As the fall semester of 2017 approached, I knew I needed to find an internship soon to then apply for the internship course in the spring semester of 2018. Unfortunately, I had completed CUNY Service Corps already and once you graduate from the program, you can no longer be a runner up for it years to follow. I knew about CUNY Cultural Corps but I also knew I missed the deadline for applications. 3-1-1 Call Taker has been an internship open and I kept it as an option.
Oddly en0ugh, I got lucky and applications for CUNY Cultural Corps reopened and I applied that second. I then met with the coordinators of the programs for a group interview. At the interview, students were timed to answer questions and then come together to find a solution to a community issue. We then introduced ourselves, our interest, major and why we wanted to work in an art institute.
Within a week, I got accepted into the program and then picked my top 10 art institutes I wanted to work at. Those art institutes then contacted me based on my resume and other variables for a schedule interview. The interviews were for a real world experience but the art institute nor yourself (the interviewee) got to pick your job site. According to the coordinators, their system matches you with the ideal internship that met your criterial. Finding this out was not the best news since I was paired at a placement I did not expect to get and I felt as if I wasted time attending interviews.
Moving forward, I met with the coordinator of my placement that I would be working for. It’s a non-profit organization named Franklin Furnace Archive located in Pratt Institute for the past 34 years. The 5 members whose ran it 34 years ago are still there except one. That one person was replaced with an intern who worked there at the time, Jenny. 2019 is the 34th anniversary of the Franklin Furnace Fund. Initiated in 1985 with the support of Jerome Foundation, Franklin Furnace has annually awarded grants to early career artists selected by peer panel review to enable them to produce major performance art works in New York. Franklin Furnace combined the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art and The Future of the Present programs into one, entitled the Franklin Furnace Fund. Franklin Furnace made the decision to combine these programs because during the last decades, artists have created works on every point of the spectrum between the body of the artist and the circulatory network of the Internet in the creation of temporal work.
