EmergeNYC is an incubator and affinity network for socially engaged artists to develop their creative voice, explore the intersections of art and activism, and connect to a thriving community of BIPOC, migrant, and LGBTQIA+ practitioners who challenge dominant narratives through cultural resistance.

EMERGE has both an in-person program (at Abrons Arts Center) and a virtual program, which both run from late March to late June 2023. Applications are due on February 1, 2023.

Link to the Application: https://bax.submittable.com/submit/237423/emergenyc-2023

- The in-person flagship EMERGENYC program is open to emerging artists/activists who live in the NYC area.
- The virtual EMERGENYC program is open to emerging artists/activists outside the NYC area and who cannot attend in person.

FLAGSHIP PROGRAM (in person at Abrons Arts Center)
led by george emilio sánchez 

This is the flagship program that has been the heart and soul of Emerge since 2008. Designed and led by george emilio sánchez, this program is open to artists in the New York City area, and is comprised of weekly workshops facilitated by george, as well as workshops by guest artists who are leaders in the field of performance and politics. With a decolonial lens, we explore the intersection of art and activism through creative writing, autobiographical narratives, group work, and other multi-disciplinary adventures—all while creating and re-creating a space in which all participants build community with one another, actively listen with their bodies, and build intentional trust to lay a foundation where compassion and risk-taking guide our work together. We ask applicants to define issues that are important to them and explore how creative practices can harness their political voice. Through the years, participants have explored themes of racism and racial violence; police brutality and mass incarceration; radical joy as resistance; disability rights; undocumented immigrant activism; war and human rights; environmental justice; and myriad topics that affect their lives. These engagements have resulted in the creation of performance art pieces, multimedia installations, theatrical explorations, street performances, video art, and more.

In 2023, the flagship program takes place at Abrons Arts Center every Sunday (10:00 AM – 2:00 PM Eastern Time) from Sunday, March 26 to Sunday, June 18th. During this time frame, there is an Intensive Week of daily workshops from Monday, April 24–Saturday, April 29. The workshops will include various guest leaders that will be announced later in the semester. Final works-in-progress will be presented live at Abrons on Thursday, June 22 and participants must be available the afternoon/evening of June 21st for tech. Abrons Arts Center is wheelchair accessible. *Please note: You need to be fully vaccinated for COVID in order to participate in person.

This in-person program, which includes a final production at Abrons, has a fee of USD $1000.
Financial aid will be available to cover part of the tuition on a need basis. If  your enrollment depends on financial aid, please let us know in your application. We will work it out.

VIRTUAL PROGRAM, ANALOG BODIES AND VIRTUAL ACTIVATIONS
led by Nicolás Dumit Estévez & Marlène Ramírez-Cancio

Through a series of weekly sessions at the very core of performance art, activisms, and care and love for one another, participants in Emerge’s Analog Bodies and Virtual Activations are encouraged to investigate genders, sexualities, class, race, politics, and spiritualities from the interstitial space between the analog and the digital that this pandemic moment has intensified. How do we as artists, instigators, dissenters, mediators, or meditators, wrestle with the back and forth between our flesh-and-bone bodies and the virtual spaces that allow us to bilocate, multiply, clone, and project our presences around the globe at any time and at all times at once? This program will pay equal attention to how these two seemingly opposing forms of engagement can mix and mingle, remain aloof or dissolve into each other. Some of the formats we will use include performance, writing, dance/movement, deep listening, visualization, somatic practices, and conversations, plus visits by and presentations of the work of mainly BIPOC and gender non-conforming practitioners from the Americas and the Caribbean. With all of this in mind/heart, participants are invited to reflect upon themselves, their audiences, and the shifts that their analog movements in virtual realms have the power to ignite—way out there in the cosmos, and right here in our changing, aging, living, dying, breathing, pulsing bodies.

This virtual iteration of Emerge, which takes place via Zoom, will begin on Saturday March 25 (11:00 AM–3:00 PM Eastern Time), and then meet every Sunday from April 2nd to June 18th (11:00 AM–3:00 PM Eastern Time.)

This virtual program has a fee of USD $600.
Financial aid will be available to cover part of the tuition on a need basis. If your enrollment depends on financial aid, please apply and let us know your needs in your application. We will work it out.