Residency Opportunities: Winter 2014 & Spring 2015

Posted on September 1, 2014 by admin

APPLICATIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED. LOOK FOR A NEW CALL OUT
IN SPRING 2015!

Flux Factory is a 20 year old non-profit arts organization, artist collective and international residency program committed to building a sustainable community for diverse cultural producers, including visual artists, builders, curators, activists, musicians, writers, etc.

We’re looking for cultural producers of all kinds to join the Flux community for
3 / 6 / 9 / 12 month residencies.

Flux Factory cultivates a spirit of openness and generosity through a unique collaborative and participatory approach to realizing it’s residency and public programs. Fluxers benefit from an immersive and prolific environment that encourages experimentation and peer to peer resource sharing. Residents work together to shape and realize Flux’s expansive programming, proposing and leading exhibitions and educational events. Flux Factory nurtures individual practices by offering professional development opportunities, including one-on-one studio visits, group field trips, and monthly salons.

Our labyrinthian building includes 14 studios, a gallery, silkscreen studio, woodshop, coworking office, communal kitchen, library, and rooftop garden.

Each resident is responsible for their own funding, though Flux Factory can help with this process.

Please send any questions to residency@fluxfactory.org.

August Flux Thursday – August 14

Posted on August 14, 2014 by admin

Thursday August 14
Dinner at 8pm, Presentations begin at 9:30pm
The event is free, but do bring something to share!

Our 15 year long tradition continues! This month, on August 14th, Flux artists-in-residence Roopa Vasudevan and Amela Parcic will present. In honor of our Homecoming Exhibition closing, Ayden L. M. Grout will invite attendees to scavenge the building to add contributions to a Time Capsule, celebrating Flux’s 20th Anniversary; Homecoming Curator (and Flux Board Member) Jean Barberis will present; Doug Paulson and Daupo will present a display of deep Flux lore…

Nat Roe

Posted on July 8, 2014 by admin

Nat Roe is Flux Factory’s Executive Director, so he spends all his time at Flux sending emails, attending meetings and making spreadsheets in front of our big office window.

Nat is a co-founder of Silent Barn’s current space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Silent Barn is a collectively directed space for living, working and performing. He has organized and performed at numerous concerts since moving to New York in 2009.

For many years, Nat DJed a weekly radio program at WFMU. His program centered around a style of audio collage that drew influence from turntablism and dancehall Clash style as well as the cut-up and appropriation techniques of artists like Brion Gysin and Christian Marclay. You can listen to all his years of live improvised radio collage on Nat’s archives page. Nat performs and records in the audio-visual duo Private Language with new media artist Melissa F Clarke. Nat has also released a 7″ with Kakutopia records, a tape on Spleencoffin records, a CD with Tanzprocesz records — you can hear all these recordings at freemusicarchive.org

Before getting involved in collective-centric arts spaces, Nat was active as a music journalist. He has written for publications such as Wire Magazine, Signal To Noise, Rhizome, Fader, Noisey, and was the editor of WFMU’s blog for several years.

Find links to all Nat’s doings over the years and my full CV at natroe.com

20 years of Flux and hello to our new Director

Posted on June 30, 2014 by admin

As August’s Homecoming exhibition approaches (RSVP for our opening gala here), Flux Factory marks 20 years of collaborative energy through artifact, lore and friends. As we look backward, we’re excited to move forward with our new Executive Director, Nat Roe. Expect dramatic news and growth from Flux Factory this year!

The transformation of Flux Factory from impromptu art collective into pillar for exhibition, education and arts residencies has been a long and winding road with plenty of detours, rose smelling and…well…flux. Please do celebrate 20 years with us at our August 2nd Homecoming gala and by taking home our accompanying publication.

This gaze backward follows quick on the heels of a new addition to Flux – me – Hi, I’m Nat Roe and I’m the new Executive Director here. I’m thrilled to say that I’ve found a real dream job in joining the Flux family. As a co-founder of Silent Barn’s location in Bushwick, I have experienced first-hand the power of collective thinking and action. I am a firm believer in DIY as a philosophy that the most efficient route is not the best – that heuristic, collaborative routes during creation are as important as the finished project. I believe that spaces like Flux Factory perform a massive civic duty for New York City and beyond, and that our model of coworking is an antidote to many of society’s ills.

Flux’s new director Nat enjoying a vinyl at WFMU

I first collaborated with Fluxers as an organizer of the 2012 DIYBA basketball tournament of art spaces. I refereed the heated final round between Shea Stadium and Flux Factory, and was even accused that my biased reffing led to Flux’s 1-point victory. I won’t comment on those accusations, but I will say some good deeds do go unpunished. I’m excited to wear the Flux jersey in 2014’s DIYBA.

Flux Factory has immediately felt like a home to me in my first days on the job, and I’ve been amazed at the level of kindness, thoughtfulness and productiveness of our residents, staff and board. Filling the shoes of my predecessor Christina Vassallo is intimidating, I’ll admit, since she left such a gargantuan mark on the space and brought Flux to such a high level of functioning and ambition. I am immensely grateful to step into Flux with a balanced budget and general order. Many thanks to interim director Doug Paulson for holding the fort down under heavy stress.

