Across New York City, arts organizations have needed to tighten their budgets, reduce staff and cutback on programs or events. In fact, 80 percent of arts groups surveyed by the Alliance for the Arts, a New York-based research and advocacy organization, said they were trimming down their budgets, and more than half were reducing staff and postponing or cancelling events in 2009.

Flux Factory, a non-profit cultural organization in Long Island City, has had to scale back its projects and stop paying staff. But it has managed to continue providing artists with a place to create and display their work, despite cuts in funding.

It has coped thanks to a sense of community among artists in Long Island City who must work together in order for their art to survive.

Last summer, Flux moved in to an old 8,000-square-foot, three-story greeting card factory, transforming it into a bastion for the arts in which performers, painters and musicians can collaborate, support each other and weather the financial crisis. Flux runs a residency program for artists, commissions new collaborative works and is invited by host institutions to do projects.

But Flux, like most other cultural organizations in the city, has by no means been insulated from the economic downturn. It has seen most of its private donations dry up. It was promised $10,000 in state funding but then the state never paid. Its operating budget is down by about $60,000 compared to previous years.

Artists are traditionally among the first to be affected by economic slumps. The city’s unemployment rate hit 10.3 percent in October. Artists were unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers in 2008, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Many outside of Flux have lost their work spaces and have had to get day jobs to pay the bills. Artwork sales are also down.

“Sales have been slow,” said Heather Jones, a multimedia artist and Flux Factory resident artist. “Galleries have been extending their shows or choosing to close during the down season. Non-saleable, installation-based art has taken the biggest hit. Galleries are a lot less willing to invest thousands of dollars on art that’s experimental.”

For artists, finding affordable studio space is often very difficult. Flux rents 14 studio spaces to artists for about $450 to $750 per month – below market rates but slightly up since previous years – and its main gallery space for around $1,000 per night.

“I work for an artist who had a large free studio in Chelsea, and then the building was re-appropriated for smaller, expensive studios and we couldn’t afford to stay,” said Jones. “A lot of galleries in that neighborhood were shutting their doors. A lot of free spaces were taken away because people could no longer afford to give away studios.”

How Flux ended up at the greeting card factory in Long Island City is a story similar to that described by Jones.

Flux Factory was launched in 1994 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The tenants were evicted in 2001 when Williamsburg became the trendy place to be and rents soared. In 2002, Flux moved to Long Island City.

Flux was evicted again in 2008 when their building was taken over by the MTA through eminent domain. Optimists Chen Tamir and Jean Barberis, the directors, saw this as an opportunity for growth.

“You make your opportunities,” said Barberis.

Flux took the money it got from the MTA and moved. Volunteers have donated countless hours of their time fixing up the factory on 39-31 29th St. With their help it has been turned into one of Long Island City’s most talked about art institutions.

Since 2002, Flux has showcased more than 500 artists from the U.S. and around the world, according to Barberis.

“Flux is in a really wonderful position where we’ve been around for so long and we’ve created this amazing community, which is really what we’re all about,” Tamir explained. “We can rely on that community, or we’re hoping that we can rely on that community, to support us.”

But despite the duo’s sanguinity, continuing to operate during an economic downturn has not been easy.

Flux can no longer afford to pay staff and artists, or take on as ambitious projects. It used to pay artists when it commissioned works but now even has a hard time affording materials.

The collective was able to fix up the old factory with donated supplies and labor. But the place still needs major renovations such as installing a second bathroom and, even more pressing for the winter months ahead, fixing the heating system.

Flux holds free weekly and monthly events, but attendees are encouraged to leave a donation.

Tamir and Barberis are trying a new approach to raise funds this month. On Dec. 10, Flux is having a fundraising night with performances and music sponsored by local stores and caterers such as Vine Wine, Blink’s Deli and Heritage Foods, and Campari, the alcoholic aperitif. Flux will be selling box sets of limited edition works by eleven artists including well-known Andrea Dezsö, Swoon and Ward Shelley. Flux Factory plans on selling the art online afterward and is setting up a Kickstarter webpage – an innovative funding platform for artists or pretty much anyone with an idea and too few dollars to make it happen.

The event is the first of its kind at Flux, and demonstrates how artists are donating work and time to help raise money for the collective.

The art scene in Long Island City has been able to maintain itself through cooperation, volunteerism and innovation, said Tamir. She believes that overall things are beginning to improve, and hopes Flux will be able to keep putting on new shows for New Yorkers to enjoy.

In the meantime, artists such as Heather Jones continue producing art thanks to their resourcefulness, determination and places like Flux.

“Affordable studio spaces are very difficult to find and here you have studio space, you have common space, you have a gallery space, support to work on your ideas, extra hands, etcetera,” said Jones. “It’s really incredible.”

Read the original article here.

This episode features Flux’s very own Chen Tamir and Jean Barberis!

http://www.heritageradionetwork.com/episodes/339-Eat-To-The-Beat

Arctic Book Club: Artists Respond to An African in Greenland

By Nancy Campbell

This autumn, Flux Factory and EFA Project Space presented Arctic Book Club in Manhattan. Curated by Jean Barberis and Michelle Levy, the exhibition was the result of an epic several-month long journey by a group of artists responding to Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s book, An African in Greenland.

An African in Greenland recounts the author’s pilgrimage from his native Togo to Greenland. Fascinated with the distant Arctic, Kpomassie embarked on a ten-year journey across Africa and Europe, working as a translator along the way, and eventually saving enough money to complete his odyssey.
In the Spring of 2009, Flux Factory and EFA assembled a cross-disciplinary group of artists to respond to Kpomassie’s book. Those selected were Amber Cortes, Jenelle Covino, The Green and Bold Cooperative, Katerina Lanfranco, Fabienne Lasserre, Valerie Piraino, Greg Pond, Annie Reichert, Julian Rogers, Ranbir Sidhu and Christopher Ulivo. They met regularly as a book club, and upon completion of the book, they all created new work inspired by Kpomassie’s narrative.

Some artists responded very closely to the text. Members of The Green & Bold Cooperative (McDavid Moore, Matthew Gribbon, Steven Thompson) produced a hand-written transcription of the original French text L’Africain Du Groenland. The work was conducted live within a complex installation comprising four work benches protruding from what appeared to be a large stack of boulders. In Nomadic Work Desk w/ Approximate Lodestone (Exhibition Format) the artists took their cue from the Inuit hospitality demonstrated in the book, and broke off from their calligraphic labour to engage gallery visitors in conversation and offer coffee in a service modeled on the “Kaffenik” of the Greenlanders.

Other artists used the opportunity to explore the Arctic landscape. Katerina Lanfranco’s work reflects the extreme scales adopted by the elements, from the microscopic and elusive snow flake to the massive iceberg. Glacial Specimens (flame worked glass with clay and acrylic paint) consists of several small mixed media glass sculptures which capture the ephemeral nature of snow and ice crystals.

Midnight Sun, (hand-cut paper, 80 inches high) is a large paper-cut sculpture of an isolated iceberg seen in silhouette. A complex web of positive and negative spaces and shapes imply the angular ice forms and the contrast of dark and light are symbolic of the region’s Polar Night (total darkness) and Midnight Sun (total light). The form, like Greenland itself, drifts alone in the ocean and exists partially above and below water.

Christopher Ulivo designed a theatrical tribute to the story through a shadow puppet theatre. Rather than attempting to imitate Kpomassie’s style as storyteller, or engage in critical commentary, Ulivo chose to pay homage to the text by reworking it as a script for a shadow puppet show. As Ulivo developed his project, he realised that the puppet show was dramatically effective, not only because it conveyed the story directly, but also because its absolute dependence on the contrast between light and the absence of light is in direct correlation to Greenland’s black winters and endless summers. The naive, playful characteristic of the medium was also important to the artist: “There are repeated references in the book to ways in which the Inuit entertain each other in so barren a place. Tété’s vivid descriptions of dances, birthday parties and Christmas festivities all have the feeling of homespun craftiness and companionship. I hope our show can channel some of the spirit of Inuit mirth.”

