Urban Video Project Presents Evan Starling-Davis: FRACTURE
In this innovative and experiential exhibition, viewers will have the ability to interact with and control UVP’s video projection on the facade of the Everson by using their personal smart devices to explore the virtual world of FRACTURE, imagined by Evan Starling-Davis.
July 27 - September 23, 2023
Thursday - Saturday, dusk - 11pm
Everson Museum Plaza
401 Harrison Street, Syracuse, NY
(SYRACUSE, NY August 1, 2023) - Urban Video project presents FRACTURE, an interactive exhibition projected on the facade of the Everson, imagined by Evan Starling-Davis.
As a community organizer and scholar-practitioner with a deep-rooted social practice of art exposure, equitable literacies, accessibility, and community mindfulness, Starling-Davis strives to create pathways for Black imagination and history to thrive.
FRACTURE will transform the Everson Plaza into a space of communal interactivity—between viewers, the virtual world, and each other. Leaning into the experience of play, FRACTURE allows the audience to immerse themselves imaginatively in the created world, taking time to reflect on the possibility suggested by the title: “Maybe you may find yourself in the fracture.”
A guided experience and artist talk with Evan Starling-Davis will be held on Thursday, August 31, at 8 p.m. on the Everson Museum Plaza.
ABOUT FRACTURE
FRACTURE is a poetic, Afro-Surreal experience that utilizes Afro-diasporic art, Black literacy archives, and objects from local CNY collections to create a publicly immersive, holistic experience that reimages technology as an access point of art-influenced mindfulness, imaginative storytelling, and community engagement. FRACTURE functions as a virtual reality (VR) scenescape that allows onlookers to embark on a visionary series of experiences that unlock artistically rich literacies, meditations, and histories.
Leaning into the experience of play, FRACTURE allows the onlooker to lose themselves and take time to reflect.
ARTIST BIO
Evan Starling-Davis is a Syracuse-based narrative artist, curator, and digital-age griot using a Black/Queer surrealist lens to unearth distant pasts and buried histories while promoting radical self-healing. Starling-Davis is a doctoral student of Literacy Education at Syracuse University, with a focus in curatorial studies and extended reality technology; researching and facilitating art-based literacy projects and interventions within America's Rust Belt. His interdisciplinary projects have been featured in numerous community centers, art galleries, museums, and theaters internationally. More recently, he has been selected as a 2020-21 Humanities NY Public Humanities Graduate Fellow, a 2019-20 Louise B. and Bernard G. Palitz Art Scholar, and a 2018-19 Syracuse University McKean Scholar.
CREDITS
Sonny Cirasuolo, a Syracuse University Newhouse graduate, was the lead developer on this project, with Gary Tyler working as the Consulting Developer. Transdisciplinary artist and educator, Chanee Choi, provided 3D modeling assistance for the completion of FRACTURE.
RELATED PROGRAMMING
All programs are free and open to the public.
Thursday August 31, 8 p.m. - Guided Experience and Art Talk on the Plaza Saturday September 23, 4p.m. - Artist Talk during SU Human Rights Festival in Shemin Auditorium, located in the Shaffer Art Building.
PRESS IMAGES & INTERVIEW REQUESTS
To request high-resolution images for press reproduction and interviews, contact Cali Banks, Light Work Communications Coordinator, at cali@lightwork.org.
ABOUT UVP
Urban Video Project (UVP), a program of Light Work in partnership with the Everson Museum of Art and Onondaga County, is an outdoor architectural projection venue dedicated to the public presentation of film, video and moving image arts. UVP is one of few projects in the United States dedicated to ongoing public projections and adds a new chapter to Central New York’s legacy as one of the birthplaces of video art using cutting-edge technology to bring art of the highest caliber to Syracuse, New York.