Minneapolis-based Obsidian Arts, Inc. has been planning its six-block public art juggernaut Exploding Language for well over a year, and although the exhibition had been scheduled to run through the summer of 2007, the organization has announced that the show will be delayed for a full year until summer 2008.
Exploding Language proposed that artists use the Black Arts Movement as a jumping-off point to interrogate, reinterpret, and contemporize BAM artistic and intellectual sensibilities through a Gen X, Gen Y, or Gen-whatever lens. The show was designed to take up six blocks along historic Plymouth Avenue in North Minneapolis and was being curated through an open call for artists last spring. We note that the organizers seemed particularly anxious to install sound works, film, new media, and video projects.
According to organizer Roderic Southall, the problem is (surprise!) money. The organization is still waiting for responses from Target Coorporation and McKnight Foundation, both of whom had been approached for key funding, and without whom the project will have trouble moving forward as originally envisioned. General Mills Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Minneapolis Empowerment Zone, and 3M/COMPAS Community Arts Fund all have ponied up funds for the project already, still leaving a financial shortfall however.
Obsidian Arts is taking advantage of the extra time to invite specific artists to participate. Confirmed artists include Mica Anders, Wilbur Williams, Carl Pope, Michael Britto, Estela de Lerma, and Charles Huntley Nelson. Southall let us know that half a dozen other artists are being courted. Although organizers are still accepting submissions, a new formal deadline has not been announced.