Fabienne Lasserre created an installation made of human hair and plaster (Untitled). Long, dark hair hung down the gallery wall, overflowing onto the floor. The hair was covered in a thin layer of white poured plaster. Through the fluid texture of the plaster the disorderly and fibrous texture of the hair was visible; there were stark contrasts between the dark hair and the white plaster, between the shagginess of the hair and the smoothness of the plaster. Formalism and process, idealism and goofiness, purity and corruption exist in mutual agitation. The work drew inspiration from a similar tension in Kpomassie’s account of Greenland, which displays a contrast between the whiteness, the stillness and the beauty of the landscape and the dirty, visceral lifestyle of its inhabitants. Kpomassie constantly shifts from descriptions of faeces, guts, and blubber, to quasi-spiritual encounters with the environment.

Annie Reichert’s contribution to the Arctic Book Club was Souvenir Desk, an installation comprising a wooden desk in which the drawers were filled with mementos of Kpomassie’s journey. The desk was a found object that had been painted over several times by its previous owner. The artist sanded down the negative space around succeeding layers of grey, blue and white in order to reveal a topographic map of Greenland. The compact piece of furniture, comparable to one found in the cabin of a ship, was evocative of the physical space where an explorer would record his travel log. The desk also functioned as a metaphor for the writer’s mental space as he reconstructs his journey through memory and reflection.

Arctic Book Club: Artists Respond to An African in Greenland

Wednesdays-Saturdays. Continues through Oct. 24 2009
212-563-5855

Fifteen years old this year, Flux Factory is a nonprofit organization devoted to artist growth and general wackiness. Artwork is available year-round at fluxfactory.org, and the annual art auction, for which 125 artists submit one or two pieces for bidding, is scheduled to take place in February.

In the late 1950s, a West African boy reads a book about Greenland.  He dreams to someday travel there.  And he does.  Then, in the late 70s, he writes a book about his unique ten-year journey from his native Togo to Greenland.  The book goes on to win awards, including being one of The New York Times’ Notable Books of the year in 1983.

In 2009, a group of New York artists called the Arctic Book Club meet regularly for seven months to explore and discuss the book.  They then are asked to create art in response, and this Thursday, September 17, the exhibition opens.

The man we are talking about is Tété Michel Kpomassie, and the book, An African in Greenland.  And on September 23, the Arctic Book Club will welcome Tété Michel Kpomassie in a public dialogue about his reaction to their reaction arts exhibition.

You all still with me?

If you are as delighted and intrigued by this story as I am, here’s what we do.  Let’s read the book and visit the exhibition before October 24 (when it closes).  If you’re feeling really ambitious, maybe you will create your own Arctic Book Club Deux.  Or maybe you will go to the discussion on Sept. 23 and create your own reactionary song about Tété’s reaction to the exhibition that was in reaction to the book, or maybe not.  Regardless, the opening is FREE and makes for great blind date material!

Arctic Book Club
sponsored by EFA Project Space and Flux Factory
Thursday, September 17
323 West 39th Street, 2^nd Floor (between 8^th and 9^th Aves) [Manhattan]
6-8vpm Opening; $FREE
Continues through October 24

Public Discussion with Tété Michel Kpomassie
September 23
6:30 pm

From Broke-Ass Stuart’s Goddamn Website. Read the original here.

From Flavorpill.com:

To most ears, the police siren is simply a cacophonous necessity. But Mexico-born musician Lazaro Valiente – better described as a purveyor of funky, found sounds – appropriates that wail and other cop-car noises for an amusing, chaotic, and unusual experiment in composition. For example, in Police Car Quartet – the first of nine public happenings with similarly pithy titles like muchos Mexican barrel organs and visual concerts at red lights - Valiente turns variously pitched slides and blips from four cars into a symphonic siren-ade. Of course, the question remains: how did he sweet-talk the authorities? Tonight, the artist speaks, performs, and doles out some artworks.

- Jason Jude Chan

Read the original article here.

LIKE EVERY JEW worth his weight in gefilte fish and matzo balls, I put my full blind faith behind Moses.

“You have my personal fun guarantee,” proclaims the bearded Moses Gates, that is. The miracle maker is a licensed tour guide, a fearless investigator of sewers and subway tunnels, a climber of bridges, an urban explorer of the rusty and the forgotten. His municipal mania even extends to trying to walk every NYC census tract- 2,217 in total, including 783 in Brooklyn.

Moses knows New York. And today, a sticky, humid Saturday – are there other kinds come late July? – Moses shall share his city secrets on arts organization Flux Factory’s “Going Places, Doing Stuff” tour. Elementally, it’s an adult field trip, school bus included. About 40 thrill-seekers convene at Flux’s Long Island City headquarters, carrying water, snacks, whiskey and healthy curiosity. Itineraries are secret till departure, whereupon folks are whisked to, say, a crumbling Hudson River castle or Centralia, a Pennsylvania mining town devastated by a burning coal seam.

Flux’s voyages are so fun, you’ll kick yourself for missing the 9:30 a.m. departure.

“Hurry, hon!” I shout to my girlfriend, her eyes as lidded as Snoop Dogg’s on a smoky Friday night. She is not a creature to be denied caffeine.

“I am hurrying,” she says, pulling on a green tee. “Button your pants.” Barn door sealed, we boogie to the B48, then the B61 buses. Forty-five minutes later, the route, if I may utilize this word, terminates near an abortion clinic. “Can I rub your belly?” I ask my girlfriend, as we pass pro-lifers planted in lawn chairs.

They’re applying sunscreen as if it were a day at the beach. “Not funny,” she says, my wit falling as flat as days-old Diet Coke. “Maybe I should tell them we like our eggs scrambled, not fertilized,” I mumble, dreaming of my missing breakfast. With minutes to spare, we reach the vegetable-oil-powered bus – French fries faintly perfume the air – and squish in beside dreadlocked hippies, artists in patched pants and lesbians in love. Moses cues up a musical clue to our first stop: frenetic guitar riffs and rock, rock, Rockaway Beach.

“Watch out for the poison ivy,” Moses says, leading us through thick brush and poking branches to the Promised Land. It’s a rusty hatch, like the kind found on Lost, leading us to an underground nuclear-missile bunker. “It was New York’s last line of defense,” Moses says, pointing to a waterlogged launch platform that could kill commies with a fiery flourish. The nuclear apocalypse: so close to home! Back through the brush, back to the bus. “Listen up,” Moses says, playing a song with sitars.

“That’s Hindi!” someone shouts, the school bus bringing out everyone’s inner teacher’s pet. “Correct,” Moses says, as we steer toward Flushing’s Hindu Temple Society, North America’s largest such holy house.

Here, families and the devout make offerings to many-armed Ganesh statues and, like us, head downstairs to gorge at the underground Temple Canteen (45-57 Bowne St. betw. Holly & 45th Aves., Queens, 718- 460-8493).The fluorescent-lit mess hall welcomes all religious affiliations to tear into its crisp, paper-thin dosas- southern Indian crepes crammed with chutneys, curries and other meat-free marvels.

“It’s… all… vegetarian food!” my girlfriend says, happy as a kid on Halloween. Even sweeter? Nothing is more than $6. We overdose on squiggly idiappam rice noodles; savory, doughnut-like vadas swimming in yogurt; pastry-flaky potato samosas and two kinds of dosa: the fiery Hyderabadi, kicked up with green-chili chutney, and the four-alarm paneer. The buttery mess of spongy cottage cheese is such a tongue-scalder that I steal sips of my girlfriend’s cooling mango lassi. “Don’t drink it all,” she cautions, grabbing back her creamy concoction.

Full to bursting – and rubbing our bellies in a far more appropriate context – our gang waddles upstairs. I sneak to a bodega to buy a 24-ounce Bud Light Lime. It’s an artificially flavored abomination that, despite my avowed craft-beer love, I turn to during torpid summer afternoons. It’s my dirty little secret, like ordering General Tso’s chicken from bulletproof-window Chinese dive Ho Wong when I’m hungover. I sip my Lime (sleeved in a brown bag) while Moses reveals our next stop. He’s song-less, but his words remain music to my ears: “We’re going gambling at Belmont Park!” Belmont is a horse track, a classy alternative to the shabby Aqueduct. Kind of. Whereas the Aqueduct costs a buck, Belmont charges two. “And the track lets us bring in coolers of beer – which we have in back.”

The travelers roar with approval, before boning up on the differences between win, place and show. “Moses,” I tell my tour guide, grabbing a Tecate and entering Belmont to blow this column’s paycheck, “you have delivered on the fun.”

See the original article here.

