Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the human, especially the working human, has increasingly adapted to a coexistence with machines. The human has become a prosthesis for the non-organic body of the industrial factory. During early adaptation this occurred mainly on the material body, the hardware of humanity. Simple repetitive movements on the assembly line became the tasks of the workers to fulfill those duties the machine could not.
The promise was that humans of the future will not have to work, machines will lighten the load. However, the importance of ones identity being tied to her/his occupation became increasingly socially relevant.
With the invention of the computer, machines have moved away from hardware towards software; machines began to acquire a brain. In this new epoch, is it possible that human are still a prostheses of the machine? Now not only attached to the body but also an amendment to its thinking? It can seem that with the wish of creating machines that think like humans, we have also created humans that think like machines.
More and more a human defines itself by the work it does, no-matter how unnecessary or meaningless this activity is. It is often the case today that there is no need for working humans, as artificially intelligent systems can control and realize the whole cycle of industrial production. What do we do now that the human is redundant?
During the workshop participants will work with Austrian artist and Flux resident Niki Passath to create a robot from scratch. These robots will act together to become an amalgamated body, which will perform during the opening reception. The reception and exhibition will feature the robots made during the workshop.
This class is designed to be a quick introduction to off grid solar power, covering basic electronic knowledge, hardware requirements, basic off grid solar circuit design, and how to determine your power needs. Students will learn to solder and use multimeters. The class is for artists, DIYer’s, makers, and anyone who isn’t a “professional” with a very basic understanding of electricity and a willingness to experiment. Everyone in the class will build a tiny solar powered USB charger, capable of powering anything that runs off of USB including MP3 players, bike lights, speakers, and cell phones. The class will conclude by examining the offgrid solar panel installed on Flux Factory’s roof. All materials will be provided. Students should bring a USB chargeable device and cable with them.
Instructor Bio
Alex Nathanson is an artist, curator, organizer, and educator whose work spans video, sound, performance, and interaction design. He has been teaching classes on solar power since 2014. He collaborates regularly with composer Dylan Neely, performing under the name Fan Letters. His work has been featured at the Museum of the Moving Image, La MaMa, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Anthology Film Archives, PS122 Gallery, Dome of Visions (Denmark), and the Art Prospect Festival (Russia). Currently, he is a longterm artist in residence at Flux Factory, in Queens, NY. As an educator, he works with students as young as 6 to post graduates, teaching skills related to sound, light, mechanics, and electronics through creative
Bring your own grillables for our vegetarian grill (veggie burgers, tofurky dogs, eggplants, corn on the cob). Bring a side dish to share (carnivorous dishes welcome just not on the grill). We love potato salad, coleslaw, watermelons, fruit salad, caprese salad, hummus and more. . . and dancing shoes are suggested.
Our July Flux Thursday potluck will be a play on the American Independence Day BBQ.
This is a reverse July 4th party. We will be celebrating collaboration, cooperation, cross-pollination, relation & alliance building, and the recognition of the impossibility of autonomy. We will be talking about interdependence, not only in terms of societal systems & structures, but also the interdependent relationship of art & politics with the following queries:
How do art & politics feed one another?
Why do people have the urge to separate them? Is there any benefit to separating them?
How do you negotiate their relationship in your life & practice?
Maya Jeffereis invites participants to engage in a thought experiment about ethics, morality, identity politics, and nation-building. Fallout Shelter stages a US Navy “moral values” training exercise found by the artist at an abandoned naval station in Puerto Rico. The exercise outlines a post-apocalyptic survival scenario in which ten people, known only from basic information about age, race, gender, sexuality, intelligence, profession, and worldview, occupy a fallout shelter. Participants must decide which four are to be excluded from the group in order that the remaining six may live to rebuild society. In small groups, participants must argue in favor of and against each of the occupants until the group reaches a full consensus. Maya Jeffereis is a New York based artist working in video, performance, and installation. Her work has been shown most recently at NARS Foundation, New Britain Museum of American Art, and New Art Dealers Alliance. She holds a MFA from Hunter College and a BFA and BA from the University of Washington.
Past Flux Artist-in-Residence Sarah Greenbaum will have an exhibition opening in the gallery downstairs from 6-8pm, with a performance at 7:30pm
Sarah Greenbaum and Bob Pounding are interested in waste around Newtown Creek. They will be doing a piece with sound, images, recordings, painting and other non-musical elements.
Sarah Greenbaum is a painter from East Hampton, NY. Her work ranges from traditional to abstract drawings, paintings and collage. Sarah explores waste and the effects that inorganic pollutants have on the landscape and environment.
Bob Pounding is a musician from Portland OR. He makes sounds and sometimes records them. He is interested in experimenting with different recording mediums, and using non-musical elements in musical compositions.
Sarah Greenbaum presents a three part series of paintings and drawings about waste and the effects of pollution in and around the Newtown Creek Waste Water Treatment center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her work is a result of field work at the Newtown Creek site; through investigating this one location, Sarah explores how human activity has been the dominant influence on the environment.
At the opening reception, Sarah will introduce a new multimedia piece made with research collaborator Bob Pounding, a musician and artist from Portland OR.
Sarah Greenbaum is from East Hampton, NY. Her work ranges from traditional to abstract drawings, paintings and collage. Sarah explores waste and the effects that inorganic pollutants have on the landscape and the environment. Through abstract landscapes her work represents not only a result of research and facts but a personal interpretation and physical reaction of the changing natural environment.
Sarah Greenbaum (b. 1990 in New York) studied from 2008-2009 at Emerson College, she studied drawing and painting from 2010-2014 at the Russian Academy of Art and from 2014-2015 studied contemporary painting at Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. Sarah was a Flux Factory resident from October 2015-April 2016, she is now based in Greenpoint New York.
Tingwei Li is a Chinese born artist based in Berlin, having recently worked in Beijing. She arranges information associated with objects of all kinds and engages in inter-disciplinary based research. Her current works are collaged installations created as sensors for transmitting the perception of unspoken and indescribable feelings. Visual elements, sounds, videos and ready-made objects unite the identity of self with intangible phenomenon, reflecting the emotional dissonance in the information era. Working through ideas of the body, specifically our pursuit of a “healthier” mental and physical condition, she is currently researching the way communities address contemporary health issues.
Tingwei studied at Hunter College, UdK Berlin and is currently pursuing a Meisterschueler title at the Berlin University of Arts. She has shown in Galerie Gerken Berlin, Villa Renata Basel, EGG Gallery Beijing, chi K 11, Shanghai, Intelligentsia Gallery Beijing, Kreuzberg Pavillon Berlin, Flowers Gallery NYC among others.”
Flux Factory is pleased to present The Tulsa Swinton Variety Hour, a play created in collaboration with The Aesthetic of Waste and several Flux artists. The installation transforms Flux’s white box gallery into a colorful, unpredictable, and disposable theater-labyrinth. As the show progresses, an armada of miniature trains will gently guide audience members through a series of 20 backdrops. The show is designed by Abigail Entsminger and directed by Seth Timothy Larson, both current artists in residence at Flux Factory.
This July, cool off with a dip in the Franzia fountain and a scoop of chrysanthemum and tobacco ice cream in the Pepsi-Kinsey Television Studios. World-renowned actress and producer Tulsa Swinton invites you to the final taping of her long-running, highly-influential television program. To celebrate the end, Tulsa will be conducting the interviews that she’s always wanted, but that have either been censored or suppressed by the Walton Family of Networks. Special appearances will be made by business mogul Teresa Franzia, and America’s favorite President James-Michael Carnegie-Kennedy, among other cultural luminaries.