We will have some dramatic news and exciting initiatives coming up soon – for now I’ll say that I’m honored to play a part in pushing Flux toward a new chapter, and to continually raise this collective to higher heights.

Exquisite Contraption

Posted on April 18, 2014 by admin

Exhibition dates through February 2015: by appointment and during select public events. Contact Jason Eppink to schedule an appointment.

The Exquisite Contraption has been operational for two months! See how the machine has evolved, including all the photographs it’s taken so far. We’ll run the machine several times an hour and it’s totally going to work every time.

Exquisite Contraption, a collaboratively conceived and constructed machine that spans the entire building has facilitated a weekly “family photograph” since the official opening in February. Over the current year, the Flux community will exist inside the machine, activating it at the begining of weekly Monday meetings to set into motion a series of automated steps that move throughout the building to announce, instruct, prepare, and photograph those gathered. At the end of its life, Exquisite Contraption will have produced a year-long record of residents and guests who have gathered inside the machine.

Exquisite Contraption is both an interactive, building-wide engineering spectacle and a long-term experiment in creating a community ritual. The work will evolve over time as residents elaborate on the weekly tradition, respond to mechanical failures, and integrate (or not) the machine into their daily lives. Since Exquisite Contraption can be activated at any time, it will be available to the public throughout its year-long run by appointment and during select public events.

Created by Stephanie Avery, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Jason Eppink, Justin Lange, Adrian Owen, Amelia Marzec, Alex Nathanson, Nick Normal, Eric Petersen

Exquisite Contraption is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

If you’d like to help support this project, please go to our Donate page.

within a tournament of value

Posted on April 15, 2014 by admin

Opening Reception: April 3, 6-9pm
Office Hours: April 1 – April 15, 4-7pm daily

Visitors to the space will engage with artworks and texts engaging with ideas of commodification and planned obsolescence, as well as the curator who will hold office hours in the space each of the 15 days.

Full Exhibition Text

An exhibition is to be set up as a salon from April 1st until April 15th (April Fool’s Day to Tax Day). This showcase will involve several sculptural works that move beyond the normative constraints of commodification and engage in a broader critique of systems of exchange. Additionally, a selection of texts theorizing these ideas will be available. Visitors to the space will engage with these artworks, these texts, as well as the curator who will hold office hours in the space each of the 15 days, presenting information both historical and registrarial. The gallery will remain otherwise devoid of text and the exhibition will produce no catalog.

To begin, some anthropological and economic considerations about the items and terms that surround us and this project. An item that passes through any exchange system can be broadly defined as a commodity. All objects are therefore commodified at some point. The shape of these transactions vary depending on the item in question and the narrative it tells. This period of commodification occurs within a tournament of value.

Perhaps then we might consider art objects as offering an opportunity to explore the nature of the commodity through their ability to critique social forms. We may also consider the critical writings of anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and sociologists as yielding essential views on the same set of social concerns.

By looking specifically at the notion of a caveat emptor clause, which reads ‘buyer beware,’ we can distill a more singular set of perspectives. The caveat emptor clause defines the limitations or faults of a thing in exchange. It should be noted that all objects have similar considerations and specific caveats. That said, at times certain commodities employ a scheduled obsolescence thereby internalizing this notion of a buyers’ warning. This tactic has been seen as a function of conspicuous consumption.

Art objects, with all the perspective discussed above, can engage with this idea so as to manifest a critique of consumption and of capitalism more broadly. The art objects selected all willfully employ obsolescence to varying degrees. Let us review briefly. A small print of a coupon on a dollar bill from Ryan McGinness will present an opportunity to address the cultural mainstay of currency as the root of most commodity exchanges. Roman Ondák’s Breath on Both Sides will cut through the architecture of the space and presents an air of the artist’s personage. Peter Simensky will take a measure of gold and disperse it in the form of dust. Dana Sherwood will present two projects: the first will be a collection of living butterflies; the second will be a reminiscence of a previous project in the shape of a slowly decomposing but opulent cake. Julia Weist will present an object made of glass and ice to be cracked and to melt away. Necessarily, all important gestures for such a discussion.

The scholarship available equally engages with commodification, consumption, and critique. These thinkers, from a variety of academic backgrounds, analyze the vast and varied nature of exchange systems. Jean Baudrillard and Pierre Bourdieu afford us both semiotic and sociological perspectives. Arjun Appadurai, Marcel Mauss, and Grant McCracken approach the issue from a more anthropological perspective, examining a wide variety of exchange systems in their respective writings. Finally, Vance Packard, Thorstein Veblen, and Olav Velthuis present to us the economists’ angle, focusing on conspicuous consumption and the art market respectively.