Follow the link!

BY Pauline Pechin

Tuesday, July 21st 2009, 10:11 AM

NEW YORK CITY is home to cultural organizations in just about every medium. But the recession has forced local groups to find alternative solutions to stretch scarce resources.

One example is the Center for the Holographic Arts in Long Island City, the only program in the city geared toward emerging holographers.

After losing a $50,000 grant this year, the nonprofit group relocated its equipment and residency program to Ohio State University. It also moved its exhibition program to the Flux Factory, a Queens-based artists’ collective.

Flux Factory “is designed so that there’s enough room for everything to evolve,” said Martina Mrongovius, manager of the holographic arts program. “I think some interesting things are going to come out of [the collaboration].”

Chen Tamir, executive director of Flux Factory, said she has relied heavily on volunteers since the facility’s relocation to a warehouse in Dutch Kills. The organization was evicted in October from its previous space to make way for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s East Side Access project.

“Even though our programming grants were cut drastically, our greatest resource – our community – has grown,” Tamir said. “So many folks are now unemployed and looking to get involved in supportive communities.”

The Queens Museum of Art has reduced its programming and staff to help shoulder its $48 million expansion project. The museum recently launched its Adopt-A-Building program, which allows patrons to own “real estate” on the Panorama of New York City for $50 to $10,000 donations. In June, the museum also hosted its second annual “Non-Gala,” an online fund-raiser utilizing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

“I don’t want to sound partisan, but [it is] the Obama-style fund-raising, where you’re getting a lot of small donations from a lot of people adding up,” said Executive Director Tom Finkelpearl.

“Everyone has to be thinking that way because now you have to look at new paradigms for fund-raising.”

The SculptureCenter in Long Island City is talking to a benefactor to supplement its admissions fees.

Executive Director Mary Ceruti said revenue from the center’s two largest fund-raisers in the past year was down about 12% combined.

“The challenge will be finding ways to rethink the programming so that we can deliver on our mission – to foster experimental and innovative sculpture,” she said.

Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, executive director of the Queens Council on the Arts, said that despite the economic turbulence, artists by nature are accustomed to uncertainty, and are resilient.

“I think you will see some very innovative ways of surviving and actually succeeding that will come out of these diverse communities,” Krakauer said.

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/features/74835/new-places-in-nyc/2.html

PDF

NY Times – Urban Eye Weekend
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/urbaneye/index.html

PDF

The laws of physics state that bodies in motion come to rest only when an external force stops them. But Newton’s theory would have required tweaking had he met Jean Barberis, the affable 30-year-old curator of Queens gallery Flux Factory, who barely stops moving, even after roadblocks have been thrown into his path. Barberis is constantly working on the next exhibit for the gallery and aptly named art space – it changes addresses as often as one might change apartments. He also can’t stop creating curios and art exhibits for installations across the five boroughs. “I like working as a curator and I always want to do something with my hands,” says Barberis, who resides in Woodside, Queens. “Who wants to sit at a desk all day, when I can be building stuff?”

This curator-carpenter-art-installer was born in Aix-en-Provence, a small French town just outside Marseille. At the age of 18, Barberis had his first solo art show – an installation inspired by a series of photo collages – at a small nonprofit art gallery in the nearby town of Montpelier. “It was a small show, mostly friends and family. I realized that your main audience is your community. That’s where you start and that’s what you have to build from,” says Barberis.

Just four years later, Barberis followed his girlfriend at the time to New York City, where she happened to be subletting a room at the Flux Factory, a collective launched in 1994 and named for the ever-changing cast of occupants. Barberis was drawn to the space (which was then next to the East River in Williamsburg) and the eclectic mix of artists and designers better known for their weekly dinners and parties than for their art. But the challenge to having a home in NYC isn’t just finding it, it’s keeping it. The tenants of the Flux Factory were evicted in 2001 when Williamsburg became increasingly popular and rents started soaring.

“We had to redefine ourselves as an organization. It was a challenge to find a new space where we could be more ambitious. That takes up a lot of energy, but it’s also a way to get a new start,” says Barberis, of Flux’s move to a converted warehouse in Long Island City, Queens. And so began the long, vagrant history of one of New York’s most unconventional art spaces.

That first summer in Queens (in 2002) was critical for Barberis as a curator. He helped mount the exhibit “When Everybody Agrees, It Means Nobody Understood,” in the Queens Museum. Flux artists literally dismantled part of the museum’s gallery space, tunneling into the walls to spy on visitors who were walking around the plastic installation they created. “I’m constantly trying different formats, constantly trying to challenge the notions of what an art exhibit is supposed to be and look like,” says Barberis.

In October 2008, only six years into a fifteen-year lease, Flux was evicted from its LIC space on 43rd Street; the building was taken through eminent domain by the MTA for its East Side Access Project. Due to the gallery’s physical uncertainty, Barberis realized that art exhibits could be portable and, perhaps more important, experiential. The result was “Going Places (Doing Stuff),” a free tour, offered for the first time last summer and running again this June, where local artists serve as guides to busloads of visitors for day trips around the boroughs of New York. Barberis calls it “road trip as performance art.”

The fact that the gallery is constantly moving requires most of Flux’s contributors to seek employment outside of its ever-changing walls. Barberis is not only the curator at Flux Factory, he also works as a freelance carpenter and art installer. “I have never been in a situation at Flux where we could just throw money at the problem,” Barberis says. “Flux has extremely limited resources when it comes to money, but unlimited resources when it comes to people. We have an amazing community of artists that we can tap into at any moment.”

Of course, Barberis is one of the most astounding of these artists: In addition to his performance art, Barberis crafts curious art-cum-furniture by transforming vintage suitcases into wall-mounted vanity cases (available at vanitycase.etsy.com). These delightful bits of ephemera, filled with all of the essentials you’d have in a bar or boudoir, mix old-world design with practicality – they’re like functional dioramas.

And, finally, on Barberis’s to-do list is to renovate Flux Factory’s newest space, an 8,000-square-foot, three-story former greeting-card factory on 29th Street in Long Island City. But don’t pity him; it’s only because there’s always something to do that Barberis has stuck around this long. “I thought I might spend a few months at Flux. But ten years later, here I am.” he says. Be sure to catch “Going Places (Doing Stuff), Best Summer Ever Edition” June 20th through September 9th. Details are vague, but Barberis says there may be snacks. For info contact him at info@fluxfactory.org.

Barberis’s five keys to a successful art exhibit

1 Don’t think about it – do it.
2 It takes will to coordinate people and resources.
3 You need to use your social skills and be flexible.
4 Always have your friends and family help you.
5 Art can be displayed anywhere.

Barberis’s career timeline

1978 Jean Barberis is born on August 6.
1996 Barberis has his first solo exhibit.
2000 Barberis arrives in New York City.
2001 Flux Factory is ejected from the Williamsburg space.
2002 Flux Factory moves to Long Island City, Queens.
2008 Flux Factory is evicted from its 43rd Street space.
2009 Flux Factory signs a lease for its new LIC space.

See the original article here.

By Todd Lester, March 19, 2009.

As with many civil society initiatives, it is sometimes necessary to change space … and sometimes necessary to fight for the one you already have. Herewith I am re-posting two notes from the Flux Factory and SFAI:

[Flux Factory]

After our recent eviction in October, Flux Factory is setting up house (again) in our beloved Long Island City, Queens!

We’re excited to report that we’ll be occupying an 8000 square foot, 3 story building just two blocks north of Queens Plaza at 39-31 29th street. We’re working with the wonderful HWKN design team to create a multi-purpose arts center with galleries, studios, and production facilities.

The new Flux Factory will still be devoted to producing collaborative projects and providing affordable work residencies for artists. We’ve got wonderful projects coming up in 2009, including our famous bus tours and a grande science fair! And of course an inaugural show once we’re done renovations. See: http://www.fluxfactory.org/flux-factory-is-moving/

http://freedimensional.ning.com/forum/topics/flux-factory-moving-and-santa

L Magazine – July 29, 2008
Matt Levy’s Lost in History: All Boro Bonanza

Spare Times – NYTIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/11/arts/11wspare.html?ex=1373515200&en=5ddc117d0609ba4c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Flux Factory Is Hoping To Take You Away

http://www.queenstribune.com/leisure/FluxFactoryIsHopingToTakeY.html

A Couple Weekend Ideas
http://www.thelmagazine.com/lmag_blog/blog/post__06130801.cfm

Lost in History vol. 65: Staten Island Adventures!

