Slide Slam

BY ALLEN FRAME

About once a semester I host an evening called Slide Slam at the School of Visual Arts in New York.  In a fast-paced format, six emerging photographers project a selection of their work and take questions from the audience afterwards. Audiences have been packing the two hundred-seat amphitheater for this event because people are eager to get a look at fresh work and the photographers who are creating it. I started this alternative venue to give some exposure to a large number of photographers who are unknown or under-recognized. Often I’m more struck by their work than by what I see every month in galleries.

The Slide Slam was originally presented at Art in General, a not-for-profit space in lower Manhattan, and featured artists of all media. Later, I hosted a Slide Slam there just for photography. The International Center of Photography invited me to host a photography-only Slide Slam a few times before I moved the event to the School of Visual Arts.  Mid-career photographers have also been invited to participate, and sometimes the evening has included book signings by featured photographers. The next Slide Slam this winter will present a video in addition to photography. This fall almost all the photographers chose to project their work in power-point presentations rather than in slides, so I might re-name the event soon.

As an adjunct teacher working in three schools and doing critiques sometimes at others, I meet a large number of promising photographers, so it’s easy for me at any point to think of a roster of presenters. Other teachers have made suggestions, as have gallerists and other photographers. My selection process has been somewhat casual and subjective so far. I try to create an array of different content and approaches on any given night, sequencing the photographers on the program carefully to create both contrast and cohesiveness.

Some of the thrill has been seeing people rise to the occasion with unexpected eloquence or charm, or with a sense of humor that I had not appreciated before. One of the more popular, recent participants, Natalja Kent, works not just in photography but also in sculpture, installation, and theatrical set design. A number of audience members expressed relief that she provided a model beyond straightforward photography practice. Sometimes audiences have found awkwardness endearing. I think everyone is intrigued by the chance to compare the photographer’s personality with the work.

To promote this event I design an e-vite, which I send to the participants as well as to SVA. They post to their lists and I post to my own large list. Having institutional support has facilitated the event, but of course, it’s possible to take this idea and adapt it in a number of ways. In fact, one wildly successful variant, produced by the emerging photographer Alys Kenny in New York and founded by Casey Kelbaugh in Seattle, is called the Slideluck Potshow, which invites the audience to bring food and drink to a presentation of as many as thirty participants in an evening. A recent Slideluck Potshow attracted around 750 people. Casey hosted twenty of these events over three years in Seattle before bringing it to New York where the first one was held in his apartment two years ago. Around one hundred people squeezed in, and later the event was moved to large rental shooting studios that agreed to donate their spaces for the night. The history of the event, along with press, recipes, links, can be found at www.slideluckpotshow.com.

Here is work from just a few past Slide Slam participants:

If you have questions or would like to subscribe to the Slide Slam email list, please contact Allen Frame at allenframe@hotmail.com.

The next Video Slam will be on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at 7pm. At the School of Visual Arts Amphitheater, 209 E. 23rd St., 3rd floor. It will include the short video work of Yasmin Etemadi, Joshua Sanchez, Joshua Sandler, and others. Free to the public. Bring picture ID to sign into the building.

Allen Frame lives in New York where he teaches photography at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, and the International Center of Photography and is a Contributing Editor of artwurl (www.artwurl.org) and Bomb Magazine. His book Detour, a compilation of his photographs over ten years, was published by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg in 2001. He has been the recipient of grants from the Penny McCall Foundation, the Peter Reed Foundation, Creative Time, Art Matters, CECArtslink and others. He co-founded the contemporary art center Delta Axis in Memphis in 1992 and has served on the board of Art in General and the Advisory Committee of PS 122 Gallery. He is represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York where he will have a solo show in April, 2005. (www.gittermangallery.com) In 1990 he co-created Electric Blanket, an epic slide show about AIDS, which has toured throughout the U.S. and to Norway, the U.K., Germany, Hungary, Japan, and most recently, Russia (2003). He was born in Mississippi in 1951 and graduated from Harvard University in 1974.