Care is a ripple. From intimate to global, from self-care, care of family and lover, friend and neighbor, town and city, state and country, the global world, care undulates out to our whole island planet and every species upon it. To care is to look after, provide for, to watch over, to grieve, to lament, to cry, to feel concern, to attach importance. In a year of political turmoil, war, and environmental devastation, how wide can our caring arms be embraced? Who can we give care to? What can we care about? What can we watch over? What and who can we be careful about? Who is deemed worthy of care? What is appropriate care? When is care invasive? Should we care? Can we not care? Do we have that luxury? How can we give protective attention, caution, concern, and prudence? Can we extend care beyond our bodily, familial, national, species, and earthly borders? AiOP 2024 asks how art can create spaces and actions of compassionate fearless care. Can we offer and enter them with joy and love?

Art opens a space of empathy – an invitation to see through the eyes and heart and mind of another. An act of hope and imagination – art can help us dream new ways and new worlds into being. We invite you to imagine together how we can bring care to one another and our fraught and fragile world.

AiOP CARE invites artists, performers, agitators, and caretakers to enact notions of care along 14th Street NYC. We are looking for individuals, collectives, and collaborators, and those interested in collaborating with like-minded folks to design new team projects for the festival. CARE invites artists to offer stations of care across the festival, where all are invited to stop, to rest, to CARE.

Patricia Miranda and Christopher Kaczmarek are NYC-based artists, curators, and educators. Miranda is founder of the artist-run orgs The Crit Lab and MAPSpace, and works with donated, repurposed, lace and linens in site-responsive sculpture and installation. Kaczmarek’s work spans both experimental and traditional practices, including sculpture, site-specific installations, performance, video, built circuits and solar-powered objects.