October brings so many favorable things to New York City: small dogs in cable-knit sweaters, satisfyingly crunchy leaves underfoot, and the beloved Art in Odd Places (AiOP) festival along East 14th Street. After thoroughly enjoying AiOP’s 19th iteration last year, which centered care in all of its forms, I was more than eager to take on the festival’s momentous 20th anniversary and embed myself in the imaginative, DIY scrappiness and intimacy that unfailingly intrigues bystanders along the upper-most edge of the East Village.
The 20th anniversary, as spectacular as it was slated to be, was punctured by an unfortunate lack of funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), leading AiOP Founder Ed Woodham, who was already disillusioned with the erosion of democracy in the United States, to scrap any planned bells and whistles and simply go with nothing.
Telling Hyperallergic that AiOP wasn’t funded for the first time this year, Woodham emphasized that doing nothing was the “most practical and honest response.” But he didn’t want the decision to be confused as a motion toward apathy — he called it a “deliberate pause.”
People got to sample Ed Woodham’s (the shrouded figure in the photo on right) new fragrance, “Nothing,” on East 14th Street.
With that, the 20th edition of AiOP was curated by no one, and invited anyone and everyone to do nothing. As it turned out, many of the usual participants took “nothing” very seriously by not showing up during the festival’s first day on Saturday, October 18. Still, a handful of artists, including Woodham himself, were present between First and Second Avenue to emphasize that nothing is important.
While Woodham and his entourage tabled outside of an empty storefront with bottles of his new fragrance called, of course, “Nothing,” playwright and performance artist Lulu Lolo was appointed as the Mayor of Nothing. Members of the Czechoslovak American Marionette Theater (CAMT) made their way toward Union Square, equipped with kazoos and marionette strings sans the actual puppets. CAMT Director Vit Hořejš spelled it out for me: In line with the theme, Czechoslovakia no longer exists. He then handed me a postcard for an event from September 2022 and told me, “This isn’t coming up.”
Nothing happening here, as you can see
It just so happened that AiOP’s first day coincided with the No Kings march from Times Square to Union Square, a perfect alignment with the festival’s theme, if you ask me, based on what the popular yet widely criticized procession actually accomplished (read: nothing!).
In between the absurdist humor of nothing being important and the philosophical rumination on nothingness, protest, shrinking arts funding, and the state of the world, I found myself grappling with a feeling of being robbed of experiencing AiOP’s typical zest after learning that there was nothing to look forward to. Yes, I do realize that’s the point.
Regardless, doing nothing did do something: It emphasized what a cultural loss it would be if AiOP were relegated to nothingness on account of nose-diving support for the arts, especially local organizations, in this already miserable timeline.
Woodham also underscored that the theme of “nothing” became an “open invitation to experiment with presence rather than any specific performance, and observation rather than production,” offering a chance to imagine a world where “value is not measured by any sort of output.”
NYSCA did confirm to Hyperallergic that it is reviewing AiOP’s 2026 grant proposal, though, so let us hope that “nothing” works.
CAMT Director Vit Hořejš made sure that New Yorkers had nothing to look at during this year’s Art in Odd Places.
The creative turnout during the first day of Art in Odd Places
Consider this a break from doomscrolling.
