OZ Arts Nashville

Nashville's Non-Profit Contemporary Arts Center
 

As Part of Its TNT Local Spotlight Series, OZ Arts Will Present Second Edition of the Acclaimed Installation Project, This Time Featuring 50+ Artist Pods Curated by Youngblood, June 21-25, 2016

NASHVILLE, TENN. – September 30, 2015 – In June 2016, as part of its TNT local spotlight series, OZ Arts Nashville will present the second edition of the sprawling Modular Art Pods (MAPs) installation.  OZ Arts and Tony Youngblood, who conceived and curates the project, issued a call for artist entries to the upcoming engagement, which will be open to the public at OZ Arts June 21-25, 2016.  Artists are invited to submit their proposals at ozartsnashville.org.  Application deadline is November 16, 2015 and artists selected to participate will be announced December 1, 2015.

The Modular Art Pods (MAPs) will fill the contemporary arts center’s 10,000-square-foot warehouse venue with more than 50 cubed gallery spaces, each constructed by a different artist or collective. The MAPs installation is as an open-source collaborative art tunnel consisting of numerous pods, each designed by an artist or artist collective and constructed out of cardboard, foam board, canvas, conduit, PVC pipe, lattice, or anything else the artists dream up.

Modular Art Pods made its wildly successful, one-night debut at Abrasive Media in February 2015. Thirty MAPs captured imaginations as each attendee crawled from one 4’x4’ cube to another, the interiors of which represented an immersive view into an artist’s mind. Describing the inaugural edition, Nashville Scene wrote, “When everybody’s talking about the crawl at the drinking fountain on Monday morning, they’ll undoubtedly be talking about the Modular Art Pods installation.”

At OZ Arts, the tunnel will be split into levels composed of four to eight pods each. Audiences of all ages will be able to “choose their own adventure” in navigating a journey through and around the pods. Between every level will be open space, so attendees can enter and exit freely and choose a nonlinear path if they wish. Many pods will be larger this time, up to 8’x8’. Live performances will take place over the course of the engagement.

About OZ Arts Nashville

As the newest 501(c)3 contemporary arts institution in the Midsouth Region, OZ Arts’ particular style of programming has begun to transform the cultural landscape of Nashville. Utilizing the venue’s flexibility, OZ Arts presents the work of leading artists from around the world, offering an intimate context for performing and visual art programs that challenge and inspire a diverse range of curious audiences.

OZ Arts also serves as a catalyst for local creativity through a program called TNT (Thursday Night Things).  TNT is a quarterly series of unexpected collaborations with Nashville-based artists from varying creative disciplines.  OZ Arts’ “blank slate” provides a platform onto which these artists can create, develop and present a one-time-only event that would traditionally not be seen in a visual art gallery or theatre.

OZ Arts is located in the former C.A.O. cigar warehouse owned by Nashville’s Ozgener family.  Their generosity provided the seed money that breathed new life into the column-free, 10,000 square-foot space nestled amidst artfully landscaped grounds. 

Since it opened in February 2014, OZ Arts Nashville “has fundamentally changed the creative landscape of Music City” (ArtsNash). Under the artistic leadership of Lauren Snelling, its first two-seasons have brought to the city luminaries such as Philip Glass and Tim Fain, Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Vijay Iyer, Laurie Anderson, Wayne McGregor’s company Random Dance, ETHEL and BANDALOOP. These programs have consistently played to sold-out audiences and local and national acclaim.

http://www.ozartsnashville.org/

# # #

OZ Arts Nashville Media Contact

Please contact Amy Atkinson at Amy Atkinson Communications, by phone/text at 615.305.8118, on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/AmyAComm  or by email at amy@amyacommunications.com.