Tulsa will grapple with her memories, her looming death, and the legacy of her sister, Tilda Swinton, who is widely believed to have disappeared at sea as a teen. Having had her personal tragedies and triumphs broadcast from an early age, Tulsa will use her last spotlight to preserve her vision of the past. To highlight the immediacy of her broadcast, an elite squad of Production Assistants will carry out the carefully calculated destruction of every backdrop, prop, and show artifact once it has outlived it’s purpose. This will truly be Tulsa’s final hour.
The Aesthetic of Waste is a performance collective which has created original theater and installations for the Overtime Theater, AtticRep, Luminaria Arts Festival and the Houston Fringe Festival. Abigail Entsminger and Seth Timothy Larson have recently shown works in the Fung Wah Biennial and Title:Point Theater’s SalON!.
Join Flux Factory and the Aesthetic of Waste for a night of theater that promises exquisite artistry, collapsible sets, the Fountain of Youth, several automobile-actors, and a final night with America’s Sweetest Heart and People Magazine’s Premiere Sexual Progressive of 2012: Tulsa Swinton! Music, intrigue and fist fights! Featuring performances and designs by Chelsea Taylor, Judson Rose, Jason Eppink, Lena Hawkins, Michael DiPietro, Caitlin Gjerdrum, Cate Davis, Redding Baker, Sam Weiner, and more.
French artist Chloé Devanne Langlais, who has been working with Flux as an intern over the past two months, will present her most recent works for one day in our gallery. This show is influenced by the Flux Factory community and her current experience in NYC.
Chloé will present two groups of work, one exploring human kind’s naive questions about black holes and the notion of space and time. Chloé’s work poetically explores non-linear time and expansive space.
Her second series is composed of paintings and songs, created through a spontaneous, unfiltered process.
Please Join us to discuss her work and thank her for her time at Flux!
Joelle Fleurantin is an artist and researcher in a committed relationship with her computer. Her work explores this often functional, sometimes dysfunctional union. At Flux, she will continue her current project, Patchworked Venus, a body created to examine how computing has given birth to a new form of sexual intimacy. She has presented her work at the NYC Media Lab Summit, Facets Conference, and Mozilla Festival. Joelle received a Master’s from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and studied art history and film at Yale University and Brooklyn College respectively.
Maya Suess is the Managing Director of Flux Factory. She is a visual artist, educator and arts administrator. When not managing calendars, making lists and probing the depths of art and community with Fluxers she is making mischievous artistic entities of her own. Having worked in many areas of the arts including curation and programming, education, management, development and as an individual artist, she is well suited for wearing the many hats required in her position at Flux.
She was a longtime member and past Program Director of the Gowanus Studio Space and the 2015 Summer Program Manager for the Fire Island Artist Residency. She has worked as a professor and teaching artist for over a decade, and her work has been shown in Galleries, Cinemas and theatres in the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Sweden, the UK and Japan. She produces videos and performances, and makes large scale drawings using colored pencils.
Growing up on a small island off the west coast of Canada she now calls the borough of Queens, NY home. She holds a BFA in Media Arts from Emily Carr Institute, and an MFA in contemporary performance from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.
Christina Freeman is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her work takes on various forms including photography, video, artists’ books, multimedia installation, collaborative performance, and curatorial projects. She received her MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2012 and her BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Haverford College in 2005. She has been invited to perform her participatory works as an artist-in-residence for SOMA in Mexico City, Heliopolis in Brooklyn, Galería Perdida in Michoacán, Mexico and the TEM market in Volos, Greece. She is a recipient of the Tuttle Fund, the Graf Travel Grant, the Pickett Fund Award and two Center for Peace and Global Citizenship grants. Her 2012 solo exhibition at the Red House in Sofia, Bulgaria was featured on Bulgarian national radio and television. In 2015 she was awarded the CUNY PSC Grant to study at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Christina is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Haverford College and teaches in the Department of Art & Art History at Hunter College.
Emireth Herrera is a visual arts researcher and curator. She works as a professor at Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila in Coahuila, Mexico. In order to foster academic research she has organized expositions and international artistic events that involve sustainability and site-specific actions.
As a curator in residence at Residency Unlimited, New York City, Herrera analyzed the artistic scene in the city, had studio visits, interviews and wrote about contemporary artists as a means of generating future projects.
In 2014, she was the Executive Director of LivingArtRoom, the online platform dedicated to promoting artist portfolios. She participates with the international magazine, LARmagazine as Text at Large Collaborator, writing and interviewing contemporary artists.
She sees the artistic process as a scenography that is conveyed behind the scenes, where registers and interviews are the tools to deepen into symbols and significances.
She believes that collaboration is essential to generate community which makes us strong as individuals and empowers networks to defeat ideas and enlighten situations. She have been a member of various organizations such as El Nodo, which is located in an abandoned train station rounded by houses made by cardboard and steel.
Now, Emireth Herrera is in residency at Flux Factory in Queens, New York for the summer 2016, where she will be analyzing the creative process in community and curating the collective show “3459” with Relapse through the open call Relapse/Flux.
Photograph by Alejandro Alvarado
Emireth’s residency is sponsored by Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila
June 3, 6-10pm: Opening Reception
Cayla Mae Presents: Free*Sandwiches from 6-9pm
June 9, 7:30pm: Flux Thursday with presentations by Cassie Thornton and Thomas Gokey
June 14, 6:30pm: Junk Bonds workshop with Paolo Cirio
June 24, 7pm: Closing Performances including Remembering Capitalism by Nathaniel Sullivan, Introducing the Demi by Tori Abernathy, and $1000 Mandala by Sarah Beck.
Gallery Hours: Thursday–Saturday 12-6pm or by appointment, June 4-24
There will be ongoing performances during open gallery hours including $1000 Mandala by Sarah Beck and Not everything that counts, can be counted by Moira Williams, Niki Athanasiadou, Michael Asbill, Lichen Lovers.
For three weeks in June, Debt Positive invites you to bring interest to bear on indebtedness that is shared openly and not exclusively. Debt might be the fundamental basis of human relations, but today it is also tricky business. Individuals shun it, but organizations welcome it as a means to grow. Debt seems to drive the economy yet appears abstracted to absurdity. Most people in the U.S. share debt, yet debt is borne out privately. How do we put our finger on the debt, which is everywhere powerful and nowhere seen? Through an evolving exhibition, performances, and workshops Debt Positive beckons people to re-envision debt, sublimate it, and consider possibilities for eliminating its wasteful implementations.
Many of the artists in Debt Positive were kids at the dawn of Reagan’s “Morning in America”, which saw the transformation of the United States from the world’s biggest creditor to its biggest debtor—a status maintained by the U.S. today. As the relationship between debtors and creditors grows more abstract, the chance for miscommunication increases. Debt plays out on many frequencies to produce an affective field of precarity for which this exhibition aims to make space. Cassie Thornton’s site-specific paintings for financial institutions, the solidarity building workshops of Rolling Jubilee member Thomas Gokey, and the postcapitalist performances of Nathaniel Sullivan milk the incommensurability of debt’s empirical and emotional dimensions. The participatory system of Cayla Lockwood’s Free* Sandwiches celebrates debt-accumulating structures of compounded irrationality. Lisa Hirmer’s Tablets of Working Bees beckons viewers to contribute to a collective account of debt and labor using a material that is inherently mutable. The artworks and workshops of this international group of artists leverage a transmedia approach well suited to chopping at the necks of debt’s many heads – from the financial to the microbial. Because debt is a moving target, the works in Debt Positive live in a state of flux and tempt viewer investment.