In the course of 15 days we will examine these art objects as they function in concert with these texts. In full we will consider equally the works of Arjun Appadurai, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdeau, Marcel Mauss, Grant McCracken, Ryan McGinness, Roman Ondák, Vance Packard, Dana Sherwood, Peter Simensky, Julia Weist, Thorstein Veblen, and Olav Velthuis. From April 1st until April 15th the gallery at 39-31 29th St, Long Island City, Queens will be open from 4-7pm.

within a tournement of value is curated by Flux’s Curator in Residence, Christopher Stiegler of the Institute for American Art. Exhibition made possible in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

April Flux Thursday: April 10

Posted on April 10, 2014 by admin

Thursday April 10, 8pm +
FREE! But please bring something delicious to share!

Join us for Flux Thursday, our monthly potluck dinner and art salon, which is organized this month by Flux Curator-in-Residence, Chris Stiegler. This time around Flux Thursday is all about collectivism! Around our dinner table members of our community will toast to ideas of collective practice, communal ideologies, and how we find a productive place in between.

The plan is simple; We’ll use this as a chance for us to have a conversation about our practices in collectivism. We’ll use the kitchen the way we do during parties: actively cooking, presenting food, eating, talking. Intermittently, anyone is invited to stand up and give a toast to the triumphs (and trials) of collective art practice.

The evening is structured similarly to, where members of a dinner party eulogized the god Eros in short speeches about the ups and downs of love — except this time for collectivism.

STRANGE PINK GLIMMER RISING

Posted on March 30, 2014 by admin

An evening of performances, meditations, and tea service

Sunday March 30, doors at 6:30pm, show begins at 7pm. A suggested four dollar donation. RSVP suggested.

Featuring:

Satellite Installation by Taylor Sakarett

Songs by Dear Suzy (Zuzia Juszkiewicz)

Environment and Performance by Michael DiPietro & Lena Hawkins

And a performance of “Three Sisters Music” in its entirety by Ben Seretan:

Sudden, velvety darkness on an empty beach. The wind sweeps around your ankles and in the hair on your arms while color returns to the world. The colors and the clouds – they’re talking to you. No, wait – they’re singing. In the key of Bb. You’re reminded of the touch of a lover kissing your neck as ravens take the to sky and the ocean crashes against the mountains.

So begins the psychotropic tone zone hallucination that is “Three Sisters Music,” a 90+ minute continuous song cycle for stereo electric guitar, electronics, and voice. Written at the base of a mountain range on a small island on the coast of Alaska, the piece ungulates, drones, and wobbles through songs of swimming, heartbreak, friendship, waterfalls, and horses. Never before officially, fully performed for a public audience! There will be no intermission.

Flux Thursday: March 13, 2014

Posted on March 13, 2014 by admin

March 13th, 8pm+
FREE!, but please bring something delicious to share.

Join us for Flux Thursday, our monthly potluck dinner and art salon, organized this month by Flux Artist-in-Residence, Ayden L.M. Grout. Dinner starts at 8pm in the kitchen, and then around 9:30pm we’ll head to the gallery for artist presentations and performances that explore themes of psychogeography and contemporary creative interpretations and uses of landscape.

N.D. Austin and Ida Bendetto of Wanderlust will present their wunderkammers. Elizabeth Eisenstein will be share her recent photographic work which explores how Google Street View accommodates the passive approach landscape photography takes to the documentation of beauty. Flux Artist in Residence Zuzia Juskiewicz will read excerpts from her novel, which ruminates on the numinous qualities of the city. Urban cultural geographer and astrologer Dr. Bess Matassa will help you discover your N.Y.C. neighborhood of fate, and provide an introduction to the space production method. Richard Aufrichtig will play four new compositions from his latest musical project Ocean Music.

Photo Credit: Ocean Music (work in progress), William Moody

Flux Thursday: February 13, 2014

Posted on February 13, 2014 by admin

February 13th, 8pm+
FREE!, but please bring something delicious to share.

Join us for Flux Thursday, our monthly potluck dinner and art salon, which is organized this month by Flux Artists-in-Residence, Chris Stiegler, Serge Stephan, Zuzia Juszkiewicz, Ben Seretan, and Jimmy Riordan. It will be an night of curated experiences including poetry, movement and experimental food pairings. The event starts at 8pm.

He made some reservations for dinner but I don’t know where we are going. He said that I have to come to the date with an open mind ready for anything. Oh and to bring my appetite. He used the phrases transcendental and unlikely eating arrangement. Whatever that means, it sounds interesting. And oh, he said levitation. I hope there will be a magician.

Exhibition dates through February 2015: by appointment and during select public events. Contact Jason Eppink to schedule an appointment.

Opening Reception: April 3, 6-9pm Office Hours: April 1 – April 15, 4-7pm daily

Thursday April 10, 8pm + FREE! But please bring something delicious to share!

An evening of performances, meditations, and tea service

Sunday March 30, doors at 6:30pm, show begins at 7pm. A suggested four dollar donation. RSVP suggested.

March 13th, 8pm+ FREE!, but please bring something delicious to share.

Opening Reception: April 3, 6-9pm
Office Hours: April 1 – April 15, 4-7pm daily

Thursday April 10, 8pm +
FREE! But please bring something delicious to share!

March 13th, 8pm+
FREE!, but please bring something delicious to share.