The Total Styrene Experience is a laboratory for recycling Styrofoam into art and performance, turning the glut of empty storefronts and the glut of discarded Styrofoam into an opportunity for experimentation and collaboration across live and visual art. A temporary pop-up storefront in Lower Manhattan will collect styrofoam from the surrounding community and turn it into art.
The project aims to create a small temporary space for creative generosity and intellectual abundance in resistance to the commercial and institutional models of competition and scarcity that define current art worlds. It celebrates the alchemy of turning toxic Styrofoam trash into a source of artistic abundance.
A project of artist Lizzie Scott, The Total Styrene Experience presents installations and performances exploring the material relationship between Styrofoam and the body. Working with curators Michael Mahalchick and Patricia Milder, The Total Styrene Experience invites guest artists from the dance, music, and art worlds to use the combined resources of the space and the collected Styrofoam to create experimental work of all kinds.
Participating Artists (list in formation.)
Kennis Hawkins - Choreographer and Performance Artist, Dance Gang
Michael Mahalchick - Visual, Sound, Dance and Performance Artist
Rashaun Mitchell - Choreographer and Dancer, Merce Cunningham Dance Company
Lizzie Scott - Visual Artist and Performance Choreographer, The Styrene Fantastic
Max Steele - Conceptual Go-Go Dancer and Cabaret Performance Artist
Project Organizers
Lizzie Scott has had exhibitions and projects at John Tevis Gallery in Paris, at the Brooklyn
Museum, The Jersey City Museum, and at LMAK Projects in New York. She has recently
staged performances in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, at Rachel Uffner Gallery, and under the Manhattan
Bridge.
Michael Mahalchick’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions and performances
at CANADA, the PS 1 Museum, and the The Kitchen. He has curated performances and exhibitions
at CANADA Gallery and Klaus Von Nichtsagend Gallery in New York City, and was
co-curator of the Movement Research Spring Festival 09.
Patricia Milder was Associate Curator of Writing Live at Performa 09 and a Production Associate
at Mt Tremper Arts Summer Festival in 2010. She is the Managing Art Editor of the Brooklyn
Rail. Her writitngs have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, ArtCritical and PAJ: A Journal of
Art and Performance.
The Total Styrene Experience is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