“Credit is a means of privatization and debt a means of socialisation…debt is social and credit is asocial. Debt is mutual. Credit runs only one way. But debt runs in every direction, scatters, escapes, seeks refuge. The debtor seeks refuge among other debtors, acquires debt from them, offers debt to them. The place of refuge is the place to which you can only owe more and more because there is no creditor, no payment possible.”
— the Undercommons: Stefano Harney & Fred Moten
Debt Positive is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Elisabeth Wieser presents Frame Ajar- a collection of her recent work of collage, sculpture and installation. Flux’s exhibition space will be transformed into a conversation of architectural composition and loose form, analyzing the liminal space in between the familiar and the unknown. As an engagement with the surrounding site-specific language, architectural elements are converted into abstract lines and sculptural forms, interlacing the composition of the two- and the three-dimensional work in the space.
Elisabeth Wieser is a German artist who creates sculptures and site-specific, architectural interventions, complemented by film, drawings and collage. She is interested in stage-like structures, illusionary materials, ‘non-spaces’ and inadvertent sculptural vestige. Her work often alludes to displaced or claustrophobic habitats and explores ambiguous spatial situations as well as dreamlike, sometimes Brutalist architecture. Using a human scale in her three-dimensional work she examines the human inter-relations between the body and its surroundings. Her collages unfold spaces that are hard to classify within known terms – a play of structural lines, equivocality, light, shadow and cinematographic suspense.
Elisabeth Wieser (b.1986 in Munich, Germany) studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Munich and at Goldsmith College in London and is the recipient of the Bavarian State Sponsorship Award for Fine Art 2014 and of the DAAD New York Scholarship 2016. Recent solo shows include “Realm” 2014 Karin Wimmer Contemporary Art, Munich; “Zonic” 2014 Kjubh Kunstverein, Cologne; “Trespass” 2013 Charim Events, Vienna; as well as most recently “Den” at Popps Packing Emporium, Detroit, 2015.
Please vote for the Windmill Community Garden! Our budding community garden has been chosen as one of 3 finalists in NYC to receive a $20,000 grant from the National Recreation and Park Association to improve local parks.
Smiling Hogshead Ranch is an all-volunteer urban farm located on an abandoned rail spur in Long Island City, Queens, New York. They’ll be hosting the afterparty for the Flux-a-thon, a spectacularly jubilant, semi-absurd twist on a traditional walk-a-thon, complete with costumes and floats, all to raise money for another year of Flux Factory’s unique and collaborative residency program.
Come to Smiling Hogshead Ranch at 5 pm on May 7th and cheer the Flux-a-thon to the finish line! Join our guest judges Hrag Vartanian (Editor-in-Chief & Co-founder, Hyperallergic), Paddy Johnson (Founder & Editorial Director, Art F City), Harriet Taub (Director, Materials for the Arts), Kevin Balktick (co-founder,FIGMENT) and Connie Wang (Fashion Features Director, Refinery 29) in awarding teams prizes for best costume, best use of recycled materials, most funds raised, and more!
Celebrate spring, support Flux Factory, and keep the arts thriving in LIC!
***Instead of selling tickets to the event, we’re asking partygoers to DONATE TO THEIR FAVORITE FLUX-A-THON TEAM for entry! We’ll also be selling day-of tickets at the entrance to Smiling Hogshead***
*By donating $20, you get entry to the BBQ & dance party*
*By supporting Flux Factory with a $50 donation, you get entry, plus a free drink!*
*By supporting Flux Factory with a $150 donation, you get entry, plus a meal, plus 3 free drinks!*
*All donations go directly into Flux Factory’s operating costs, helping keep our doors open, our woodshop sawing, and our residents producing over 75 FREE and ALL AGES exhibitions and educational events a year!*
Dinner at 7:30 pm. Presentations begin at 8:30 pm.
The event is free, but please do bring something (edible) to share!
Dinner is produced by Fung Wah Biennial Artist Heather Kapplow. She will be serving food which will be delicious and also dissects global migration through ingredient sources.
Hosted by Fung Wah Biennial Co-Curators Matthias Borello, Sally Szwed, and Will Owen. Sunita Prasad presents on her performative public interactions on the Fung Wah Biennial Bus to Boston. Bryan Chang, documentarian for Fung Wah Biennial, will be presenting his work as a documentary film maker and speaking about his film collective Meerkat Media. Meg Wiessner will give a presentation on the history of fabric patterns used on bus seats and other public transportation. Fan Letters (Alex Nathanson + Dylan Neely) present their research and performance documentation from their performance from the Boston leg of the Fung Wah Biennial. Ariel Abrahams and Rony Efrat give a brief presentation about their unique transnational collaboration and their work for the Fung Wah Biennial.
After 3 years of working at Flux Factory, our wonderful Residency Director Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez is moving on to new and exciting adventures. Though we’re saddened to lose such an important community leader, we’re looking forward to expanding the role into a full time job — for the first time ever, Flux will have two full time employees. We’re pleased to announce an opening for Managing Director.
Artists-in-Residence and staffers collaborate frequently at Flux
Flux Factory Managing Director Job Description
Hours: Full Time, 40 hrs / week Salary: Approximately $31k / ann To apply: email jobs@fluxfactory.org with “Managing Director Applicant” in the subject and with CV and cover letter attached. All applications are due by March 31.
Flux Factory is one of NYC’s longest standing collective art spaces, founded in Williamsburg in 1993 and residing since 2002 in Long Island City, Queens. We support a welcoming community of international cultural producers, including (but not limited to) artists, community organizers, urban agriculturalists, educators, curators, builders, game designers and musicians. Since introducing our formal residency program in 2009, more than 200 Fluxers have produced prolific, eccentric and diverse programs within a socially engaging and collaborative environment. Today, Flux manages a community-oriented artist-in-residence program of 16 private studios, shared workspaces and a public events gallery.
Flux is seeking a Managing Director to report to the Executive Director of Flux Factory in managing the organization. The Managing Director will have primary responsibility for facilitating the core Flux Factory programs including Residency, Exhibitions and Education. The Managing Director will also be a key team member in meeting our development goals alongside our Board of Directors, Executive and Development staffers.
Flux is a unique organization that requires an inspired Managing Director with strategic thinking skills, curatorial savvy, inbox wizardry, and the ability to navigate interpersonal dynamics with cultural producers from varying socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. The MD should feel comfortable working as a professional manager in an informal internal environment that depends on the cooperation of staff and an entire community of artists. The MD should learn how to inspire collaboration that results in unique programming despite limited resources. The ideal candidate demonstrates strong engagement with socially engaged art practices and contemporary art trends, as well as the capacity to manage multiple projects, priorities, and deadlines. It’s a challenging job in a supportive environment, a wonderful opportunity to learn a wide variety of skills, with many opportunities to leave one’s mark.
Flux’s coworking office
Some broad responsibilities include the following:
The MD will be the chief facilitator of our international residency program that hosts approximately 35 residents each year, both through open-calls and organizational partnerships. MD will lead call-outs, scheduling, onboarding, rent collection, developing opportunities for residents, attending resident meetings, and more.
The MD will support curators of four major Flux Factory group exhibitions each year. While curators are chiefly responsible for production, MD will oversee project budget and administration, ensure milestones are met, guide overall strategy, publicity, and lend assistance as needed. MD will provide similar support for resident-produced programs, educational programs and gallery rentals. Overall, Flux produces approximately 50 public programs per year and while each program has its own curator, the MD’s role will be to ensure all the organizational tools are in place for success.
