Home, The Last Supper

About

The Last Supper began in 2005 as a series of intimate dinner gatherings of emerging creative voices sharing their work in an environment of critical, open dialog in the context of current global and local concerns. Culminating in a cornucopia of shared projects and experimental work, the inaugural festival highlighted the crux of seasonal change with the last outdoor celebration before the shearing Winter, and the harvest of Summer’s work. During a quaint Brooklyn backyard BBQ, apple bobbing, dancing, multimedia, and a sense of community and informality were served up with experimental works in progress from several artistic disciplines. The value of critical insight from an audience of peers was shared by members of differing cultural, educational, and creative backgrounds. Relationships and collaborative partnerships sprung from this exploration of social creative practice. Themes of consumption, change, personal narrative, creative conscience, aesthetic living and storytelling sparked a rigorous momentum by the collective of artists to develop throughout the year.
Last Supper:
Festival Design
Thematically, The Last Supper displays artwork, films, music, and food of any genre and medium that interprets ideas of transformation, a celebration, consumption, and interaction. Although dogmatic in its title, the festival does not pursue religious subject matter necessarily, but merely offers a Western metaphor for the celebration of change, and the gathering of ideas. Previous film submissions drew from comedy, tragedy, drama, animation, video art, and documentary motifs, but are not limited to these categories. Artworks from past years included painting, drawing, sculpture, performance art, and photography. Music drew from bands, djs and singer-songwriters whose music captures the spirit of interaction. Past food artists included varying levels of emerging talent and scale of preparation, from home-grown goodies, and local farm interactions, to social experiments in taste. In short, the call for entries seeks to expose up-and-coming filmmakers, artists, musicians and culinarians to a creative audience of peers. Thirteen films will be chosen, along with thirteen artworks, thirteen culinary artists will present dishes, and Seven musical acts will all bring work to the dinner table.
Last Supper Book:
2008
Includes detailed bios and descriptions of Artwork, Films, Music, Food and Writing.
Last Supper:
Project Proposal 2008
Fiscal Sponsorship grant package for potential sponsors.Project Description, Goals, Community...
Entries:
Film,Art,Food,Music,Design,Writing,Performance
Call for Entries 2009. Artwork, Films, Food, Design, Music, Writing submissions must be accompanied by these forms.
Press Kit:
2008
Press release 2008.

Curation

The Last Supper is a multimedia, project-based collaborative festival that addresses the act of consumption. Viewing the creative process as a cyclical, communally interactive conversation between media, it is a non-profit benefit event for the Food Bank of New York City. The Last Supper is an indoor-outdoor salon of ideas occurring in NYC during the crux of seasonal change at the end of September. As a feast for the senses and a symposium of genres, the gathering kindles the creative miasma infused by the city’s autumnal shift, harvesting the cornucopia of media in our own backyard and sparking an atmosphere for open dialog and collaboration. Short films and works from emerging directors and artists, edible installations from creative culinarians, performance, design projects, writing and music from several local bands and DJ’s will grace the dinner table. Each year, the show sparks dialog about consumption by curating projects based on a theme of global and local import. This year, more than 50 creators and volunteers will discuss ideas about “Means” with an audience of peers to evaluate our state of consumption. The decay of Summer and the emergence of Winter will be celebrated at the Fifth annual Last Supper.

Theme

Means: In an atmosphere of political and economic crisis, along with dwindling resources, our precarious societal climate demands a review of the way we consume locally and globally. An artist’s resource, whether medium, message, or muse, is the voice of its cultural language. Creating is making something from nothing. Consuming, like all laws of matter, transforms the states of products. As creators, we must cherish this cyclical process and consider its affect. Repurposing traditional practice to our contemporary needs and desires has become vital to both aesthetic and functional life. Whether in the form of urban victory gardens, reclaimed handmade objects as art and design, DIY techniques, prevailing independent films and bands, the self-sustaining artist is a simultaneously complex, imperfect, and idyllic model for contemporary life. The Last Supper’s 2009 salon is the creative dialog about consumption where Means as motive, economy of Means, ways and Means, and Means of production are all tools for storytelling.