Elastic City

ELASTIC CITY

Elastic City is now in its fourth season of presenting participatory walks by artists throughout and outside of New York. With this season, over 60 artists will have led walks in New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Montreal, Paris, Reykjavik, São Paulo and Tokyo.

Todd Shalom, a New York native, devised Elastic City while traveling in Peru and founded the organization in 2010. Having worked in a variety of artistic genres (poetry, sound and performance), he decided to expand upon his existing repertoire of sensory-based walks and commission other artists to lead walks in their own disciplines. Todd works with each artist to help adapt their ideas to the walk format. Elastic City walks explore various planes of human sensory and aesthetic experience, such as dance, architecture, poetry, sound art, the paranormal and ritualistic performance.

In 2012, Elastic City launched its educational program, beginning with a series of “ways.” Whereas a walk offers the opportunity to participate in a narrative series of poetic moments, “ways” are experiential workshops that explicitly engage participants in *how* to generate these moments through exercises, tools and techniques offered by Elastic City artists. In a “way,” participants gather in an intimate group to prompt exchange, tone one’s gut feeling and sharpen poetic decision-making. Elastic City ways typically do not involve walking and are offered outdoors unless otherwise noted.

Elastic City has partnered with numerous organizations to co-present its walks/ways, including: The Abrons Art Center, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Brooklyn Flea, California College of the Arts, Consulate General of Spain in New York, Friends of the High Line, Le Petit Versailles, Museum of the City of New York, New Museum, NY Art Book Fair, Open House NY, Pratt Institute, Printed Matter, Performance Space 122, Residency Unlimited, River to River Festival, San Francisco Arts Commission, SculptureCenter, Staten Island Museum, Wave Hill and Urban Design Week.

Each walk & way lasts approximately 75-120 minutes and costs $20 on average.

Last updated: July 1, 2013