Flux produces two major fundraising events per year, including silent art auctions, banquets, and walk-a-thons. The MD will play a large role in the production of these events through soliciting participants, seeking sponsors, growing committees, planning production, and more. Additionally, the MD will participate in developing and managing programs for increasing Flux Factory’s earned income.
The MD will generally contribute to the Flux Factory team, representing Flux Factory to stakeholders, partners, supporters, press and the public; collaborate to develop strategy; and supervise volunteers. As a member of the Flux Factory artist collective, the Managing Director will have the same opportunity as other Flux Factory participants to take part in Flux Factory activities on a volunteer basis.
Flux Factory is an equal opportunity employer and considers all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, sex, age, national origin, creed, disability, marital status, sexual orientation or political affiliation.
Jason Eppink engages in public space magic, open source scheming, moving image mischief, photon reappropriation, and linguistic subterfuge.
His doings have been seen worldwide because they’re all on the internet. Also they’ve been seen worldwide in galleries, but no one really goes to those.
When he’s not doing that, Eppink creates interactive experiences, curates events and exhibitions, and throws raging art parties as the Assistant Curator of Digital Media at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City.
– – APPLICATIONS are now CLOSED- – Please check back in January 2017
Flux Factory is a 21 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, community organizers, chefs, activists, musicians, writers…
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 its 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 labyrinthine building includes 14 studios, a gallery, silkscreen studio, woodshop, coworking office, communal kitchen, library, and rooftop garden. Check the Residency page for more information and photos.
There is a monthly cost involved in participating in the Flux Factory Residency program, depending on the studio that you are assigned. Each resident is responsible for their own funding, though Flux Factory can help with this process.
– – APPLICATIONS are now CLOSED- – Please check back in January 2017
Fluxer Ariel Abrahams presents February’s Flux Thursday inspired by his exhibition FRIENDSHIP. FRIENDSHIP manifested as two all-night sleepover events in the Flux gallery on January 22nd and 26th. Drawings, sculptures, performances and videos were explored over the course of each night.
The work presented will be in the spirit of FRIENDSHIP: either on topic, or by special friends of Abrahams. Following the presentations, we will have a short Q and A on friends and art-making.
Spotlightness is a pop-up group show organized by Sébastien Maloberti at Flux Factory.
Reception on January 28th, 6pm–9pm
Featuring works by Jimmy Beauquesne, Mathilde Bezon, Kevin Desbouis, Marine Joulie, Sébastien Maloberti, Valentine Ridde and Bruno Silva.
The exhibition will present the work of seven artists, all based in France, and currently in residence at Flux Factory (Queens) and Triangle Arts Association (Brooklyn), with the partnership of Artistes en Résidence and the École Supèrieure d’Art de Clermont Métropole. This project’s format is lightweight, much like the artists’ methods of working: simple means, found materials and tools. All these works were produced this week in the fresh air of NYC.
Flux Factory is one of NYC’s oldest and most affordable collectively-run art spaces. On Saturday, May 7th, we’re holding the 1st Annual“Flux-a-Thon“ putting our own jubilant, collaborative twist on a traditional walk-a-thon to raise money for another year of our residency program. Teams of artists and marchers will wander through the streets of Long Island City with their best mobile art projects, floats, performances, and roving spectacles.
We’ll head from Flux Factory to Smiling Hogshead Ranch, an all-volunteer urban farm located on an abandoned rail spur in Long Island City, where our guest judges Hrag Vartanian (Editor-in-Chief & Co-founder, Hyperallergic), Paddy Johnson (Founder & Editorial Director, Art F City), Harriet Taub (Director, Materials for the Arts), Kevin Balktick (co-founder, FIGMENT) and Connie Wang (Fashion Features Director, Refinery 29) will award prizes for best costume, best use of recycled materials, most funds raised, best performance, and more! The day will conclude with a Garden Dance party and BBQ featuring the Center for the Holographic Arts behind the grill, scrumptious dishes donated by Beija Flor, Dutch Kills Centraal, and Tom Cat Bakery and music by none other than DJ Vinyl Richie and DJ Seaarch.All funds raised in the “Flux-a-thon” will go directly into Flux’s operating costs.
Each year, our roster of cultural producers run ambitious and challenging programs, that are always free and open to the public. In addition to providing low-cost facilities and support that premise creativity, we pay every artist who participates in a Flux program, providing over $30,000 in 2015 to support the creation of new works.
In 2016, Flux Factory has narrowly avoided displacement from Long Island City. We are thrilled to have signed a 5 year lease extension, and to continue to serve our neighborhood and the greater NYC arts community long-term. However, starting April 1st, our rent went up 8.5%, and we’re working to raise the funds necessary to keep our doors open, our woodshop sawing, and our studios humming with emerging and off-the-wall cultural producers.
Sunday, February 28th, 4-8 pm (with music by DJ Vinyl Richie)
Wieteke Heldens is pleased to invite you to Once Upon a Line, her third solo-show. She will share her paintings and drawings made during her current residency at Flux Factory. Together, the paintings form a never-ending story or an endless poem with their titles and content. ‘Once upon a time’ refers to the title of the first work made during the residency. The second work is made by the first and so forth. But the first is never the first and the last is never the last. Everything has history and everything has consequences.
Wieteke Heldens was born in Ottersum, The Netherlands in 1982. Heldens works in the medium of painting. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague in 2007. She had her first solo show at Flux Factory in 2011 and exhibited in the The Hague Gemeente museum, Royal Palace in Amsterdam and internationally in Switzerland, France, Germany, Denmark and the US. In 2013 Heldens won the Royal prize for Painting in the Netherlands. Heldens is currently represented by gallery Borzo in Amsterdam and is an active member of Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives in The Hague. She lives and works in New York and in The Hague.
These artists and / or their works listed below will be present on these specific buses:
BOSTON:
The Biennial Project, Marco Castro, Eric Doeringer, Fan Letters (Alex Nathanson + Dylan Neely), Sunita Prasad, Joshua Caleb Wiebley, Ariel Abrahams + Rony Efrat, Magali Duzant, Keith Hartwig + Daniel Newman, Heather Kapplow, Seth Timothy Larson + Abigail Entsminger, Manuel Molina Martagon, Kristoffer Ørum, Ruth Patir, Pines / Palms (Emily Ensminger + Sophie Trauberman), Jonah Levy, Roopa Vasudevan, Tereza Szwanda, Documentarian: Bryan Chang
Boston Partners: Atlantic Works Gallery (Hosted by Anna Salmeron), Make Shift Space
PHILADELPHIA:
Michael Barraco, Chloë Bass, Adam Milner, Marjan Verstappen + Jessica Valentin, Meg Wiessner, Joshua Caleb Wiebley, Ariel Abrahams + Rony Efrat, Magali Duzant, Keith Hartwig + Daniel Newman, Seth Timothy Larson + Abigail Entsminger, Manuel Molina Martagon, Kristoffer Ørum Ruth Patir, Pines / Palms (Emily Ensminger + Sophie Trauberman), Jonah Levy, Roopa Vasudevan, Tereza Szwanda, Documentarian: Alex Nathanson
Philadelphia Partners: Asian Arts Initiative (Hosted by Nancy Chen) , R.F. Kampfer Revolutionary Literature Archive (Hosted by Bradley Duncan), Space 1026 (Hosted by Jacqueline Quinn) ,Vox Populi (Hosted by Bree Pickering)
BALTIMORE:
Dillon De Give, Ursula Nistrup, Kristoffer Ørum, Ariel Abrahams + Rony Efrat, Fan Letters (Alex Nathanson + Dylan Neely), Magali Duzant, Keith Hartwig + Daniel Newman, Seth Timothy Larson + Abigail Entsminger, Manuel Molina Martagon, Ruth Patir, Pines / Palms (Emily Ensminger + Sophie Trauberman), Kristoffer Ørum, Jonah Levy, Roopa Vasudevan, Tereza Szwanda, Documentarian: Alex Nathanson
Baltimore Partners: Current Space Gallery (hosted by Michael Benevento + Andrew Liang)
In March 2016, Flux will commission 25 US-based and international artists / artist groups to create site-specific works for three Chinatown bus routes in the North-Eastern United States for the inaugural Fung Wah Biennial. During trips to Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore artists will share performances, projections, sound-works, web-based projects, and other social interventions that amplify experiences or tease out the nuanced politics of transit.
