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stoishere

@stoishere

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NY State of the Arts Fellow at Office of Victim Services
A.I.R. Materials for the Arts
NY Dept of Sanitation Public Artist in Residence

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Saturday, April 18, join us for a free work-in-progress screening of DISCARD RECORDS, a love letter to NYC told through its trash.

While serving as the NYC Department of Sanitation’s Public Artist in Residence, sTo Len unlocked the door to a forgotten municipal TV studio and discovered a treasure trove of training videos, PSAs, interviews, cartoons, and news broadcasts documenting decades of @NYCSanitation.

Filmmaker @stoishere joins @uniondocs founder @seewhatness for a post-screening conversation.

Screening INSIDE at 1PM as part of our Earth Day Celebration. Reserve free tickets at rockawayfilmfestival.org. by @stoishere

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6 months ago

Here’s your chance to experience how two artists have reshaped the way we see ourselves in something many people would rather not see at all - our trash 🗑️.

In celebration of Earth Day, @RockawayFilmFest brings together two films for a full day of free screenings, conversation, and community action on Saturday, April 18—all centered on New Yorkers’ relationship to refuse.

“Discard Records,” a remixed historical film by DSNY Public Artist in Residence sTo Len (@stoishere), draws from over 500 hours of archival footage the artist digitized during his residency. Spanning decades, the film playfully excavates the invisible systems and labor behind sanitation, revealing our ever-evolving relationship to waste.

“Maintenance Artist” traces the groundbreaking work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles (@MLUkeles), the NYC Department of Sanitation’s first and longest-running artist-in-residence (and inspiration for our own PAIR program). For nearly five decades, Ukeles has celebrated the unseen labor that sustains urban life—from her landmark “Touch Sanitation” project, where she shook hands with all 8,500 sanitation workers, to a mirrored sanitation truck that invites New Yorkers to see themselves (literally) in their waste.

Enjoy post-screening conversations, and between films, head to Dubos Point Wildlife Sanctuary for a shoreline cleanup.

Learn more at RockawayFilmFestival.org.

#NYCulture #NYC

📷:

1. sTo Len. Photo by Vincent Tullo.

2. “Touch Sanitation Performance,” 1979-80. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery.

3-4. sTo Len and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Courtesy of sTo Len.

5. Clip of “Discard Records” by sTo Len.

6-7. “The Social Mirror,” 1983. © Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery. A photo of sTo Len, sitting on the back of a garbage truck. by @stoishere

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6 months ago

What would you find in sTo Len’s phone? Lots of trash pics — but that’s a good thing.

Just in time for #ClimateWeekNYC: the very first episode of “Climate Artists: Season 2,” which features an inside look at the practice of Queens-based artist @stoishere.

🏆 Watch the episode — awarded by @climatefilmfestnyc earlier this week!—on YouTube. Link in bio!
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#ClimateWeek #queens #NYC #climatejustice @serica.initiative @thirteenwnet @wliwfm taken in New York, New York by @stoishere

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2 years ago

🌱save the date for our final event of the year! for the first time ever, we’re bringing together our 2026 artists, @stoishere @_saffr0nia_ @rose.mal.enfant and @chynacassell for an exciting discussion on how they think about the local environment in their artistic practices. stay tuned for more details, coming soon⭐️ by @stoishere

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7 days ago

Some pix of my work from the exhibition WASTED that opened earlier this month. Featured are some of the prints and a video that I created while I was the Public Artist in Residence at the NY Department of Sanitation @nycsanitation as part of the PAIR program created by @nyculture. This group show includes waste-minded artists dealing with the issues in a variety of interesting ways. Go see it if you are in Pennsylvania!