First grand tour of the Going Places (Doing Stuff) project

BY LISA L. COLANGELO

Tuesday, April 29th 2008, 4:00 AM

Noonan for News

Pierre deSanctis holds his son, Luca, in front of a wrestling head lock photo, as mom, Sophie, looks on at the Flux Factory.

A massive yellow piñata wearing a MetroCard and a fluorescent safety vest hangs in the Flux Factory’s Long Island City home.

The piece, created by artists Cassandra Ferland and Kate Watson, is called “Tough Love.”

It’s a playful, yet pointed, reminder of a looming deadline imposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on the art gallery.

The MTA acquired the building by eminent domain and plans to demolish it to make way for the East Side Access project, which will connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal.

“We still don’t have a date from the MTA,” said Stefany Anne Goldberg, executive director of the Flux Factory. “We want to stay in Queens, particularly Long Island City. We are talking to everyone we can.”

City Councilman Eric Gioia, whose district includes Long Island City, Woodside and Sunnyside, said he would like the Flux Factory to stay local.

“Its rich cultural and artistic community is part of what makes Long Island City such a special place, and the Flux Factory has been a part of that,” he said. “My office is on the lookout for other locations that might be appropriate for them.”

The Flux Factory, which started in 1994, moved to Queens in 2002 after gentrification priced it out of its home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Goldberg said she was thrilled to sign a 15-year lease for the 7,500-square-foot space at 38-38 43rd St. and settle in.

But the building stands in the path of the MTA’s $6.3 billion megaproject. The agency used eminent domain to acquire the building and informed the tenants – several business owners and the Flux Factory – that it will be leveling the building.

Flux Factory’s final show – aptly titled “Everything Must Go” – ended last weekend with a party.

Golberg said the popular artists’ collective will continue holding shows throughout the year, even if they have to move out by the end of the summer.

lcolangelo@nydailynews.com

you can read more about it here:

amNY/Newsday
http://www.amny.com/news/local/am-flux1219,0,1036878.story

Queens Chronicle

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19186405&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574903&rfi=6′

Queens Courier

http://www.queenscourier.com/articles/2008/01/10/news/regional/northwest_west/news04.txt

Stamford Advocate

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/newyork/am-flux1219,0,7215939.story?coll=ny_news_local_newyork_head_1

BLOGS
http://curbed.com/archives/2007/12/19/lics_flux_factory_to_fall_for_commuter_tunnel.php/

http://gothamist.com/2007/12/20/in_flux.php

http://www.nolandgrab.org/archives/2007/12/eminent_domaini_56.html

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19186405&BRD=2731&PAG=461&dept_id=574903&rfi=6′

http://www.liqcity.com/arts/

http://queens.about.com/b/2007/12/19/vote-for-the-worst-of-queens-2007.htm

19/03/07 – NEW YORK DIARY

One man’s failure is another man’s work of art

SIMON HOUPT

New York can be a scary place, but the most ominous thing I’ve seen in the last few weeks consisted of a log. That was it: just a log (actually, even more prosaic: a section of a fallen telephone pole), maybe one and a half metres in length, suspended about two metres off the ground. And boy, did it give me the shivers.

If you’ve seen the droll 1996 Peter Lynch documentary Project Grizzly, you may have some sense of why it was so threatening. For logs are one of the many projectiles that collide with the quixotic North Bay outdoorsman Troy Hurtubise as he tests a homemade titanium-rubber-and-chain mail suit designed to withstand an attack from a grizzly bear.

Hurtubise had been obsessed with ursus arctos horribilis since 1984 when, then 20 years old, he was hiking through the backwoods of British Columbia and came face to face with a grizzly. The encounter left him shaken but determined to meet the bear he’d dubbed ‘the Old Man’ again, this time in a protective suit that would allow him to get close without being injured.

Lynch’s camera respectfully follows Hurtubise in a quest that consumed seven years and $150,000, as he fine tunes the contraption and then heads out to the Rockies with his buddies.

Alas, the suit is so heavy and awkward — he can barely walk even on the flat terrain of a North Bay doughnut shop parking lot — that he has to abandon it even before a grizzly materializes.

Quentin Tarantino sent a Charlie Rose end-of-year film roundtable into peals of laughter when he described the film — which none of the esteemed film critics had yet seen — and pronounced it “fantastic.” Three years ago, in an episode titled The Fat and the Furriest, The Simpsons sent Homer on a quest to build a bear-proof suit. And more than 220,000 YouTube viewers have checked out a goofy two-minute clip from the film that shows Troy testing his suit by being thrown off the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario, having bear-like bikers beat him with baseball bats and having a truck run into him at 50 km/h.

A couple of years ago the New York-based curator and artist Jean Barberis was visiting Montreal when he spotted some drawings inspired by the film. He got a copy and immediately saw its potential as a spur for artists, and earlier this month the show Grizzly Proof opened at the converted industrial space Flux Factory in Queens (the North Bay of New York) with a sold-out screening of Lynch’s film.

“I almost see Troy’s project as a work of art,” says Barberis. “It fails in its purpose, it’s not a viable grizzly-proof suit, you can’t walk around in it, so the only thing I see it as is an art project. A lot of the time art is about grandiose endeavours that have no end in them except being what they are, and that’s like Troy’s project.”

Hurtubise, who is normally something of a publicity hog, didn’t return phone calls to see how he felt about his life’s work being called a failure. Flux Factory had originally hoped to feature the grizzly suit in the show but, “Troy wanted $10,000 a day for it,” said Barberis. He added, dryly, “Our budget doesn’t come close to that.”

Lynch, who flew down for the screening, contributes his first work of non-photographic art, a camping tent wired with a five-minute soundtrack loop. Stick your head in and you’ll hear a wintry wind howling outside, then barking dogs off in the distance, and then the unnerving snort and snuff of a grizzly on the other side of the flap.

Last week Lynch said he’d drawn on the experience of his first night in the Rockies during shooting in 1995, when Troy’s whimsical project began to take on some unseen higher stakes. “There was a storm and there was something outside my tent, and my producer and I were sitting there — he had an axe and I think I had some kind of knife, and we were just going: What the hell is that out there? My imagination went into high voltage pretty fast.”

Lisa Dillin offers a different take with Bear Hug Sleeping Unit, a sleeping bag fitted with a bear head at the top that fits snuggly atop the face of the sleeper and is outfitted with a reassuring low growl.

Ian Montgomery has contributed a two-metre high origami ursus made of brown wrapping paper titled What it Takes to Fold a Giant Bear. A display shows the 24 required steps, so you too can try this at home.

In the back lounge I found my favourite piece in the show, a heavy duty foosball table made from scratch by the Brooklyn artist Chris Hackett and the transplanted Torontonian Eleanor Lovinsky. Instead of rival soccer teams, the players are miniature grizzlies and men wearing Troy’s space-age grizzly-proof suit. The controls are about chest height, making the entire game more suited to be played by a bear than humans.

It seemed impolite not to play, so Barberis took the Troy controls and I took the grizzly’s side in a game that quickly took on the same dimensions of bottomless time that Troy and his friends endure during the film’s final ill-fated stakeout in the Rockies. Barberis-as-Troy and I-as-bear stalked the elusive ball and each other from one end of the playing field to the other until finally I scored after about 10 minutes. We decided to play only up to 2, and Barberis scored the next couple of goals. Maybe I took it easy on him, I’m not sure. It just seemed that Troy deserved to finally win a round.

DIRECT LINK TO VIDEO

Tucked away in an industrial section of Long Island City, New York, an art Gallery called the ‘Flux Factory’ is launching an unusual art exhibit.

‘Grizzly Proof’ draws together works from over 20 artists inspired the film ‘Project Grizzly, a documentary about an eccentric Canadian who builds a bear proof suit after reportedly being attacked by a Grizzly bear.

The 1996 documentary by the Toronto based filmmaker Peter Lynch is a profile of metal worker Troy Hurtubise, who survived a Grizzly bear attack in 1984 and then spends years building and testing a bear attack proof suit of armor.

Lynch says his documentary has become a sort of cult classic.