On each Saturday in March, a bus will depart from NYC to venture to a new city and back. Artists were invited to create works in response to the history and infrastructure of these particular bus lines, as well as the physical and emotional experience of travel. Some works look at transit through the lens of leisure, or challenge its banality and isolation, while others contend with migration as an act of necessity or survival. The works will be presented on the bus while en route to and from their respective destinations, as well as on the ground in each city. The audience will comprise of mostly knowing Fung Wah Biennial exhibition participants, however it may also include those who are simply traveling on each selected bus (i.e. innocent bystanders).
The impetus for this exhibition is three-fold: The impending migration of most emerging art spaces in New York City due to increasing cost of living; The experience of travel whether for leisure or out of necessity; The incredible, inexpensive network of buses between Chinatowns in the Northeastern U.S. and beyond, and especially honoring the closure of the original company in 2015, Fung Wah Bus line.
Select Projects:
In Roopa Vasudevan’s “eMOTION Mapping” passengers’ varied emotional states, typically internalized, become collected and visualized on a web-based map designed by the artist.
A trip to the bathroom may ask one to consider the meaning of permanent residency status, while washing away labels associated with it embossed on Tereza Swanda’s hand cast soaps.
Weary travelers are treated to customized comforts found in seat-pocket travel kits tailored especially for each bus journey by Pines // Palms (Emily Entsminger and Sophie Trauberman), while Marjan Verstappen’s “Fung Wah Onboard Service” allows passengers to taste the topography rolling by outside the windows through her specially created snack menu.
Reminding us of the legacy of artists inspired by travelling between cities in the northeast, Eric Doeringer will revisit artist Douglas Huebler’s cartographic exploration of two cities by recreating his 1968 artwork “Boston – New York Exchange Shape” during the Fung Wah Biennial’s Boston leg.
In the “The Legend of Buspar” Abigail Entsminger and Seth Timothy Larson will translate an epic, multi-act saga of forced urban migration and transformation into a miniature theatrical production staged in two seats at the rear of the bus.
In each city Fung Wah Biennial will partner with local art and cultural spaces for lectures and tours to get to know better our neighboring city centers and their creative output. Our current partners include: Current Space (Baltimore), Space 1026 (Philadelphia), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Atlantic Works Gallery (Boston), and more to be announced. The last week of the month will culminate in an exhibition held in the Flux Factory gallery, 6pm Friday March 25th, 2016 showing both documentation and replication of works from the month’s travels.
Will Owen, organizer and co-curator of Fung Wah Biennial states, “The Fung Wah Biennial was an idea now taken a little too far. We’re essentially creating a series of gallery exhibitions on chinatown buses– while traveling between cities in the Northeast with artist interventions, snacks, and all the joys and frustrations of a regular gallery opening, but traveling at 70 miles per hour.”
Gallery visits by appointment (email arielabrahams@gmail.com)
Who makes me laugh out loud? Who holds my hair back when I vomit? Who takes care of me when I am sick? Tell me of the mysteries of friendship. Of a strength that goes beyond the physical. It brings such a quality of joy that on the merit of its strength it must exist long after we die. That we speak every day for 3 months and then stop for 3 years; a friendship lightly peppered with emoji text messages. Yet we are not broken. That there are some who bring me down, and yet they are my friends. That there are some who make my heart sing, and yet we are not friends. Why? And that through and through it is understood, ubiquitously and through the ages, that friendship is golden, and at that, it is the most solid of goldens.
FRIENDSHIP features work by friends of Ariel Abrahams, as well as work by their friends. FRIENDSHIP will also host two sleepovers, one at the start of the show (January 22nd) and one at the closing (January 26th). These sleepovers will feature performances, games, television watching, cooking, and sleeping. Please email (arielabrahams@gmail.com) for details on how to attend.
Ariel Abrahams was born in New York in 1988 and graduated from New York University in 2010. His work has been performed in venues and universities worldwide including the Embros Theater in Athens, Greece, Front Space in Kansas City, Princeton University, Night Kitchen in Philadelphia and numerous venues in New York City. He writes poetry and opera in email, inky pen drawings, .zip files, audio, sleepovers, long walks, shabbat dinners, and records under the name lonohomo. He is fascinated by religion, group dynamics, and imagination. Ariel is currently a resident at Flux Factory in Queens, New York, and is the Director of Public Engagement for the theater group Odyssey Works.
With the growth of mass communication channels, media wars have become a strong and powerful machine of creating, conducting and escalating conflicts between countries, nations and communities. In the current political agenda, when global relations between main players on the world’s political arena are again being reconsidered, the power of media in forming and broadcasting ideologically charged discourse becomes especially obvious and disturbing. Since television the Internet have become easily accessible and embraced by the masses, they have influenced our world views and fed us with selectively constructed news in order to shape our thinking and prevent us from critical analysis of the information we are being delivered.
TOK’s new exhibition ‘Propaganda News Machine’ will explore the notion of propaganda, the news construction and designs of multiple realities in the media today. The show attempts to present, analyze and unveil some of the strategies that governments use in order to create specific images/views of political and social events and influence audience’s opinions when it comes to broadcasting cases in the global political arena.
TOK curators Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits analyze the media discourse related to the conflict between Russia and the U.S. during the Cold War, as well as the new wave of opposition between the U.S. and Russia today. TOK questions if artistic practice can create an alternative media discourse free of propaganda and whether curators and artists can be independent cultural diplomats. Can art influence politics and oppose global political games?
Invited artists and researchers will analyze strategies and mechanisms of the media and mass culture realm in the era of mass television development of the Cold War era and determine whether some are still used today. Through printed series of postcards and stamps Emily Newman looks at the figure of the spy in American mass culture during the time of the Cold War and in contemporary films and TV series. In his series of posters with quotes of American politicians Yevgeniy Fiks investigates espionage concepts in the US mass culture and relations between communism and homosexuality used in the United States’ propaganda in the 50’s-60’s. Fiks draws a historical parallel to the antigay law in Russia and how it is presented today in the U.S. media. Media researcher and activist Stephen Duncombe provides theoretical insight on the notion of ‘propaganda’ throughout history, as well as quotes of famous speakers and politicians. American filmmaker Mark Boswell will create a new work combined of short Soviet didactic films screened in movie theaters as propaganda.
‘Propaganda News Machine’ is a result of the research that TOK curators have conducted over their 3 month residency at Flux Factory. The exhibition includes documentation of the public events that TOK organized at Flux Factory prior to the exhibition in December 2015 and January 2016 to challenge a critical discourse and accumulate knowledge around the theme of propaganda and media realities it creates. The installation will comprise some archival materials found by exhibition curators in New York City Public Library and some readymade items (books, TV sets, etc.) that will be connected with art works by the invited artists.
‘Propaganda News Machine’ is supported by Trust for Mutual Understanding and Flux Factory.