September 5 - October 16 2026

Featured Artists:

sTo Len, Melissa Langer, Dominga Opazo, carole frances lung, Kirsten Stolle

Informed by the emerging field of discard studies, Wasted critiques our culture’s proclivity for overconsumption and waste. More than the disposal of physical objects, discard studies explores how systems of power determine what — and who — is valued and devalued. Through artworks addressing the plastics crisis, fast fashion and our food systems, this exhibition gives context for the larger machinations at play in an economic system where the individual is often burdened with end-of-life responsibility for the products these industries produce. Related programs will provide avenues for adaptability and resiliency at the individual and community levels. Support for this exhibition is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Curated by @llibert39

📸 Katelyn Adams

Student-Led Tours: Sept. 29 and Oct. 1, 12 p.m.
Tours led by art history majors and minors.

@loredegensteingallery is free and open to the public from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Sunday

Susquehanna University

151 Weber Way, Selinsgrove, PA 17870 taken in Lore Degenstein Gallery by @stoishere

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12 days ago

“In the ten years of my tenure at Materials for the Arts, I have not seen an artist activate the audio and video section of our warehouse in the way that sTo Len has,” shared MFTA Executive Director Tara Sansone about resident artist sTo Len’s upcoming solo exhibition, “The Accidental Archive.”

Curating a treasure trove of materials (vinyl records, VHS tapes, LaserDiscs, and more) and their respective players, Len has amassed an accidental archive of our commercial culture that speaks not just to nostalgia but to the activation of lost media and the remixing of our own intertwined stories in the process. Projectors cast images on MFTA’s gallery walls that mix the historical with the personal while collections of books and marginalia offer a peek into the interests of the donors themselves. In “The Accidental Archive,” Len activates lost media, recontextualizing our own intertwined stories in the process.

MFTA will celebrate the opening of “The Accidental Archive” with a free public event TONIGHT from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

👉RSVP at the link in MFTA’s bio. Artist sTo Len in his studio. taken in Materials for the Arts by @stoishere

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17 days ago

Ok, so here is another incredible find among the videotapes that I came across and digitized during my art residency @materialsforthearts. This footage features some legendary first generation graffiti artists painting on a large canvas as an audience watches. These artists include SNAKE1, SJK171, and C.A.T. 87, among others who at the time I think were members of UGA (United Graffiti Artists) and are probably painting as part of an Art in the Park Festival in Battery Park in 1973. The Department of Cultural Affairs @nyculture originally shot the footage and it wound up here at MFTA. It has probably not been seen since 1973. I looove being able to find and save these moments of NYC art history...I’m kind of a magnet for this stuff haha. I guess I’m just always looking and digging. Anyone still in touch with these guys? They’re so young here! I’m showing the full video in my exhibition, The Accidental Archive, at Materials for the Arts, Sept 24 - Jan 13, go check it out! #snake1 #sjk171 #cat87 #batterypark #departmentofculturalaffairs
👁️📺📼 taken in Battery Park by @stoishere

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19 days ago

The digging through endless stacks of videos that I’ve been doing as the artist in residence @materialsforthearts pays off when I find gems like this concert from 1973 in Battery Park by Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, a very early synthesizer band featuring David Borden, Steve Drews, and Linda Fisher (I think?) There was no real info about the band on the tape itself so if anyone knows them, please share or put us in touch, I’d love to learn more. From my own research, they were very early users and testers of Moog instruments and were one of the first groups to perform only using these synths. I love the puzzled reaction of some of the audience who probably had never seen anything like this. This is just a little excerpt of a whole concert which will be viewable in my upcoming exhibition at MFTA. @bobmoogfoundation @nyculture @nycparks
#davidborden #lindafisher #stevedrews #mothermallardsportablemasterpiececo #moog taken in Battery Park by @stoishere