SOUNDBITE: Peter Lynch, Filmmaker, saying (English):

“Project Grizzly, it’s one of those things where it’s got nine lives, first it gets discovered by a famous filmmaker like Tarantino and then it gets spoofed on ‘The Simpsons’ and then all of a sudden some artists in Queens, New York are doing a tribute to your film and it’s very surreal, it’s very moving as well.”

The show features 17 works of art, ranging from sculpture, to drawing, to mixed media.

Lynch said he was ‘overwhelmed’ that his documentary has managed to strike a cord with so many people, especially outside of Canada.

Katie Juhl, Reuters.

March 9, 7:54 AM

Grizzly Proof Exhibit Comes To Flux Factory

Katerina Lanfranco’s bear diorama.

By JENNIFER POLLAND

Jean Barberis, the head curator at Flux Factory, was casually browsing through a thrift shop in Montreal when he stumbled on “a childish drawing of a grizzly bear fighting a robot.” Intrigued, he asked the clerk about the drawing. That led him to “Project Grizzly,” a film that illustrates one man’s quest to conquer nature.

Peter Lynch’s comedic documentary “Project Grizzly” tells the story of Troy Hurtubise, a man who survived a vicious attack by a grizzly bear in the Canadian Rockies, and embarked on an obsessive mission to create a “grizzly proof” suit of armor. The film shows Hurtubise testing his suit in various violent ways, with ramming trucks, flying logs and baseball bats. After a series of tests, Hurtubise heads back to grizzly country for an adventure that naturally ends in failure.

“The documentary is a really funny piece of film,” Barberis said. “It shows Troy as a type of Don Quixote figure, who is obsessed with finding a way to defeat nature, but, of course, he inevitably fails.”

“Project Grizzly” has grown into a huge phenomenon; it has even been parodied on “The Simpsons.” Barberis was so taken by the film that he decided to curate Grizzly Proof, an art exhibition at Flux Factory that is inspired by Lynch’s film. In this show, Barberis invited more than 20 artists from around the world to create their own responses to the documentary. Artists were asked to take on the age-old theme of man versus nature, which resulted in an eclectic and dynamic range of paintings, sculptures and multimedia artworks.

Katerina Lanfranco created a diorama-style sculptural installation that was inspired by the dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History. In this 15-by-4-foot glass-encased installation, Lanfranco displays a 7-foot sculpture of a hybrid-bear – with a longer tail, horns and abnormal growths – in its “natural” habitat.

“This piece is a critique on us wanting to contain and control nature,” Lanfranco said. “Troy is obsessed with using super technology to retaliate against the grizzly bear. It almost becomes like a psychotic desire to control nature, and in the end it is a very pathetic and desperate mission.”

Barberis said that Lanfranco’s piece is “cartoonish” yet “scientific.” Lanfranco puts the artist in the position of scientist by “re-blending two aesthetics that are completely different,” Barberis said.

Like Lanfranco, each artist interprets “Project Grizzly” in his or her own way. The film’s director, Lynch, even created an installation for this exhibition: a multimedia installation that draws on humans’ fear of nature by recreating the threatening sounds of the wild.

“The film is interesting and inspiring, and I think that resonated with the artists,” Barberis said. “I think that it is a very fun and playful show. It’s sort of unique in that everyone is responding to a single object, and there is an enigmatic element about that.”

Grizzly Proof will run March 9 to April 12 at Flux Factory in LIC. The show will kick off Friday at 6:30 p.m. with a screening of “Project Grizzly,” followed by a Q & A session with director Peter Lynch at the New Center Cinema in Sunnyside. For more information call (718) 707-3362 or visit www.fluxfactory.org.

Kodiak moment

Eleven years after its release, Peter Lynch’s man-versus-bear documentary inspires artists at Flux Factory.

By Dan Avery

When Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Lynch completed work on Project Grizzly in 1996, he knew he had something special on his hands. Detailing Troy Hurtubise’s quest to create the ultimate anti-grizzly bear armor, the film taps into something primal – capturing Hurtubise’s struggle to tame personal demons even as he shields himself from furry predators. Since its release, Project Grizzly has garnered a fan base that includes Quentin Tarantino and Matthew Barney (it even earned the Holy Grail of pop culture- a reference on The Simpsons). More than a decade later, Project Grizzly has resurfaced as the inspiration for “Grizzly Proof,” a new exhibition of bear-themed installations at Flux Factory (the film will screen before the show’s official opening on Friday 9). Lynch chatted with TONY from his Toronto home about Grizzly’s enduring appeal, his contribution to the Flux Factory show and why a certain comedic commentator has it in for our ursine friends.

Where did the idea for Project Grizzly come from?

I had been doing films about people who map their own territory. A producer asked if I wanted to do something on this guy up north who was working on a bear-proof suit. After meeting Troy and seeing how charismatic he was, I knew it’d translate well into a story.

Is Hurtubise a serious inventor, a raconteur or a humanitarian?

He’s all of it. There’s a part of him that’s P.T. Barnum, but there’s also a Matthew Barney kind of performance art to it. Troy sees himself doing something to benefit humanity, but there’s a real gap between his vision and reality that’s fascinating. I mean, the chest plate is titanium but then another part is just covered in gaffer tape. It’s like an inflated hockey uniform.

What are you contributing to “Grizzly Proof”?

It’s a tent in a dark room, lit only by a Coleman lamp. You’ll hear these primordial sounds getting louder until they completely envelop you and you feel this physical presence bearing down on you. I’m fascinated by the “scared white man in the forest” experience.

Have you seen Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man?

Yes, I loved it. I think there’s something theatrical about both Troy and Timothy Treadwell. They’re both sort of addressing something bigger than the bears. Troy said his grizzlies were tougher than Treadwell’s, though. “His are a lot better fed,” were his exact words.

Why does Stephen Colbert hate bears so much?

I don’t know – maybe it makes him feel safer in a dangerous world? For me, I’m in awe of them. The grizzly is under siege by man. It’s the bear that needs the suit.

How does it feel to know your film is still so popular?

It’s surreal, but also affirming. It makes me feel alive in the world to know I created something that really resonates with people.

Project Grizzly screens Fri 9 at 6:30pm at New Center Cinema.

MONUMENTAL MOMENT
A playful approach to Tatlin’s Monument

By Aileen Torres

When I heard the title of Flux Factory’s latest show, Response to Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International Conceived in the Mood of Ambivalence, or R.T.T.M.T.T.T.I.C.I.T.M.O.A. for short, I thought I was going off to see a ridiculous, pretentious show full of highfalutin communist propaganda. I’m happy to report that I was completely wrong.

Out there in Long Island City’s industrial outskirts, I came upon an exhibit that was cerebral and ideological in premise yet still wildly playful. Very clever. But also very fun.

First, a bit of history: Tatlin’s Tower was designed by Vladimir Tatlin as an architectural homage to the Third International (1919-1943). In the vein of Constructivism, it was to house bureaucrats as well as an information center that was to churn out communist propaganda for widespread broadcasting. A grand idea from a grand idealist, but the tower, which Tatlin envisioned as overshadowing the Eiffel Tower in height, was never built because of exorbitant building costs and unsolved engineering puzzles in Tatlin’s design.

Flux approached Tatlin’s Tower from an artistic, collaborative perspective. Putting their heads together, they asked: “What would Tatlin’s Tower be like if it was an ongoing construction in a 1,500-square-foot room with 12-foot ceilings and was designed to be a nice place to spend a day in?”

The result is a pretty cool hangout. A structure made of thin wood slats held together with only rope is suspended across the room; the idea being that this is what it would look like if Tatlin’s Tower fell over into the space outside, says Flux co-founder Morgan Meis. There’s also a helix hanging by one wall; one of the few concrete references to Tatlin’s original design.

All sorts of goodies are nestled in the space. There’s a love seat by the windows, where people can pick up sheets of lyrics to love songs from the table beside it and broadcast their own readings (or performances) via a dangling microphone. And yes, your voice will be heard- the microphones around the room are all connected to a streaming Internet radio station.

If you’re hungry, stop by the soup counter. Just wait your turn, and you’ll get real soup. And even ice cream, if you want it. If you start to feel a food coma coming on, head for the hammock, complete with pillows. Feel free to nap away. Or, if you’re feeling feisty, take a turn on the swing set in the corner. For the more dramatic, there’s a chance to show off your skills in a small theater alongside one wall designed for one-act plays.

