Artists Space

Filmed in the South Bronx studio workshop of Tim Rollins & K.O.S. over the course of three years, Kids of Survival portrays the workings of this combined classroom and art studio during the production of some of their most celebrated suites of paintings and sculptures. In 1981, Rollins opened the workshop to the students of Intermediate School 52, many of whom had few creative opportunities in their severely disenfranchised neighborhood. By the mid-1980s - out of a network of roughly seventy participating students to date - a core group populated this film, including Victor Llanos, Carlos Rivera, Angel Abreu, and Rick Savinon, all long-standing members of K.O.S. Rollins’ work with K.O.S. began while he was getting a Masters in Education at New York University, and just two years after he co-founded Group Material. It is Rollins’s dual effectiveness in teaching and art-making, and his fusing them into a singular process, that makes his project such a breathtaking story.

This program is preceded by Cinema Elaine.