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23 days ago

From Urban Waste to Natural Wonder: Socially-Engaged Art in the Environment
with sTo Len
Thursday, October 1 7pm
Foundations Lab (Main 401) and on Zoom

sTo Len will speak about his interdisciplinary artwork that focuses on place-based collaborations with environmentally abused landscapes and co-creations with communities and government agencies. The cross-disciplinary nature of Len’s practice spans printmaking, video, sound, performance, installation, drawing, and social practice work, threaded together by a site-responsive process of making. Recent projects have included an interactive video installation at the Grand Canyon, a Trash Museum in Kyrgyzstan, and a community pirate radio show in New Mexico.
Len has done extensive work as an Artist in Residence embedded in diverse locations including the NY Department of Sanitation, Grand Canyon National Park, Mass MoCA, Queens Botanical Garden, Wave Hill Public Garden, AlexRenew Wastewater Treatment Facility, and Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island. sTo Len is currently an inaugural NYSCA State of the Arts Fellow embedded in the NY State Office of Victim Services.
Len is currently based in Queens, NY, with 26 years of residence in NYC and familial roots in Vietnam and Virginia, often incorporating these bonds by connecting issues of their history, environment, and traditions. Invitation for talk with sTo Len taken in Pratt Institute by @stoishere

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24 days ago

“A lot of it is about our memory and how do we record our lives? How do we see ourselves in media and mass culture? And that has changed so much in the last fifty years.”

MFTA Artist-in-Residence sTo Len (@stoishere) gave NY1’s (@ny1) Roger Clark (@rogerclark41) a tour of his massive media library and studio space and talked about his upcoming exhibition, “The Accidental Archive.” As MFTA’s Artist-in-Residence, Len has had access to our 35,000-square-foot warehouse of materials where he’s narrowed his focus on one section: the audio-video aisle. Curating a treasure trove of materials, Len has amassed an accidental that speaks not just to nostalgia but to the activation of lost media and the remixing of our own intertwined stories in the process.

MFTA will celebrate the opening of “The Accidental Archive” with a free public event on Thursday, September 24, 2026, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

👉RSVP at the link in MFTA’s bio. taken in Materials for the Arts by @stoishere

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a month ago

World Trade Center, Opening Footage, 1973
As the artist in residence @materialsforthearts,I’ve been mainly focused on the physical media that has been donated here. I’ve collected quite an array from homemade videotapes to popular films for use in my work but one of the most exciting finds was several boxes of reel to reel videotapes shot by the Department of Cultural Affairs in the early 1970s. These tapes document some amazing art and culture events from that time period and this footage is from a tape of the WTC in its earliest days and shows the unveiling of some sculptures that were installed as part of the Percent for Art program. I love the deep shadows cast by the huge arched windows in this video, ominous now but of course entirely innocent when it was shot. There is a heavy sadness associated with any footage related to the WTC now and as someone who was here for 9/11, I often just can’t even look at any but I found myself enjoying this for what it is. Playful, innocent, celebratory, and in awe. You will be able to see a longer version in my upcoming exhibition but for now, here’s a little snippet, some stills, and photos of the actual tapes. Lots more finds to share with yall real soon! 🖤👁️📺🎬
@nyculture taken in World Trade Center by @stoishere

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a month ago

Excited to unveil my latest interactive sound sculpture in this group show in Central Park’s Arsenal Gallery. It was a lot of fun to gather branches and sticks from the brush piles created by the Parks Department and reuse them for this new work that I created in the gallery. Pix coming soon but best to see it/play it in person along with checking out so much other great work investigating our relationship to trees in many different ways 🌳 🪾👁️

New Dendrology

September 11 – November 6, 2026

The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park

Fifth Avenue & 64th Street, 3rd Floor, NY, NY

Opening Reception Thursday, September 10th from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Featured Artists: Mariel Collard, Karin Giusti, Mark Heller, Anya Hoyer, Ekene Ijeoma, Gail Karlsson, sTo Len, Anthoula Lelekidis, Matthew López-Jensen, Amanda Lovelee, and Laura Nova.

New Dendrology is a group exhibition featuring eleven artists whose work contributes to the study of trees, offering new insight and connection between humans and their arboreal neighbors.

This free exhibition is presented by NYC Parks Art & Antiquities department. @nycparks taken in Arsenal (Central Park) by @stoishere

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a month ago