And no need to worry that playing with all these props might be “corrupting” you. This art is meant to be experienced – not ingested as a throwback to Comintern “truth.”

Through Dec. 22. Flux Factory, 38-38 43rd St., Long Island City, Queens, 718-707-3362, Sat. 5:30-9:30.

PERMANENT LINK

DAZED & CONFUSED
September 2006 Issue *41

Flux Factory, a combination living space/art gallery housed in a warehouse in Queens, is located far enough from the worn hipster pathways of Manhattan and Brooklyn that Hopstopping directions to my cell phone is a necessity. Despite my foresight, I still end up lost in 100-degree heat, wandering around the industrial wasteland that is Long Island City.

When I finally arrive, after a pit stop at Hess (for water and Chex Mix, but not directions), I’m greeted by a shirtless man in his late twenties or early thirties who is wearing a necklace made from rope, tape and two Sharpies. Later, I will learn that his name is Brian Matthews. He is the “mad scientist of the house” and his room is too messy for me to see. Now, however, he simply invites me in, asks who I am and proceeds to call my contact on his cell phone. “Hey Stefany, are you at the house?” he asks. I gather that this is how people communicate in the 7,500 square foot space and wonder what the group did before the invention of cell phones. Perhaps there was a series of tin cans and tangled wires running to and fro.

Stefany Anne Goldberg is stuck at work, but Kerry Downey, a resident of Flux for the last two and a half years, offers to speak with me. We retire to the only place in the building with air conditioning, a jerry-rigged 10′ x 10′ room that is walled on two sides by a drop cloth hung three feet below the ceiling. There’s still some debate among the house members as to whether this actually contains the cool air, even though earlier that day Matthews used his new instant thermometer to prove it was cooler and spread the news by e-mail to the house’s 17 live-in members.

This huge number of residents is what makes Flux Factory, well, so in “flux.” The project, however, hasn’t always been so large. It began in 1994 in an old Williamsburg spice factory. By 1998, the group gained official 501 (c)(3) nonprofit status and moved to its current location. Today, the collective curates four shows per year, a requirement for the grants that help fund the project. The shows are created by multiple artists functioning as a unit to build a work greater than the sum of its parts. The day I visit, a handmade city featuring buildings built by 15 artists stands in the gallery. Called Opolis, it’s the “the third manifestation of Flux Factory’s annual ‘Comix Fluxture’ exhibit” which seeks to “create comic narratives that also function as installation art.” The previous show, Flux Box, featured seven kinetic sound sculptures that played a music box song when the viewer turned a crank.

While Goldberg and a few others have lived at Flux since its inception, others have been there for shorter periods. According to Downey, this is both a blessing and a curse. “It’s kind of a push and pull. The people who started it are trying to build based on a common goal and future plans,” while new people add energy and vitality. Sometimes, however, “people move in and don’t do anything at all.” The group lives as a social collective where everyone is responsible for cleaning the house, building the art exhibitions and other tasks. When new or old roommates don’t pull their own weight, the system fails.

This living situation is just as experimental as the shows they curate. “You can see how people that you love and with whom you share ideals can ruin the whole world because they can’t wash a dish.you start to understand why the world turns to shit,” Downey explains.

A tour of the space is as impressive, insane and totally overwhelming as is meeting all the roommates. Aside from the gallery, the floor includes 17 bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms and an overflowing craft space that resembles a kindergarten room on crack. A library filled with hundreds of books has evolved over the years. “At one point, we had four copies of The Shipping News, my tour guide admits proudly, although only two currently grace the shelves. The collection is the kind of place where you find Dave Barry’s Guide to Life next to a detailed academic breakdown of surrealist artist Man Ray’s work. The “executive wing” of Flux is named so because it has its own door. Glamorous moniker aside, “it’s just art storage and a crapper. Oh, and the cats live here too.”

Even the bedrooms are in a state of constant transition. Improvement, additions or projects started by one resident are often completed by the next patron, giving the whole place a never-finished feeling. No one seems to mind. One resident, Nick Normal, has begun his own gallery in his bedroom that he calls Normal Space @ the Flux Factory. Occasionally, people will show up on the warehouse doorstep looking for exhibits at Normal Space. His fellow roommates find this incredibly amusing.

As Downey and I chat, Morgan Meis, Flux Factory’s “driving force,” enters the makeshift room. He’s wearing a tucked in button up shirt, dress pants and shoes. In the chaos that is the collective, his dress seems absurdly overdone but Downey laughs it off, assuring me that “he dresses as pompously as possible all the time.”

As he is about to sit, he notices the newly hung drop cloth. “This is€¦um€¦interesting,” he remarks, surprisingly unfazed by the new addition to his home. “Yeah, it’s just a temporary solution to it being too fucking hot,” Downey explains with a competing level of blasé. I get the distinct impression that “improvements” of this nature are pretty standard happenings in a place that houses almost two baseball teams worth of exceptionally creative souls.

Once Meis takes a seat and starts vibing about the Factory, I can sense the contagiousness of his enthusiasm for the project. In the constant push and pull between the house and the art space, he functions as “the gallery’s cheerleader,” who is willing to curate any show at the expense of his fellow residents’ comfort. Others are the liaisons between the house and the gallery. Balancing the needs of the house versus those of the gallery is a consistent source of difficulty, but the group takes it in stride.

In addition to these routine concerns, the Fluxers are currently dealing with a potentially pressing problem. The MTA is tearing the block down and, while it has yet to purchase the building which houses the Factory, reality dictates that it’s only a matter of time before the cooperative must find a new home. Future plans are, as usual, in flux. Rest assured that they will find a new space and continue to make great art while living the crazy life they’ve carved out for themselves. If you get a chance, you should visit before the warehouse becomes another casualty of “progress.” But when you do, make sure to bring a cell phone.

C. EDWARDS
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

On the corner of Broadway and Jay Street a paranoid loner wanders an office complex at night; across town, on Rue de Poire, Julia Child is born and dies at the age of 92. Meanwhile, on Aggravation Alley, Nadia Comaneci and a group of costumed bunnies drift through heaven, hell and Eastern Europe. Welcome to the city of Opolis, the product of the third annual manifestation of Flux Factory’s Comix Fluxture exhibit in which 15 separate artists put their creative spin on a city block for the fictional metropolis: a blending of sequential art and architecture that combines the spectacle of installation art, with the intimacy of the comic narrative.

As expected, the results are as mixed as the artists themselves: Ian Montgomery’s forgotten row house stares up at Daupo’s Terminal Tower, crude but carefully rendered comic images covering its expansive sides. Beth Brandon’s library, with dreamlike tales of its own, overlooks the J.B. Liminal Park, a landscape architecture installation crafted by Nicole Tucker with suspended wooden structures nearby that house the city’s Futurological Society (a work by Leah Beeferman and Michelle Higa).

In his book, Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud defines the word “closure” as something that occurs in the margins between the panels of a comic book’s imagery, where human imagination takes separate images and translates them into a single idea. Comix Fluxture is built on closure, each installation able to carry multiple narratives, all of which come together to tell the story of Opolis itself; a tale that has as its most common element a lack of regard for time, seasons and reality. But whether or not each individual piece allows us to mentally construct a unified reality is debatable.

Rarely do you find a group exhibition that isn’t hit or miss, and Opolis is no exception. Very few of the artists have any real capacity for blending the sequential art with architecture to the level that the theme of the show implies, most just seem to give in to the idea of windows as comic panels or cryptic dioramas. Since there’s no real consideration for the perimeters of the gallery space, the entire show feels contained, and while most of the artwork will hold your interest, you probably won’t feel the need to re-visit anytime soon.

Opolis: a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Through Aug. 5. Flux Factory, 38-38 43rd St., Long Island City, Queens, 718-707-3362; Fri. 4-7, Sat. 12-5, Free.

Volume 19, Issue 28

© 2006 New York Press

07/06/2006
Flux Factory Breathes Life Into Mini City
by Farida Hariyanawala
Peering inside each window of “November House” to see a dream sequence played out frame by frame is one of the many sites in the Flux Factory.