Please RSVP for an individual tour with exhibition curators: tok.press@gmail.com
Dinner at 8 pm. Presentations begin at 9:15 pm.
The event is free, but please do bring something (edible) to share!
‘Re-‘ curator Naiyi Wang and participating artist/ Flux resident Yi Zhou will dive into the inspiration behind the show (in Flux’s gallery January 9-14). The exhibition was partly inspired by a conversation with Yi at Flux, a space for artists that is filled with “re” purposed objects. Flux residents Seth Larson and Abby Entsminger will host a special performance in the gallery.
Facilitated by Ayden LeRoux, SexEd is a month-long series of workshops to be held at Flux Factory that will give participants an opportunity to talk about sexuality safely, practice and become more comfortable with open communication, and to discuss theory about sexuality. Each workshop will last approximately 2 hours and be held on Sunday evenings from 5-7 pm. Anyone is welcome to attend and the class will be free (with a suggested $5 donation). It is strongly encouraged but not required that people attend all four workshops in order to create a cohesive atmosphere.
Week 1: Communicating Desire
Learning how to create safe spaces for discussion (asking for and outlining certain communication practices)
Authentic expressions of desire, talking without fear (or acknowledging fear when it is there)
Alternative sexual practices
Invitations and fantasy
Week 2: Shaping Relationships
Getting out of default formations
Boundaries and consent
Jargon: Open relationships, polyamory, partnered nonmonogamy, solo non-monagamy and other shapes of relationship (jargon)
Sexlessness: Asexuality and celibacy
The notion of virginity
Week 3: Sex and Community
Privacy vs. Openness
Who do you sleep with? Deciding what feels appropriate for you and for the group you live with (at work, at home, at school)
How do you talk about sex and with whom?
Male dominance being demonized
Gender equality in partnerships and living spaces
Intimacy and Affection
Week 4: Intersections of Art and Sex (with guest speaker Katy McCarthy, from Flirtmoji)
Why is it important to be discussing sex in an art space?
Depicting sex inclusively
Art as a way to communicate about sex
Art as a place of sexual expression
INTENTIONS OF THE CLASS:
to practice open communication (with friends, lovers, partners)
to practice expressing ourselves sexually, positively (physically and verbally)
to practice receiving others sexual expressions and desires (whether or not one reciprocates)
to talk about sexuality and community, and the language of such
GROUND RULES:
This is a safe and confidential space. We encourage you to extend the discussions we have here outside this space with those here and those that aren’t here, but please if you repeat what we talk about here, do so with anonymity.
This is an open space that is here to receive you as you are. We won’t judge you and we ask that you don’t judge others.
This is a sex positive space. We are all for pleasure, health and safety. Please ask for what you need, state what you want, and feel empowered to voice if something makes you uncomfortable.
Artists, creative practitioners, researchers, and educators are invited to submit proposals for objects, experiences, workshops, performances, or actions that repurpose debt in its broadest interpretation. Debt might be the fundamental basis of human relations, but today it is also tricky business. Individuals shun it, but organizations seek to go into debt in order to grow. Debt seems to drive the economy yet appears abstracted to absurdity. Most people in the US share debt, yet debt is borne out privately. How do we put our finger on the debt, which is everywhere powerful and nowhere seen?
Debt Positive beckons artists and alchemists to re-envision debt, sublimate it, or provide entrance points and possibilities for eliminating wasteful implementations of debt. The national debt, student debt, climate debt, nutritional (or microbial) debt, and even the everyday debts arising out of daily lived experience are all fair game for transformation and repurposing.
Debt Positive is one of Flux Factory’s 2016 major exhibitions and will be co-curated by Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich.
__________________________________
Submission deadline: Tuesday March 1st, 11:59 pm
Notification of acceptance: Tuesday March 15th
Debt Positive exhibition and workshops: June 3rd – 24th
Political Conflicts: Media Strategies and Construction of Multiple Realities
America vs Russia
‘House of Cards'(Netflix), 3 episode, film still, 2015 President Petrov greets members of Pussy Riot together with U.S. president Frank Underwood and his wife at the White House
Join us for TOK‘s second roundtable discussion in Flux Factory’s kitchen. It will be a semi-formal talk amongst speakers and attendees on TOK’s research of the role and strategies of media within global political conflicts, starting from the era of the Cold War till nowadays.
The conversation will revolve around the processes of news construction and design in the media today. Also, how audiences’ opinions are being formed and shaped by ideologically charged media information and what strategies governments use in order to create a certain image/view of a political or social event for viewers. Are there alternative sources of information? What are ways to stimulate a critical approach amongst viewers to mainstream media sources when we are presented with very convincing (but misleading) information? The talk will gather journalists, filmmakers and scriptwriters interested in the Cold War era, covering the political processes of today.
Speakers will also discuss their own artistic practices and professions. Inspired by the ‘House of Cards’ Netflix TV series, TOK will analyze its portrayal of the character President Petrov (based on President Vladimir Putin).
Featured speakers include:
Stephen Duncombe is Professor of Media and Culture at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Department of Media, Culture and Communications at the Steinhardt School of New York University. He is currently co-founder and co-director of the Center for Artistic Activism, a research and training institute that helps activists to think more like artists and artists to think more like activists.
Mark Boswell, an artist and filmmaker whose been interested in the USSR/Russia and USA relations through his practice. His films USSA: Secret Manual of the Soviet Politburger (2001), Agent Orange (2002) and upcoming Nova Conspiracy are based on stereotypes, collective memories and archival materials on Russia and the US in times of the Cold War which he bridges with contemporary political situation.
Olga Kopenkina is a Belarus-born, New York-based independent curator and art critic. Her exhibitions and projects includeLenin Icebreaker Revisited, the NY Austrian Cultural Forum, 2015; Sound of Silence: Art during Dictatorship, EFA Project Space, NY, 2012; Reading Lenin with Corporations (2008-); Russia: Significant Other, Anna Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2006, Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions at the First Moscow Biennale, Moscow, 2005. Kopenkina contributed to such publications as Art Journal, Moscow Art Magazine, ArtMargins, Manifesta Journal, Modern Painters, Afterimage, and others. She is an adjunct professor at New York University, Steinhardt School for Arts and Art Professions, Department of Media, Culture and Communication.
David Klion is an opinion editor at Al Jazeera America who has studied and worked in Russia and writes about Russian politics and international affairs. He previously worked as an editor at World Politics Review. He holds a master’s degree in Soviet history from the University of Chicago.
January 9th-14th, 2016 Open Hours: 12 – 6 pm (Mon – Sun)
Opening Reception: Saturday January 9th, 6 pm
Artists have always employed the “re-“, as in “rearrange,” “reselect,” “restructure,” “represent,” “reproduce,” and “rectify.” The tradition of “re-” in the age of mechanical reproduction can be traced back to the beginning of the last century, when Dadaists used collages, photomontages and assemblages to express their views on modern life. In the 1960s, Marcel Duchamp repurposed ordinary objects and turned them into art with his series of readymades. From there, appropriation art emerged and starting in the early 1990s, an increasing number of artists developed their own style by reselecting, reproducing, and restructuring daily objects.
In 2005, German art critic and philosopher Brois Grioys wrote in his article “Multiple Authorship”, that the definition of art today lies somewhere in between the practices of “creation” and “selection”. Daily objects are selected by an artist, according to a process and criteria that is purely private, individual-minded, and subjective. Then, they restored, transferred to other media, and rearranged, installed, and presented in new context or narrative. The reality, according to “Multiple Authorship,” is that the identity of the artist is transformed from “producer” to “assembler.”
