The New Museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC recently announced the full schedule for DEMO2024, a 3-day art, design and technology festival featuring industry leaders and NEW INC members running from June 5-7, 2024. Through demonstrations, exhibitions, performances, and talks, DEMO2024 will spotlight innovative projects created by 38 current NEW INC members whose interdisciplinary work spans art, design, architecture, technology, science and entrepreneurship and will celebrate NEW INC’s 10th anniversary by highlighting the contributions of outstanding alumni over the past decade.
Founded in 2014 as the first museum-born cultural incubator, NEW INC supports a cohort of approximately 100 creative practitioners each year with a values-driven program including professional development, mentorship and community-building opportunities. As part of NEW INC’s work connecting members with industry leaders, “Demo Day” was launched in 2016 to showcase member projects before an invitation-only audience of creative directors, investors, and curators. DEMO2024 opens this process to the public, offering insight into the next generation of design, technology, science, and social projects incubated at NEW INC through a free, multi-day festival.
DEMO2024 will feature keynote speakers including artist and filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang, New York City Council Member Chi Ossé, artist, poet, and chef Precious Okoyomon and Clocks co-founders Mahfuz and Chloe Sultan. DEMO2024 will also introduce Studio DEMO, a broadcasting and recording hub for short interviews, quick demonstrations, podcast recordings, live streaming, and more. While work continues on the OMA-designed expansion of the New Museum, which will include the first purpose-built home for NEW INC, DEMO2024 will be hosted by Water Street Projects and WSA, the home of creative businesses including Office Magazine, Interview Magazine, Bode, and LUAR in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport.
In partnership with Montez Press Radio, Studio DEMO will spotlight NEW INC alumni from over the past decade, including Stephanie Dinkins, MSCHF (Lukas Bentel and Kevin Wiesner), Marco Roso of DIS and Kinfolk in conversation with leading artists, designers, and technologists including Estelle Bailey-Babenzien, Meriem Bennani, Demian DinéYazhi, Christine Espinal, Charlie Engman and Josh Itiola. Featuring many NEW INC alumni who now serve as advisors and mentors to current members, Studio DEMO will explore topics including new models for funding businesses and sustaining artistic practices, experiments in collective and cooperative production, and the evolving media landscape.
Each day of DEMO2024 will kick off with a Power Lunch, an open-invitation event for NEW INC members and DEMO2024 audience members to participate in an alternative career fair organized by artist Ayana Evans (June 5), “Office Hours” with NEW INC mentors working across a range of fields (June 6) and a panel discussion with investors sharing how and why they make investments in arts and culture (June 7).
NEW INC’s Year 10 cohort members presenting at DEMO2024 include participants working across five tracks: Art & Code, considering the future of Internet-based art in collaboration with Rhizome; Creative Science, exploring modes of scientific inquiry to advance creativity and storytelling; Extended Realities, examining the artistic potentials of technology to blur the physical and digital worlds; Social Architecture, rooting design and architecture practices in community-centered, ecologically-engaged thinking; and Cooperative Studies, exploring community and worker-centered models for planning, funding, and governing. At DEMO2024, each of the five tracks will feature an opening performance, a keynote speaker, presentations by current track members, and a track showcase, which may take the form of an exhibition, an installation, or another mode of collective presentation.
For the complete DEMO2024 art, design and technology festival schedule and more information, visit demofestival.org.