Given the complex dilemmas of our society, how can creators and citizens build systems for direct action?

season 4: NOW! Call for proposals

For Season 4: NOW! StoreFrontLab puts into practice the philosophical questions explored in Season 3: The Unknown, the Unknowable, The Future. NOW! is an opportunity to shake off outmoded attitudes, to evaluate our progress, and to confront the tyrannies of contemporary life.

How can one challenge systemic racism through sound? How can one fight economic inequality in the spirit of Fluxus? How can one biohack the social sphere for the greater good? Given the complex dilemmas of our society, how can creators and citizens build systems for direct action? 

NOW! disrupts the stagnancy of habitual behavior through actions, noise, visual art, environments, design prototypes and implementation, journalism, research, film, happenings, gatherings, food, scores, interruptions, and transformations. Project duration can range from one day to one month, encouraging event-based, short-term projects where concepts are anchored by strong visual, performance, and installation-based components. 

StoreFrontLab is a small space for big ideas, a venue for dialogue and constructive public engagement. Each season, we promote the development of participatory projects that bridge disciplines and prompt discussion through grants and curatorial support.

The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live,
in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.    -Howard Zinn

Suburo Murakami, Passing Through, 1956; Nam June Paik, TV Buddha, 1974, The Calbuco volcano seen from Puerto Montt, Chile, on April 22 (detail) (Alex Vidal Brecas/European Pressphoto Agency); Michael Burton & Michiko Nitta, Algaculture (2010); Dance of the Dark Soul, 1987; Superstudio, Reflected Architecture: San Francisco, a Cube Forest on the Golden Gate, 1972, photomontage