Taking a step sideways then circling around

A temporary archive curated by Samantha M Connors

Exhibition Runs September 29th - October 25th
Opening Reception Saturday, October 3rd from 5 - 7 PM
Preserving a Narrative: A Discussion Around Archival Methodologies October 15th from 6 - 7:30 PM
Closing Reception & Artist Talk Sunday, October 25th from 12 - 2 PM

Curatorial statement:

“This exhibition was born out of a desire to highlight the work going on within artist run spaces over the last few decades in Philadelphia. Specifically, spaces that are no longer active, but are always footnotes within my own practice and the larger ecosystem of artists and curators across the city. The process of building this temporary archive started by thinking about artist collectives that were impactful for me in my early 20s. The collectives represented expanded through conversations with other curators at Collective Futures meetings, and the dots were connected after a meeting with Alina Josan and Cindy Stockton Moore at the Free Library of Philadelphia while looking through their collection of artist books, exhibition postcards, the Little Berlin Zine Library, and more.

All of the exhibitions I curate start with a single person, piece of art, or space, and then ripples out from there. For Taking a step sideways then circling around, that starting point was New Boone. When I was enrolled at Tyler School of Art, I was a year under many of the founding members of New Boone, which became a personal gravitational pull every First Friday. Watching my peers open a space in Old City amongst largely blue-chip galleries and longstanding artist co-ops and then using that space to create exhibitions and programming that went against everything else happening in the area at the time was inspirational. When I received my position at DVAA in 2021, New Boone’s program How To Survive, organized by Leah Koontz and Darragh Nolan, was a guiding light towards the types of programming I wanted to present at DVAA in alignment with our mission at the time of Building Community Through Art. This type of programming eventually led to the evolution of our mission from the former to ‘using art to build collective resilience’. 

Another collective I wanted to highlight is a bit different from the others represented. True Wave was a music collective formed in 2014 by JXLBeats (James Lamar), Jack Deezl (Drew Mercadante), and Freddie Fresh, with other collective members joining and becoming core to the function like Austin McMahon, Feddyroxbeats (Twan Washington), THA RIVA (Nile Overton), Mellowbastard (Kris Lee), (Alex) Dayo, and many more. True Wave functioned as Philly’s Boiler Room until 2020, showcasing Philly DJs, rappers, and ambient sound artists, as well as hosting national and international touring musicians. True Wave was centrally located within the home of JXLBeats, with events also happening at other collective members homes, record stores, and clubs across the city. THA RIVA was my introduction to DVAA, when he hosted a pop-up exhibition here in 2017 called DOSE, featuring work inspired by his EP “Audio Capsule 001” and served as the release party. True Wave parties and the relationships I built through them was a core part of my 20s, as I’m sure they were for many other people, and introduced me to the life I’m living now in my 30s.

Taking a step sideways then circling around isn’t intended to serve as a complete account of what happened within each collective represented. In fact, I think most of this is a grasp of a memory, preserving small fragments of innovation that happened once - and an invitation to reflect on how these spaces and others have affected you. So much of what happens at a collective goes undocumented, especially the most important parts, which are usually things like discussions around the rent getting raised and who will finally take the trash out, please it’s been weeks and we are getting fruit flies again. What I tried to represent within this exhibition are things like, how did the members of High Tide get heavy, gigantic work in and out of the Berks St Warehouse? Does every collective try to push the limits of the fire code at some point? And the most important question really - WHY DO IT?

What is the point of looking back at things that don’t exist anymore? That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot while curating this “archive” (of sorts). There’s that saying “Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned To Repeat It”, but my argument in this case is, what if this show is actually a reminder that irregardless of what time period you look back on in Philadelphia, artists have been self-creating the reality they want to exist in. Even if you never saw any of these projects before, do they feel familiar in your gut? What if there is no condemnation here? Maybe we just continue on and on and on, making and looking back and looking forward and looking within and out, and that is the point.”

Collectives represented:

High Tide, Highwire Gallery, Little Berlin, Megawords, New Boone, Nexus, Spillway, True Wave
Thank you to everyone who contributed to these spaces over the years they were active.

A special thank you to:

Little Berlin: Eileen Doyle, Tyler Kline, Christopher Richards, Sarah Trad
True Wave: James Lamar, Drew Mercandante, Nile Overton
New Boone: Frances Cordelia Beaver, Chris Joyce, Leah Koontz, Darragh Nolan
Spillway: Kate McCammon
High Tide: Kwan Howard, Geoffrey KixMiller

and Alina Josan and Cindy Stockton Moore

About the curator:

Samantha M Connors is an artist, cultural worker, and abolitionist in Philadelphia. Samantha’s practice focuses on the cyclical disposability of people and objects in the United States by those in power, particularly focused on how these goals are accomplished through gentrification, displacement, and infrastructure failure. Their work lives both in the studio and in collaborative spaces - flowing between research, documentation, creating sculptural drawings, attending too many meetings, curatorial projects, and in partnership with other people committed to liberation. In 2014, they graduated from Tyler School of Art and have completed 5 artist residencies in the Northeast US and France. Their practice is rooted in their dual homes of Kensington and South Philly. Since 2021, Samantha has served as the Executive Director of Da Vinci Art Alliance, an intergenerational artist collective.