2019: 

Ñambi Rimai is a new Indigenous Media Collective operating in the Colombian Pan Amazon region, between the high Andes and the lower Amazon. This initiative emerged after a series of workshops and field work conducted by Felipe Castelblanco in 2018/2020 while working in close cooperation with the central government of the Inga Nation and Ambulante Colombia. The mission of the Media Collective is to support processes of self-governance, preservation of cultural, territorial control and communication all across the territories and beyond. 

2016 - Ongoing:

During an artist residency in Cologne, Felipe Castelblanco (artist and founder of the Para-Site School) established a new film collective in Cologne with a group of young Syrian refugees. 

During the four week residency, Felipe became a film instructor, collaborator, teammate and instigator. In this period, the group developed new skills on filmmaking, created short documentaries and experimental videos, contributing a new perspective to the conversation about the migrant crises and its current developments.

As the closing event of the residency, the group presented some work in progress and invited audiences to take part of a live film shooting and reenactment of migrant stories. This event included video projections, temporary interventions, interactive art, music and performance in public spaces near CAT Cologne. 

More info at: www.borderlesstv.eu

2012 and 2014:

We Paint Houses:

Public Art Intervention / Experimental Economy / Performnace

WPH is a participatory project that takes the form of a temporary business run by Latino artists/laborers. This intervention seeks to enable contentious encounters between locals and immigrants, workers and artists, while stimulating public debate about immigrant labor, class and misrepresentation.

WPH was developed between Colombian artist Felipe Castelblanco and Latino laborers living in Portland, Oregon (USA) during Open Engagement, an academic conference hosted by Portland State University and the MFA in Social Practice.

For an entire week, the group offered to paint people’s houses within the city of Portland, Oregon using local media and street advertisement. However, instead of painting the walls of the houses, artist and laborers created fine art paintings — on canvas — of the façades of the buildings, while engaging customers/audiences in a situation that re-imagined the act of exchange, service and labor. A temporary art studio (with easels, canvases and palettes) emerged on the streets as the group created the paintings.

WPH employed undocumented Latino Laborers and provided faire wages in the form of artists stipends, using funds from academic research grants and artistic fellowships granted by U.S. universities.

2015:

Royla Academy ParaSite A.I.R Show

Royal Academy of Arts

As an attempt to demystify the isolating artist-in-residency model, current Starr Fellow Felipe Castelblanco invited three international artists living in London to conduct a month-long residency at the RA Schools through his ongoing project The ParaSite School. This programme became an extension of Castelblanco’s own artistic residency and fellowship at the Royal Academy.

This iteration of the The ParaSite School is a response to the current government’s policies that prevent the RA Schools to enrol non-EU artists/citizens. The exhibition includes works by Starr Fellow Felipe Castelblanco and Para-Site School’s artists in residence: Melanie Coles, Serra Tansel and Shepherd Manyika. 

Artist Statement by Shepherd Manyika:

How does one prove his or her contribution to society if one is invisible in society?As an obsessive hoarder I find myself holding onto random objects with the intention of reusing them by producing  art works or simply displaying them on social network sites. The objects range from the physical, the tangible to digital materials stored on my computer/hard drive which is now becoming another archive hoarding  space. The build up of the materials  take place through a  process of watching TV, documenting random events , web browsing or collecting whilst out running.

Some of these objects/-materials will make up some of the work I intended to display as part of “We out Here”  as a way of de cluttering  by producing new works from old , document my footprint/activities within my surrounding…. providing evidence of my existence and contribution to my time “here" 

2013:

Smuggling Tools for Independent Hacker_Spaces: Pittsburgh (USA) to Havana (Cuba)

Several Arduino microcontrollers, sensors and actuators, manuals and literature on interactivity were donated by Golan Levin's Studio for Creative Inquiry, and then smuggled into Cuba directly from the U.S.

These materials were used to teach a series of workshops on interactivity to local artists and engineers, as well as to produce a collaborative project during the Camaguey Video Art Festival, 2013. The workshops were developed by Pittsburgh based artist Felipe Castelblanco, in collaboration with Havana based New Media artist and professor Yusnier Mentado Fernandez

As a result of these workshops, students and instructors collaborated on an interactive performance for the public space that engaged hundreds of audiences attending the Camaguey Video Art Festival.

The resulting project used open source platforms such as Processing, Arduino and Raspberry PI

2012 - 2013:

Talk to Me.

A project by Nima Dehghani, through the body of Felipe Castelblanco. CMU’s Ellis Gallery, Pittsburgh PA.

This exhibition took place at the Ellis gallery, a student art gallery located in the Carnegie Mellon University’s campus. Talk to Me was created by Nima Dehghani and presented for the first time in Tehran, Iran.

An additional performance by Nima and Felipe Castelblanco was included in the show in the form of artist talk. During this exhibition, Nima was able to interact  and communicate directly with the audience through the body of Felipe, who became a surrogate for the artist.  

Both artists are exploring alternative ways to extend the presence of Nima into the U.S., by using internet-based technologies for data-streaming and telepresence. Nima lives and works in Tehran, Iran and is currently enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University since September of 2012. However, his student visa was delayed by a complicated bureaucratic process that started somewhere between the U.S. embassy in Dubai and the International Student office at CMU. As of today, Nima remains in Tehran where he is still waiting to beging his studies.

Context:

Nima lived Tehran, Iran until 2013. In the fall of 2012 Nima was enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, USA) as an MFA student and was given a fellowship from the Art School. However, his student visa was delayed by a complicated bureaucratic process somewhere between the USA embassy in Dubai and the International Student office at CMU. Due to this delay, Nima’s situation was uncertain for several months while his fellowship was running out.

In the Spring of 2013, Nima finally received his visa attended classes at CMU (remotely) through the body of one of our registered surrogates