It’s fall in the city of Opolis. Natasha is taking a leisurely walk in the J.B. Liminal Park. She’s the same cold blooded assassin who publicly shot the president in the interior of a theater. A few blocks away, Leslie, the paranoid loner, lurks in the dark shadows of his office, while not far away, Mr Macomber wakes up with a hole in his chest.
Like most vibrant cities, myriad scenes are being played out simultaneously in Opolis, which, though imaginary, has come to life in a comic art installation at the Flux Factory in Long Island City.
The third in the series of the factory’s annual Comic Fluxture exhibits, Opolis was created by 14 participating artists serving as the “chief architects” of the city. They also imagined and created the characters who inhabit this city, and wove around them tales of devious machinations, mystery, drama and romance – all in comic art form.
Comic illustrator Jason Little, who is curating the show along with Jean Barberis and Flux Factory President Morgan Meis, said they brainstormed on a formal theme to give structure to a series of images. “Though each of the blocks is different in terms of ideas and presentation, the overall picture is still inclusive. The only real linkage is that there are a few common characters around a lot of blocks,” he said.
Before stepping into this cardboard city’s zone, visitors can pick up a souvenir map and guide, which helps navigate the streets, with names like Languid Lane, Fascination Street, Terminal Avenue and Aggravation Alley.
As you walk around peeking into the lives of the city’s residents, and eavesdropping on their conversations, Opolis comes alive. You grow to love its quirky characters with their bizarre stories that unfold in the 14 blocks.
“Opolis has an air of sadness around it,” said Daupo, an illustrator and comic artist, who undertook building the tallest structure in Opolis. The end result was the Opolis Terminal Tower, the city’s only skyscraper. It is covered with comic strips that tell the story of an evil character in a multinational corporation in the building.
“The city has a lot of interesting variety – you have urban, modern buildings as well as conventional ones, but there seems to be a lot of death and tragedy unfolding in them,” he said.
Manhattan based Nicole Tucker, a landscape architect and artist, sees Opolis as a city of “indiscriminate seasonality,” so her contribution was a public park depicting all seasons simultaneously, one on each of four tiers. Reality blends here with the imaginary, as the fictional characters can be seen walking through three of the four seasons.
“What I like about Opolis is that everything is so different. It is so reminiscent of a real city where you have so much diversity all rubbing against each other,” she said.
For Brooklyn based Bishakh Som, this exhibit was the perfect opportunity to blend his two professions – architecture and comic illustrations. On the city’s border stands his three story conventional town house. Inside, the young protagonist Natasha is subjected to domestic trauma.
The story unfolds that years later, Natasha will assassinate the president in a theater – her ultimate revenge on authority figures. “Everyone aspires to be part of a family, but I wanted to show the flip side of it,” Som said.
Other interesting landmarks worth visiting in the city include the Historical and Futurological Society by artists Leah Beeferman and Michelle Higa, the public library by Beth Brandon, and Andrea Dezso’s November House, representing a dream sequence.
Yet the charm of Opolis lies not in its cardboard buildings, but in the many stories hidden in its underbelly, which should best be explored at leisure.
Opolis: A Comic Fluxture is on view at the Flux Factory, 38 38 43rd St., Long Island City, through Aug. 5. Hours are 4 7 p.m. Saturdays, noon 5 p.m. Sundays, or by appointment at (718) 707 3362. www.fluxfactory.org.

FluxBox: Exploding the Miniature
by Bethany Ryker

Drawing by Stefany Anne Goldberg

The crank on the side of a wind-up toy or a music box is not just a mechanical device that sets things in motion; it is a generator of suspense. You give it a few turns and the tension mounts. When you get to the point where you can’t wind any further, you let go and wait through an expectant pause until – snap! – the magic begins.

The FluxBox, which was on view at the Flux Factory in Queens from March 25 to April 29, triggered a greater feeling of suspense than your everyday automata. Not because it was a room-sized version of something that usually fits in your hand, but because the only visible part of the box from the entrance was the crank, and the crank was wired to a kosher pickle.

I knew to expect a “giant, interactive music box” – the collaborative handiwork of seven visual/sound artists whose individual “kinetic sculptures” were linked together to play a song. I imagined something like a Rube Goldberg-esque jukebox. But I was thrown off by the lab-experiment/corner-deli aspect of the crank (created/conceived by James Rouvelle). If this is on the outside, then what is on the inside?

The only way to find out was to crank the pickle. Unlike a mechanical system of gears, the crank turned without much friction. My memories of sixth grade science class were kicking in: “Ah, yes, the crank is generating the electricity – the kind that keeps a potato-clock ticking – and this will start the action.” So my last few turns of the crank slowed down, not for lack of capacity, but out of fear that this pickle I was charging up was going to explode.

Then the suspense. First, a couple of clicks and then the box started up like the sonic equivalent of a calliope piping away from inside a construction site. A distinct melody soared through the texture, but equally prevalent were thick rhythmic layers of mechanical sounds – the audible by-products of the melody.

Once inside the maze of small rooms, the sounds came alive, often with a sly gesture. The most fascinating instrumental “performances” came from Ranjit Bhatnagar’s suspended accordion, which played when its bellows were raised and lowered by pulleys, and John Roach’s toy organ, which remained silent until the pointed finger of a slowly descending hand struck a single key.

As a whole, FluxBox brought out a whimsical curiosity for those inside of it. We ducked under and around things to scout out certain sounds and see how they were being made. Sometimes our path was guided by sight, other times by sound, but either way it was a colossal feeling to be encompassed by the structure of its sounds.

This explosion of miniature onto a grand scale distills down to one melody: the “Tea Cup Song” written by Stefany Anne Goldberg, executive director of the Flux Factory and director of the FluxBox project. In conceiving the piece, Goldberg first gathered the artists who would work together, and then they were to make the collective decision of what the FluxBox should play. Goldberg was looking for something “compact, melodically identifiable, and easily repeated,” but wanted to leave territory open in terms of original music or covers.

John Roach circulated some ideas from his music collection on a CD-R that became known as “Flux for Thought,” but in the end, they decided on one of Goldberg’s original melodies from a separate installation. In that piece, the song functioned mechanically: Goldberg had her tune manufactured into music-box parts that she affixed to teacups.

The counterpart to the suspenseful onset of a mechanical work is the gradual decay. As the FluxBox metaphorically “wound down” you found yourself inside of it, dark and quiet, until someone would shout “Pickle!” and after a shuffling of footsteps, the box would come alive again.

As it turns out, the pickle’s only function was cleverness. The sound devices inside the FluxBox were triggered through the program Max/MSP… by a computer that was kept out of sight. The speed and length of time that someone cranked the pickle determined how fast and how long the FluxBox would play, but the electrical current came straight from the wall. Did this trick take away any of the magic? Not at all; it gave the box its flux-colored lining.

About the Author

Bethany Ryker is a writer and musician living in Brooklyn. Her radio program, “The Stochastic Hit Parade,” airs weekly on WFMU. She is currently completing a masters thesis at The New School for Social Research on the aesthetics of mechanical music in the digital age.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Fluxbox

A look at a sound installation in Queens known as Fluxbox.

click to listen

issue of 2006-04-24
Posted 2006-04-17
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“FLUXBOX”
Flux Factory offers a taste of authentic contemporary bohemianism, with a collective of seventeen-odd artists living in a warrenlike loft near the railroad tracks (and next to a Korean mega-church) and creating work together. The current project, “FluxBox,” is a room-size music box that uses homemade and found instruments – everything from an old boot striking wood to an accordion suspended from the ceiling – to tinkle, wheeze, and bellow out versions of one simple tune (written by the project’s organizer, Stefany Anne Golberg). The effect is somewhere between Kurt Schwitters’s Merzbau and Tim Hawkinson’s sculptural constructions, without the novelty of Schwitters’s found objects or the artless sophistication of Hawkinson’s machines. Through April 29. (Flux Factory, 38-38 43rd St., Long Island City. 718-707-3362.)

L.I.C. art show
is dill-harmonic

BY CAITLIN KELLY
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

It starts with – what else? – an electric pickle. A giant dill, replaced daily, contains enough salt converted into electrical impulses to power a roomful of funky, homemade musical instruments.

The dill is the opening act for Fluxbox, an art exhibition open until Saturday at the Flux Factory, a six-year-old artists’ collective in Long Island City.

Their 2,000-square-foot gallery at the end of a row of factories is a long way, physically and intellectually, from the powerhouse commercial art scene of Chelsea or SoHo. Those silent, white-walled spaces have prices, if you dare ask for them, that quickly run into five or six figures.

