The Everson Museum of Art presents Sitting Still, a contemplative video project funded by a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts. The project is led by Anne Beffel, a New York based public artist and Associate Professor at Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. The project begins October 4, 2008 and culminates with an exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in June, 2009.

“This project addresses the question of what the world would look like from a non-violent point of view,” said Pam McLaughlin, Everson Museum of Art Curator of Education and Public Programs. “Sitting Still looks at what would happen if Syracuse city youth and Syracuse University joined together to explore this concept.”

Beffel and McLaughlin have worked together for over a year to put video cameras in the hands of Syracuse youth throughout the month of October 2008, so that they will stop, look, and listen as scenes unfold before them ranging from those that inspire awe to those that compel us to participate and intervene. Students from Central Tech, Henninger, Corcoran and Nottingham high schools have been invited to participate.

Within the context of four Saturday workshops at the SU Warehouse E-tags studio, 350 W. Fayette St., Syracuse, students will engage in making video art from a perfectly still point of view, and then use their art works as the basis for sharing their diverse visions. Beffel, who initiated the Sitting Still project last spring in collaboration with University of Memphis and Overton High School students at the Art Museum of University of Memphis, says the conversations in previous workshops are lively, inspired, and attuned.

“Participants experience something attuned because the youth encounter something unusual with the cameras: they concentrate completely on being right here, right now, moment by moment. The video camera becomes a focusing tool,” said Beffel. “The atmosphere is collaborative, and students often tell me after the workshops that they walk around noticing small things they had overlooked previously. They seem to open up to one another.”

Beffel drew inspiration for Sitting Still from a variety of sources, including her interest in the sit-ins at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., the Nashville sit-ins of 1960. Also of inspiration have been the Dalai Lama, and Rosa Parks. Although these individuals come from very different environments and positions, they have drawn strength and courage from stillness, which has impacted the world in profound ways.

Sitting Still is also supported by a Syracuse University Initiative Grant and an academic fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

About Anne Beffel
Anne Beffel is associate professor of art at Syracuse University. Beffel received her B.F.A. from the University of Michigan’s School of Art and her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Beffel participated in the Studio Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and taught at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. Beffel has had several exhibitions, including public arts residencies at the World Financial Center and at the New York Downtown Hospital in Lower Manhattan. She has received grants from the Gunk Foundation and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and has recently co-founded the Interdisciplinary Research Group at Syracuse University. For more information on Anne Beffel, please visit www.annebeffel.typepad.com/default.html. For more information on the Memphis project please visit www.memphis.edu/releases/feb08/beffel.htm.