The Re- exhibition was partly inspired by a conversation with artist Yi Zhou at Flux Factory, a space for artists that is filled with “re” objects. For example, a screwdriver functions as a faucet handle in the kitchen, while a helmet, safety goggles and a mask combine to become a gala dinner light.
Another part of the foundation for the exhibition emerged from the rise of cross-disciplinary collaboration. The artists in Re- come from a wide variety of backgrounds (fine arts, contemporary art, photography, cinema, architecture, design, amateur practices, etc.), whose practices mix forms and genres without concern for artistic conventions. Artists participating in the exhibition clearly show interest in the concept of Re-, or their creations are in line with the purpose and creative methods of Re-. They work independently, but the final outcome will transform Flux Factory into a vibrant interactive space of installations.
To commence a three month residency at Flux Factory, TOK curators Maria Veits and Anna Bitkina will host a roundtable discussion in Flux Factory’s kitchen. All are invited to see presentations, and join in on an informal discussion. This series of discussions will culminate in a February 2016 exhibition in Flux’s gallery.
The conversation will focus on the role of the media in forming and broadcasting ideologically charged discourses in the global political and informational context. During TOK’s research at Flux, they will take a close look at the strategies of constructing information that were designed in the era of mass television development and reflection of the Cold War in the media and will see whether some of them are still used today.
We’ll start the conversation with presentations from artist Emily Newman and Yengeniy Fiks, and will be joined by several who work on related subjects, including Eli Dvorkin and Meesha Chang.
U.S. artist Emily Newman recently lived in St. Petersburg to conduct several projects locally including the one about Soviet heroism and heroic events of Soviet history. Emily’s show in connection to this project will open at Klaus gallery in NYC on Dec 11.
Yengeniy Fiks is a Russian artist currently based in NYC. His work is inspired by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which led him to the realization of the necessity to reexamine the Soviet experience in the context of the history of the Left, including that of the international Communist movement. His work is a reaction to the collective amnesia within the post-Soviet space over the last decade, on the one hand, and the repression of the histories of the American Left in the US, on the other.
Eli Dvorkin is a staff editor for an international relations think tank and a co-director of the Silent Barn arts collective in Bushwick, Brooklyn. He worked as an editor at Kickstarter (NYC), Flavorpill (NYC), and the Hürriyet Daily News (Istanbul), cooked at Mile End (Brooklyn), and took the Sketchbook Project on two nationwide tours. He was born in Toronto and has lived in NYC since 2004.
Meesha Chang is finishing her role as the global galleries director managing the network of Erarta Global Galleries in New York, Zürich, Hong Kong and London from 2012-2015. Erarta is the largest project of its kind with museum headquarters in St Petersburg it also includes Design, a Fund and international art galleries showing only contemporary Russian artists. Meesha represented Erarta for Art Paris 2013 and also the Venice Biennale 2013.
Creative Association of Curators TOK is a curatorial duo founded by Anna Bitkina and Maria Veits in 2010 as a platform for conducting interdisciplinary projects in the fields of contemporary art and design and social sciences. Today TOK is an interactive intellectual platform for collaborations of curators, artists, researchers, designers, sociologists, anthropologists and other professionals in the sphere of art and culture from Russia and other countries. The main goal of TOK is to elaborate and realize projects that are based on the research of cultural processes in contemporary society. One of our main principles is the combination of theory and practice and a cross-disciplinary approach.
A special thank you to the Trust for Mutual Understanding for making these conversations, residencies and exhibitions possible! Banner photograph taken from The Crocodile, a Soviet satirical publication.
UPDATE 2/19/2016: We are happy to announce that we’ve currently raised $1100 to repair our broken window, although we are still seeking donations for upgrades. An immense thank you to our supporters! Meanwhile, the vandal has been arrested and we are happy to feel more safe and secure moving forward.
Flux Factory needs your help to replace our front window. On Saturday February 13th, a vandal threw a wrench through the large glass pane for no clear reason. Unfortunately, that coldest day of the winter left our artists-in-residence without proper protection from the elements, not to mention ill at ease. While we’re investigating with the police and checking in with our insurance company, we can’t keep our facade boarded up for much longer.
When Flux gets knocked down, we get back up stronger! Help us turn this setback into a step forward. We’re seeking tax-deductible donations to replace (and hopefully improve) the large window that lets Flux Factory greet the world.
Please consider supporting Flux through the below Paypal button, or donate an amount of your choosing. If you’re unable to donate now, or want to get more deeply involved, consider participating in our Flux-a-Thon fundraiser on May 7, or volunteering to assist with our various building improvements (email nat@fluxfactory.org for more).
If our supporters provide $800, Flux can replace our pane with sturdy safety glass. If our supporters provide $4000, Flux can retrofit our old-fashioned windows with double-pane glass to keep us warm, and keep Con Ed bills lower.
Click here to lend a hand with $50 Click here to create a window of opportunity with $100 Click here to join a higher pane with $500
To be frank, ever since we signed our lease extension through 2021, we’ve been warily eyeing our drafty loft-style windows which could be updated to improve insulation and lower heat costs. If we can raise the extra money in the next week, artists for the next 5 years will be served through lower cost and better accommodations. We’re already well underway with all kinds of improvements and amenities to make the next 5 years great, a notable part of which is supported by the generous Hyde & Watson foundation. Thank you for supporting of our mission to provide affordable, quality space for emerging artists in an NYC that’s as tough as it is inspiring. Please do reach out to our director Nat at nat@fluxfactory.org if you’ve got any feedback.
In March 2016, Flux Factory will serve as a work and rehearsal space to create, perform, and install works in 3 separate Chinatown bus trips to 3 cities in the North Eastern U.S.
During each weekend in March 2016, a bus will leave NYC to venture to a new city and back. Artists are invited to create works to be presented specifically on the bus while en route traveling to their respective destinations. The audience will become a mixture of those who have knowingly signed up for the Fung Wah Biennial and those who are simply traveling by bus (i.e. innocent bystanders).
In each city we will partner with local artist-run spaces for lectures and tours to get to know better our neighboring city centers and their creative output. Each trip will be co-organized by Matthias Borello, Will Owen, or Sally Szwed.
The last week of the month will culminate in an exhibition held in the Flux Factory gallery, showing both documentation and replication of works from the month’s travels.
The impetus for this exhibition is three-fold:
-The possible, impending migration of many art spaces in New York City due to increasing cost of living
-The increase of global migration and asylum-seeking due to shifting climate / armed conflicts / globalized economies
-The incredible network of buses between Chinatowns in the Northeastern U.S. and beyond and honoring the closure of the original company, Fung Wah.
Additional events will occur at the MET Museum of Art’s MediaLab (info forthcoming).
We are interested in performance, social practice, lecture, food, sound, new media, innovative technology, objects, and video art. All media and concepts are encouraged to apply, however we are especially interested in work that explores migration, transitions, empathy of strangers, and exploration based sciences.
GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION
Submit as one or multiple PDFs- whichever you prefer!
You may apply as an individual or a group
You MUST be available each weekend in March, 2016
Please email your submissions in PDF format to FungWah@fluxfactory.org and include:
A description of your proposed project for Fung Wah Biennial, no more than 500 words
CV
Artist statement or bio (no more than 200 words)
Up to 10 examples of your work: images submitted as a single PDF or no more than 3 videos submitted as public links
Image List, including brief descriptions (max 50 words per work) submitted as a single PDF (preferably included in the 10 examples of work PDF)
What is your wildest transportation story? (No word limit, attached as part of PDF)
Thursday December 10th Dinner at 8 pm. Presentations begin at 9:30 pm.
