discovering the signs we installed on the grounds. Another attendee suggested we look for gallery representation through which we may be able to create a special edition of artist designed ringtones. The feedback helped us to feel as though we'd successfully answered the first (and very important question): "What the hell are two conceptual artists doing in the poets' group?"