Wanna Come Sail with Us for a While?

An international, transdisciplinary artist collective, Mothership NYC is anchored in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, NYC, in a converted industrial loft that serves as a combined live-work space and presentation arena. Our headquarters have five fully furnished live-in spaces: 2-3 berths for permanent crew members (who also frequently travel) and 2-3 for shorter-term visitors staying anywhere from 1-3 months:
1) Live-Work Space (aka Engine Room) | Spacious private quarters with separate studio area
2) Guestroom 1 (aka Stateroom)| Large room with sturdy worktable and open wall space
3) Guestroom 2 (aka Cabin) | Tiny room with computer desk and bare-bones furniture

Our residencies support most contemporary art practices and transdisciplinary projects, including performance and performing arts, music, film, writing and curatorial proposals. In aims of promoting exchange, debate, experimentation and collaborative work, we host multiple types of residencies: Production | Exploration | Micro-Residency | Presentation. Artists-in-residence work on a project and show results on one of our platforms or do their research without a fixed outcome.

Residency Programming:
This is a self-directed residency with no daily schedule beyond communal events, which all Shipmates are encouraged to attend:
~ Our monthly salons are open-air art parties and/or informal indoor gatherings where our A.I.R.’s present their work to a very receptive audience of local artist peers and other arts professionals and appreciators
~ We occasionally host artists' dinners for our international and NYC-based creative colleagues
~ During the warm months, we use our roof deck as a stage for creative productions across several disciplines
~ Collaborative productions can occasionally be hosted on our sister platform, Captain Sol’s studio Last Frontier NYC , which includes Guesthouse Gallery for popup exhibits
~ You can host your own open studio events, including participation in the neighborhood-wide, Greenpoint Open Studios weekend

A peer community of hardworking artists, Mothership NYC has no outside funding, so everybody onboard must cover their own rent. From 2019 through 2026, we have been able to offer an annual Residency Award: a month-long residency at no cost to a talented artist selected by a jury of international arts professionals. As we are ourselves tenants at the mercy of the  brutal NYC real estate market, we may have reached the final year of this quixotic program now.  If you are interested in working in our community for a while and able to pay your own rent, please reach out for application guidelines.

The slide show below includes images of Engine Room, the 220 sq. ft. private live-work space available for our Artists-in-Residence:

"I have long believed that the arts have an important role to play in dealing with the interconnected and interdependent problems of our global crisis. All these problems — energy, environment, climate change, economic inequality, violence and war, and so on — are systemic problems that require corresponding systemic solutions; solutions that do not solve any problem in isolation but deal with it within the context of other related problems. To find systemic solutions, we need to learn how to think systemically, in terms of relationships, patterns, and context.

In my view, the arts can be of great help in this task for two reasons. One, because there is hardly anything more effective than the arts — whether it's the visual arts, music, or the performing arts — for developing the ability to recognize and express patterns; and thus, the arts can be a powerful tool for learning how to think systemically. Two, because the arts provide the emotional impact that is critical to get people engaged in communities and civic action.

I was therefore delighted when I heard of the Mothership, that unique multidisciplinary collective of artists, thinkers, and activists in Brooklyn, and honored to make a contribution to an exhibition project in July 2016. I stayed on board for several days and thoroughly enjoyed the packed public event featuring four brilliant musicians and performing artists from the collective. I gave a keynote on Leonardo da Vinci’s synthesis of art, science, and design, which sparked lively discussions in which several artists explained and demonstrated how their creative works across several fields (painting, philosophy, music, performance art, photography, and environmental architecture) echo Leonardo’s unique synthesis in a contemporary context.

With its friendly multinational crew, rotating visiting artists, and its considerable local following in NYC, the Mothership offers constant opportunities to exchange ideas and make new connections, whether over shared meals in the communal kitchen, far-ranging rooftop conversations under a vast Brooklyn night sky, or during their well-attended salons and open studio events.

This is fertile ground for new ideas and future collaborations, and indeed many of the creative practitioners who spend time on board end up returning for additional inspiring stints. As the Mothership’s Honorary Scholar-in-Residence, I, too, look forward to coming back for more." 

                                                                                                                                                                    Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., Scientist, Educator, Activist, & Author, Berkeley