The event is free, but please do bring something (edible) to share!
This month we’ve invited artists who are featured in Flux Factory’s last major exhibition of 2015, Test Patterns. Claire Corey will discuss her digital compositions created by combining painting, photography and printing techniques. Noémie Jennifer will explain her approach to image-making and how it informs her current xerox printer installation, This is Not a Test. Cha Tori will describe the color-mixing process he uses in his interactive light installation and will share a short story he wrote to accompany the piece. PARTYSHARD will play field recordings interspersed with spoken word elements to elucidate the collective’s piece, Precariousness of Feeling Anything.
Dinner will be lovingly designed by Fluxer Sarah Greenbaum and MC’d by Test Patterns curators Maddie Hewitt and Roopa Vasudevan.
Please join us for the final Flux Thursday of 2015, and bring something edible to celebrate!
Gallery Open Hours:
December 9th-11th & 16th-18th
12-5 pm
Test Patternsis a group exhibition that examines the ways in which we interact with technological standards. Technological standards are visual, auditory, and mathematical references usually held by groups of people to define a physical measurement. The works in Test Patterns offer an affectionate exploration of individual and collective agency claimed over technology, while exposing the limitations inherent in “universal” calibration techniques.
From color bars and tones to Pictures of Facial Affect (Ekman & Friesen 1976), theartists of Test Patterns have created their own patterns and standards–and have, in some cases, used pre-existing ones–as raw material to interpret, process, and generate entirely new artworks. This exhibit features work from seventeen artists who respond to technical standards using sculpture, drawing, video, sound art, performance, computation, and other media.
Opening Reception: Friday November 20th, 6-9pm. Artist presentations at 7pm.
Pivot is an international, multi-venue group art exhibition exploring processes of consuming and subsuming through multimedia, sculpture, sound, and research lecture.
The show features work from artists based in Philadelphia, Copenhagen, Denmark, San Pedro, New York and Boston.
Featured artists include:
Nadia Botello (Philadelphia, PA) installs a large, interactive sound installation inspired by how sound passes through bodies of water.
Karl Sandegård (Copenhagen, Denmark) shows multiple sculptural works that relate to lung capacity and making tangible what is normally invisible.
Misha Rabinovich & Caitlin Foley (Boston, MA / San Pedro, CA.) will be presenting new work based on their research with OpenBiome, a microbiota development lab in Boston.
On November 6th a show with the same theme and name will open in Philadelphia at Little Berlin Gallery. The two shows will be mirror images of each other, but with slight variations, like concave and convex mirrors.
Additionally, November 21st at 11 am there will be a performance and lecture series on a chinatown bus running from New York to Philadelphia and back to New York the same evening at 6 pm. Beverage service, snacks and a light dinner is included. RSVP for this bus trip will be live October 15th, 2015 on LittleBerlin.org/pivot-bus-trip
The Queens Action Council (QuAC) is hosting its 3rd annual Fall Food Justice Potluck at the Flux Factory. Along with an inspired communal meal, we will premiere three locally shot and produced short food justice films, featuring several members of our Queens community and produced by QuAC’s own, Jonathan Argudo (and his LIC based film company, Dangerworks). Local farmers, CSA and food pantry workers, documentarians, and food activist will be in dialogue over dinner, join us and bring your potluck A-game!
Please email Tatiana Orlov at torlov@cityharvest.org to RSVP. If you can, please let us know what dish you can bring so we can plan the rest of dinner accordingly! We look forward to sharing dinner with you!
Future site of the Windmill Community Garden, right across the street from Flux, where we’ll host public programs next year.
Flux is a slice of old-school NYC. Like the 1960s’ “Flux Houses” in downtown Manhattan, our multidisciplinary family is prolific, socially engaged and scrappy. Our nearly 50 artists-in-residence of 2015 produced just as many public events this year including group exhibitions, concerts, potlucks, panels, and the unclassifiable. We commissioned dozens of new artworks (just Strobe Network itself included over 75 video artists), and we provided $30,000 for artistic work, in addition to providing the low-cost facilities and support that premise creativity. Even before crunching all these numbers, we knew that Flux does more with less, and it’s all because we are a community that cares deeply about the singular civic role Flux performs.
Groups like Flux are an endangered species in today’s NYC, and the truth is that we’ve narrowly avoided displacement. The day before Thanksgiving, Flux Factory signed a 5 year lease extension to remain in the Alfred Mainzer Greeting Card Factory. We’re also very grateful to the Hyde & Watson Foundation for awarding us $9,000 to help patch up our building for coming years. We love LIC and we’re thrilled to serve our neighborhood longterm. This stability was hard-won and our real work toward permanent sustainability is just beginning. We are setting a fundraising goal of $25,000 by 2017, and now is your first chance to join a revamped Friends of Flux program we’ll soon roll out in full force. We aim to take Flux to a higher level, and we need your support to get there.
Fully tax-deductible support on the levels of $250, $500 or $1000 will make you a pilot Friends of Flux member, with overflowing thankfulness, perks & opportunities such as curator tours, studio visits, friends-only gifts and more. Or donate any fully tax-deductible amount you like.
We’re pleased to announce that come Spring, we’ll partner in creating the Windmill Community Garden right across the street. We can’t wait to host workshops, performances and cook-outs in a green space we’ll share with the Dutch Kills Civic Association, Growing Up Green Charter School, Newcomers High School & more neighbors.
In March, we’ll host the Fung Wah Biennial, a group exhibition taking place on Chinatown buses roving around DIY spaces in nearby cities. This is just the first of four annual projects in which Flux will commission a group of artists to create new works on a theme – as always, our collectivist selection process uses an open call that includes artists both local and international, both emerging and established.
Even before we board those Chinatown buses, we’ll host new exhibitions and events produced by artists-in-residents Yi Zhou, Ariel Abrahams, Anna Bitkina & Maria Veits, Abigail Entsminger & Seth Larson, Gil Lopez, Ayden Grout, Tommy Nguyen, and Wieteke Heldens. Meanwhile, Test Patterns co-curator Maddie Hewitt is headed to Claremont, France as part of a new partnership with Artistes En Residence — we’re building on Flux’s recent trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, to become an organization that routinely sends our artists out to the world. We do not sleep much, to say the least! Just last week, our current Residents met to select 20 new artists to interview among those who applied for 2016 residencies – we’re immensely excited to meet a group of folks diverse in creative practice and international in background, while commonly sharing a commitment to collectivism.
Roopa Vasudevan just wrapped up a Flux residency, during which she curated 3 exhibitions and created numerous artworks. Looking forward to her next Flux stint in Fall 2016!
On a more personal note — when I began working at Flux mid-2014, I knew I’d entered a deeply meaningful life course. My love for Flux is only getting stronger as I’ve sounded the magnitude of what we do and can grow to achieve. Just one wonderful friend I’ve made this year is Roopa Vasudevan — in her 3 month residency, she co-curated Hands Up, Test Patterns and our Flux-Artist-In-Residence group show, created many new artworks and even organized our secret santa! Roopa shared a note with me: “Flux has been such a valuable place to me in the last couple of years. I really believe that I have met some of the best people in the world there, and have been incredibly fulfilled and productive throughout the duration of both my residencies. Curating the FAIR show this past Fall was such a treat because it gave me the chance to work with flux artists who I have known and admired from (quite literally) the first day I arrived, and I was so proud of the amazing and unique work that this crazy and talented group put together. Flux Factory holds an incredibly special place in my heart, and I’m looking forward to being just as involved in the future.”
Class Description
