About the project
Mapping the Void, a documentary film produced by Art Projects Era, will be the result of a cross-country road trip with artists Keren Cytter, Colby Keller, John Roebas, Laura Lark, Israel Lund, Dafna Maimon. Armed with cameras and mics, the team will explore the US visiting national landmarks, museums, and other spectacles.
We’ll interview a variety of people -- local celebrities and gas station attendants; high school students and authorities in a range of fields. The plan is to criss-cross the country through the following states: New York, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California.
![]()
The Vision
This documentary aims to capture a wide spectrum of American culture through the multitude of landscapes, communities, and individuals that comprise it. The team will uncover many, and varied stories--and explore the links between them. What, if any, commonalities are shared between a teenaged girl in Tucson and an antique car aficionado in Houston? How does the US look to a New Media Expert in Chicago compared to Russian immigrants in New York? And what does a Broadway producer in Las Vegas have to say? This film will be rich with aesthetic content.
While with this project the team will become documentarians and anthropologists, they are first and foremost artists. The resulting work aims to use the structure of the documentary to allow for discovery: for the creators, participants, and the viewer, creating new perspectives with an established form.
Trip schedule: June 4 - July 1, 2017
![]()
About A.P.E
Art Projects Era challenges the limitations of given structures. The aim of the organization is to develop projects that cannot be realized within traditional institutional formats or frameworks. A.P.E was founded in 2010 by artist Keren Cytter and curators Maaike Gouwenberg and Kathy Noble. In 2012, A.P.E expanded to New York and in 2014 to London.
![]()
About the Artists
Keren Cytter - Characterized by a non-linear, cyclical logic Cytter’s films consist of multiple layers of images; conversation; monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. She has exhibited at galleries and institutions throughout the world such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Hammer Museum Los Angeles. Watch her film Rose Garden.
Colby Keller - An American visual artist, blogger, and Pornographic film actor. Keller has been nominated for a number of awards and in a wildly successful 2014 Indiegogo campaign, Keller began shooting his own art/porn project, Colby Does America,
John Roebas - Lives and works in New York. Past exhibitions include: Tile Project Space, Milan, Turin; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Middlemarch, Brussels; Bodega, Philadelphia; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland; Centre D'Action Culturelle, Niort.
The Ask and the Reward
After running the numbers, $15,000 will make this happen. This will cover food, equipment, and accommodations for the month-long journey. Even if we don't hit the mark we will road trip as long as we can until there is no money left.
We tried to come up with perks that best represented the film. In that vein the rewards are a combination of actions taken by the artists or artifacts from the film. Each perk aims to capture elements of the journey as the film aims to capture pieces of society.
A postcard created by artist Laura Lark:
![]()
A Bouzouki (Greek Mandolin) signed by the artist Dafna Maimond:
![]()
An electric Autoharp used throughout the road trip:
![]()
A hand drawn APE Flag by Keren Cytter:
![]()
