PROJECT
PeoplesLab, 2020

PeoplesLab offers procedural, pragmatic and sensorial tools for change: meeting conflict with an adaptive process to revive trust between people; guiding recognition and understanding of differing perspectives; illuminating ways in which we may be caught in old structures, beliefs and habits; teaching communication and negotiation skills to bridge differences, and generate creative options for effective collaboration. In our era of severe cultural tension and change our collective future depends on our asking, “Who are we to one another”, and on choosing to align in mutual support to meet each other with new creative responses.
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Where Art Might Happen

PUBLICATION
Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, 2021

Philipp Kaiser, Christina Vegh,
Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany

The publication Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, accompanies the exhibition of the same name presented at the Kestner Gesellschaft during 2019. The structure of this publication is astutely highlighted by the chapters Where Art Might Happen, an overview of the exhibition including 42 artists, as well as essays + oral histories in the following chapters Institutional History, Fluxus, Feminist Art Program and Conceptualisms.
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NEWS
PeoplesLab: Transforming Corona into Possibility
Online | April 22 – May 10 2020

If the conflict between us is also within us, then this time of Corona isolation is an opportunity to focus WITHIN – to recognize our habits, biases, resistances and reactions; to witness, feel, assess and change.
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PROJECT
The Sighted See the Surface, 2020

LM Projects is pleased to announce its latest publication, The Sighted See the Surface, by artist Dorit Cypis

The Sighted See the Surface​ is an expansive project developed by Dorit Cypis over the course of seven years (2012-19). Sparked by the death of mentor and teacher Michael Asher, Cypis excavates her 40 year art practice by connecting disparate points from past to present while unearthing the complexities between sight and seeing, difference and the psychosocial relations within and between people. Works made during this period include video, photography, prints and drawings.
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Friendly Fire

PROJECT
Friendly Fire, Epoch Virtual, 2020
EPOCH Gallery | September 5 – October 23

Friendly Fire – Epoch Virtual explores how our internal landscapes may reveal traumas of social histories – trapping us into reactive behavior. Histories are embodied and refracted by us even as we may hold elevated social principals and values. How may we be wearing the ancient warrior coliseum as a collar around our necks? In the age of Covid-19 everything has shifted under and around us. It’s a new world order yet held by broken old world structures. How will we assess conditions with new eyes, ears, minds and bodies to weave our ways towards developing generative models for who we want to be to one another?
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PROJECT
The Color of Whiteness
Field Workshop: Action Projects,
2020
ICA Los Angeles | August 30, 2020

The Color of Whiteness was performed Sunday, August 30, in-person and over Zoom, by invitation-only and on site at ICA-LA. This event was created by Cypis and 7 previous participants of PeoplesLab: Identity, Race, Whiteness + Antiracism, a research/training/dialogue program Cypis developed in June 2020 following the tragic murder of George Floyd.
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NEWS
Friendly Fire (a coronation)
a performance, video and Zoom event in 3 Acts

May 24, 2020

Everything has shifted under and around us. It’s a new world order with broken old world structures. We need to relocate our bodies spatially, temporally and socially. How do we assess conditions with new eyes, ears, minds and bodies to weave our ways towards developing generative models for who we want to be to ourselves and to one another?
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PROJECT
Come Closer, 2019

Come Closer is a triptych of prints intended to be challenging to read. The work asks the reader to take time, to focus carefully in following a flashlight beam across words that appear and disappear in shadow.
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PROJECT
XI OPEN CITY Festival of Art in Public Space, Lublin, Poland
Showcasing contemporary art in urban space as an integral part of everyday urban reality. Hospitality versus Hostility in Lublin’s History and Contemporary Global Cultures
September 13 – October 12, 2019

Welcome the Stranger is created for the Open City Festival, Lublin, Poland, an ancient city with complex political and cultural histories. Welcome the Stranger is an urban installation, performance and social engagement project that reflects principles of sharing sustenance across all human need. Dorit Cypis and Louise Steinman are two artists, a visual artist and a writer, living in Los Angeles, USA, both with family roots in Poland’s Jewish community.

opencity.pl
facebook.com/festiwal.opencity/photos
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PROJECT
The Sighted See the Surface (Studio), 2019

The Sighted See the Surface, which began as a tribute to artist Michael Asher whose practice shed light on power and consciousness, documents a mapping process of projected light across 11 photographs installed on a wall at the artist’s studio. The photographs perform as portals into events taking place between 1973 - 1977 and 2012 - 2016. Cypis’ process borrows from crime detective tropes connecting unlikely suspects, locations, intentions and expectations to chart a prism of possibilities between sight and blindness, intimacy and violence, conceptual art and community dialogue. The Sighted... deepens Cypis’ investigation into aesthetics, ethics, identity and human relations, the roots of her practice since the late 1970s.
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NEWS
Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts
Kestner Gesellschaft | August 30 – November 19, 2019

Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts focuses on the legendary founding years (1970–1980) of the California Institute of the Arts, which has produced numerous well-known artists. This wide-ranging group exhibition presents a variety of perspectives on the school: parallel movements from the milieus of Conceptual Art, feminism, and Fluxus as well as the school’s radical pedagogical concepts will be brought together for the first time.
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PUBLICATION
The Art of Direct Action: Social Sculpture and Beyond, 2019

Karen van den Berg, Cara M. Jordan, Philipp Kleinmichel (Eds.)

Texts by Karen van den Berg, Mary Jane Jacob, Cara M. Jordan, Grant Kester, Philipp Kleinmichel, Kuda Production, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Marina Naprushkina, Dan Peterman, Rainer Rappmann, Pedro Reyes, John Roberts, Gregory Sholette, Caroline Tisdall, Anton Vidokle, Caroline Woolard

One of the most significant shifts in contemporary art during the past two decades concerns artists and collectives who have moved their artistic focus from representation to direct social action.
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NEWS
Peoples Lab: Basics Workshop
LATELY | August 21, 2019

Does conflict in your personal life seem chronic? Do disagreements in your professional life feel irreconcilable? Whether you’re looking to sharpen individual or collaborative capacities, Dorit Cypis’ Peoples Lab offers practical and adaptive tools designed to uncover social and psychological blind spots. By fostering honest relations between people while building self-knowledge and communication skills, the Lab realigns thinking and opens space for new collective action.
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The Winter Office

NEWS
The Winter Office: The Social Territories of a Warming World #2
with Andrew McNeely & Dorit Cypis

Armory Center for the Arts | July 27, 2019

Please join The Winter Office for the second in a series of public conversations on non-ideal theories of art, collaborative design, and spatial justice in the 21st century city. In the center of The Winter Office's current Armory exhibition is a working Podcast studio that functions as a public speaking and listening environment where new, urgent models for dwelling and housing can be imagined in conversation. These public conversations will be recorded and produced as a podcast series entitled The Social Territories of a Warming World. This conversation series is moderated by The Winter Office, in collaboration with the Armory and 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, where a second version of this Podcast studio will be installed in August.
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Community Corporation SM

NEWS
Community Corporation Santa Monica:
Tools of Engagement Training

Resident Council of Community Corporation Santa Monica
January-July 2019

I got to know these terrific folks mentoring them in collaborative group dynamics through my Tools of Engagement. They are members of the Resident Council of Community Corporation Santa Monica - committed to leading their fellow residents in building strong, healthy, safe communities, while advocating for affordable housing locally and nationally.
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PROJECT
Close Your Eyes If You Want to See
Santa Monica Prefecture | April 1 – July 6, 2019

Santa Monica Prefecture is pleased to present a new work by artist Dorit Cypis, Close Your Eyes If You Want to See, a social sculpture exploring relationships between psychological, physical and social aspects of identity and social relations. Clear, fearless, and piercing, Dorit’s work emphasizes critical social engagement, never falling into reaction, or outrage.
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PROJECT
One Another: Identity, Difference + Conflict
NAVEL | April 17, 2019

Dorit Cypis presents a ten-act interactive presentation on identity, difference and conflict – key themes in the upcoming collaborative research project, One Another. Here, interested audience members will be invited to apply to participate in the seven month process, where, if selected, they will progress through several rounds of rigorous collective inquiry and self-examination.
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Mandarin Plaza

NEWS
Mandarin Plaza Pop Up
March 30-31, 2019

“On Captiva Island, I would ride an old bicycle a few times a day from the Gulf side to the Bay side - over a mile-long dirt road that meandered through tropical jungle. Wanting to understand where I was, I often left the road to walk amongst the unfamiliar flora and remember clearly the exact moment I recognized that the largest of the trees had grown huge endless limbs around other trees...suffocating them!"
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NEWS
WORD 2018-2019: The Bruce Geller Memorial Prize
March 2019

The 2018-2019 Word Grant: Bruce Geller Memorial Prize, a project of American Jewish University’s Institute for Jewish Creativity, supports artists creating projects that explore Jewish ideas, themes, tradition, history, and identity. We believe in supporting a contemporary, vibrant, Jewish cultural landscape in Los Angeles.
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NEWS
Kulture Klub
February 14, 2019

2018 was a BIG year for Kulture Klub and we wanted to reach out and share some highlights.
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