Monday, November 23, 2009

Meet Superfront

Meet the indefatigable Mitch McEwen - the founder, owner, operator and all-around guru behind the cutting edge SUPERFRONT gallery in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Her theoretical framework (and the central tenet behind SUPERFRONT) explores the balancing act between architecture and other art forms. McEwen, an architect herself, curates material that often questions the relationship between human beings and subjects such as dance within temporary structures. Her program explores how dance can twist design into new directions.

Mitch proposes pairing architects and choreographers to create relationships between choreography and buildings and finds William Forsythe’s notion of the choreographed object, relevant to her practice. Forsythe’s installation of suspended gymnastic rings at the Venice Biennale represents a push from our position of certainty and Mitch sees this uncertainty as a potent mode of inquiry that tests the limits of architecture.

A telling recent example of SUPERFRONT’s inventive pastiche is a collaboration between Movement Research (an experimental contemporary dance group founded in NYC in the seventies) and Live Architecture Network (an architecture collective working in the digital realm). The structures are fleeting, temporary designs that become even more debased by means of exploratory human movement in the form of postmodern dance. By mixing dance and architecture in an art space, SUPERFRONT presents a scenario that also deconstructs the spatial relationships of citizens outside the gallery walls.

Superfront’s imaginative use of active design is both unique and resourceful. Visit their website at http://newyork.superfront.org/ and be sure to catch Superfront at The Laundromat Project’s Create Change program in Brooklyn through December 12 and see how design is creating change!

I’d love to hear your comments. Please email me at mycurator@earthlink.net.

By Helen Varola

Meet the indefatigable Mitch McEwen - the founder, owner, operator and all-around guru behind the cutting edge SUPERFRONT gallery in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Her theoretical framework (and the central tenet behind SUPERFRONT) explores the balancing act between architecture and other art forms. McEwen, an architect herself, curates material that often questions the relationship between human beings and subjects such as dance within temporary structures. Her program explores how dance can twist design into new directions.


Mitch proposes pairing architects and choreographers to create relationships between choreography and buildings and finds William Forsythe’s notion of the choreographed object, relevant to her practice. Forsythe’s installation of suspended gymnastic rings at the Venice Biennale represents a push from our position of certainty and Mitch sees this uncertainty as a potent mode of inquiry that tests the limits of architecture.


A telling recent example of SUPERFRONT’s inventive pastiche is a collaboration between Movement Research (an experimental contemporary dance group founded in NYC in the seventies) and Live Architecture Network (an architecture collective working in the digital realm). The structures are fleeting, temporary designs that become even more debased by means of exploratory human movement in the form of postmodern dance. By mixing dance and architecture in an art space, SUPERFRONT presents a scenario that also deconstructs the spatial relationships of citizens outside the gallery walls.


Superfront’s imaginative use of active design is both unique and resourceful. Visit their website at http://newyork.superfront.org/ and be sure to catch Superfront at The Laundromat Project’s Create Change program in Brooklyn through December 12 and see how design is creating change!


I’d love to hear your comments. Please email me at mycurator@earthlink.net.


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