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Taking a cue from it’s own research-oriented history, the Berwick extends
its eight years of experience supporting unconventional creative practices into
the arena of experimental arts administration. Director-in-Residence (DiR)
names a new position taking equal inspiration from the traditional role of an
Executive Director and from the contained tenure and supported experimentation
associated with an artist residency; a twenty-four month residency in which the
DiR takes the reins and asks the organization itself to become the creative experiment. 

It is with great enthusiasm that we welcome Leon Johnson as the
Berwick’s first Director-in-Residence. There will be a Pirate Party welcome for Leon and the new SPI Coordinators (see below) on December 17th from 7-10pm at the Midway Cafe. Please join us in welcoming our new staff!

Leon comes to the Berwick as an artist and educator whose innovative
and genre-defying practice incorporates the conception, research, design and
production of intermedia communications and events. Johnson succeeds Meg Rotzel
who co-founded and led the Berwick as Director from 2000-2006. 

In his own studio practice, Johnson produces work in film, performance, and
site-specific events and is the proprietor of The Long Bell Press and a
founding member of Creative Material Group, a non-profit arts collective. He is
the recipient of a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant for Painting and a Yaddo
Residency Fellowship. His film FAUST/FAUSTUS IN DEPTFORD was selected for the KunstFilmBienale
in Cologne, Germany and the Raindance Film Festival in London, UK. AFTER, a
recent video, was published by Chiasmus Press last summer as part of The End of
Reality, a DVD and fiction anthology. His new video project, FORTRESS BOY BRIDGE,
was finished in 2007 during a Cuts + Burns Residency at The Outpost in
Williamsburg. He is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio + Theory in
the Graduate Program at The Transart Institute and will lead a workshop for
them, in Berlin, in the summer of 2009. Johnson lives in Portland, Maine with
his partner, Megan O’Connell and two sons. 

As a kick-off to his tenure as DiR, Johnson has initiated a series of
convivial symposia through which the Berwick will draw together leading
creative thinkers to provide state-of-the-art research on questions relating to
the cultivation of, and engagement with, new audiences; the incubation,
initiation, and distribution of new works in convergent media; and strategies
to build and sustain networks of knowledge and collaboration. The results of these
symposia will form the nucleus of a Berwick authored publication slated for
release in late 2009. 

For more information about Leon's projects, please visit www.leonjohnson.org. To contact Leon directly, please use the Berwick Contact Page