For the 15 members of Fluxbox, most in their 20s and 30s, art is something to share with everyone – the more fun, down to earth and thought-provoking the better.

“We’re trying to create collaborative works that are accessible to a broad public, for people who aren’t schooled in art,” says Morgan Mies, 33, one of the group’s co-founders. Although Mies has a Ph.D. in philosophy and his wife, co-founder Stefany Anne Golberg, 32, has a master’s degree in music and sound, their unpretentious exhibitions draw a wide range of visitors from New York and overseas.

The current show, created by nine artists, uses a 16-bar piece of Golberg’s music looped through a computer. Unlike most exhibits, viewer participation makes it run, beginning with a crank that uses pickle power to start up all the other instruments. As long as there’s power, the music plays and the lights stay on. There’s a glockenspiel “played” from underneath by puffs of air, accompanied by a red Christmas ornament pounding a drum.

As visitors move through the show, they hear, and make, dozens of unusual sounds. A worn leather boot kicks a wooden board. A bottle cap taps a cigar tube and a sardine can filled with toothpicks becomes a minimaraca. A safety pin acts as a record needle to keep an LP of birdsong playing in the background. The group, now a registered, nonprofit organization, receives funding from the state Department of Cultural Affairs and the Queens Council for the Arts. A recent auction raised an additional $20,000.

But, like the ever-changing space itself, the Flux Factory has become temporary as Mies and Golberg seek an arts-minded developer with deep pockets to build a new one.

They’re doing so because within two years, plans call for the former air-conditioning factory, with its spectacular views of Manhattan, to be torn down to make way for a new Long Island Rail Road station.

Flux Factory co-founders Morgan Mies (l.) and his wife, Stefany Anne Golberg, with Flux Factory resident artist Jean Barberis.

Originally published on April 25, 2006

Ruminations On Replication: ‘Repeat After Me’ Opens At Flux Factory
by Jennifer Manley, Assistant Editor

Imagine for a moment molecular nanotechnology gone horribly awry: Through an accidental mutation or malicious act, the infinitesimally tiny machines (built to cure human disease, enable space travel and eliminate pollution) learn to self-replicate, systematically consuming all carbon matter and blanketing the planet in a cold, quivering mass of machine.
This is what keeps artist Carla Aspenberg up at night and is partially what inspired “Repeat After Me,” an interdisciplinary art exhibit now on view at the Flux Factory, a nonprofit arts organization and live-work space in Long Island City.

Aspenberg and co-curator Sarah Phillips put together the collective that poses some serious questions about self-replication: What if inanimate ideas, like language, emotions or rainbows could act like a virus? What does the replication of an artist’s identity in a piece of art ultimately mean? What are the consequences of endless repetition?
On the whole, the exhibit is significantly lighter than the end-of-time scenario envisioned by science-fiction aficionados and cynical scientists. The dozen-plus pieces on display in the boxy second-floor exhibit space range from drawings and paintings to sculpture and installation. They deal variably with concepts of self-replication, repetition of form and idea, and asexual reproduction, among others. A few conclusions are offered, but moreover, the show is a thought-provoking exploration on the themes.
Farley Gwazda’s process piece, “Relay,” involves a series of hand-painted tiles mounted in rows. Each row begins with a single, simple image painted in black on a pale tile. Following across the row, the image changes slightly, or vastly, on each subsequent tile, changing into a new image, “Metamorphosis”-style, by the last tile.
The piece was created through a modified version of the game “telephone,” with one participant describing the image to the next, who then sketched it. The replication of the image did not demonstrate entropy, as Gwazda thought it might, but instead revealed magical forms and puzzling patterns. In his role as “Mr. Intelligent Design,” Gwazda steered the evolution of each image through imposing time limits and finally redrawing the participants’ sketches with glaze on the tiles.
Phillips and Aspenberg both have pieces in the show, although they deal with the theme in vastly different ways. Aspenberg’s industrial-material sculpture incorporates cellophane wrap and Ace bandages in a futuristic vision of what a being who didn’t need to reproduce sexually – but still had the organs – might look like.
Phillips’ relatively light piece plays on the theme of “gray goo,” the common term for the apocalyptic takeover of the planet by tiny machines, but with self-replicating rainbows instead of robots.
The reflection, if not replication, of an artist’s identity through the creation of work inevitably arises in several pieces, the most striking of which is a series of latex masks by Ian Montgomery. Casts of his own face are altered with the addition of somewhat disturbing elements and features, then tacked to rough wooden plaques.
Flux Factory’s own Kerry Downey, whose installation is less literal, incorporates hundreds of cup-shaped plaster molds affixed in a swath across one gallery wall like a topographical map of her idea.
The artists in the show hail from all over the country and beyond, with representation from Brooklyn, San Francisco and Europe.
The show is running now through Jan. 28. Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday noon to 6 p.m. or by appointment. Details and directions available at www.fluxfactory.org

INS & OUTS MAGAZINE

ART WORK IN PROGRESS

By Justina Williams

Flux Factory’s warren of rooms unwinds like a Dr. Seuss landscape made manifest. Numerous small studio spaces spin off of common areas such as a library, darkroom, office, silkscreen area, well appointed shop, and a large exhibit/performance area.

Flux Factory began in 1994 in Williamsburg when a group of seven friends and former New School University graduates sought group studio space whose communal environment would provoke and incubate creativity.

In 1998, they formalized their transition from a private endeavor and became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Four years later, when Williamsburg’s increasing gentrification sent rents soaring, Flux Factory Inc. moved into an old air conditioning factory off of Northern Boulevard in Long Island City. The new location’s larger space has nurtured their growth as an artists’ collective and resource, with links to materials, contacts, press, and funding assistance.

“When Flux Factory moved, it just fell into place. It all came together serendipitously and organically,” says member Jean Barberis.

GREETINGS, EARTHLING

The only hint that their LIC locale may differ from its warehouse brethren is a ceramic figure tiled to an exterior wall, an image of knee-high, blue, three-legged spaceman.

Inside, people quickly and quietly pass through the different areas and, despite the present membership of 13 Fluxers, the open spaces appear oddly organized; floors are paint-splattered but clean, a testament to an arsenal of cleaners stacked beneath a double basin sink.

The exhibit space is between shows and old pieces mill about in various states of disassembly. Around a corner, something crashes to the floor, followed by a mournful howl. A moment later comes a more reasoned assessment, “Oh well, it was balanced, well, it was balanced on nothing actually.”

At the moment, two shows are stacked weekend to weekend, with a third, “What the Book,” a display on handmade books, smack on their heels. The curator of the third show, Kerry Downey, dazedly comments, “At the moment it’s mayhem. It goes from chaos to order and back to chaos again.”

Downey adds that this is the first time she’s curated a show. Indeed, many members have made the leap from creating to curating € a result of the group’s cross-collaboration and synergy. “It’s like Wu-tang,” says Barberis.

One corner of the exhibit space is entirely covered by a floor-length velvet curtain. Kerry lifts it to reveal a ceiling-height plaster mountain sculpted to look like an ice flume. She explains the curtain’s necessity during shows:

“People tend to get distracted by it and just want to crawl inside. It can be a problem, although fun.”

GET UP IN TAR

The ice flume seems to epitomize Flux Factory’s overall goal: to cause viewers to do a double take, think, and if necessary, crawl inside.

Past projects have included ‘The Impossible Tea Party’, ‘All You Can Art,’ and ‘If Everybody Agrees that Means Nobody Understood.’

The Tea Party, deemed ‘A sophisticated experiment in Not-Drowning,’ featured inner tube-ensconced Fluxers, and their teapot, merrily bobbing amid the flotsam of the East River.

‘All You Can Art’ was composed entirely of food, from a chocolate-spackled ceiling to chocolate rugs and floorboards.

‘A lot of artists work with food, such as making jelly bean portraits, but it’s still something you look at,’ explains Barberis. ‘We wanted people to get down and eat the art, to lick the walls. One thing we all agree on is that we’re not into producing objects but into experiences.’

‘If Everybody Agrees it Means that No One Understood,’ Fluxers’ exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art, consisted of three months of assembling and disassembling a giant erector set. Sporting bright orange jump suits, they started each day with tea and a ribbon cutting ceremony, in addition to stirring up the occasional madness and mayhem.

Tom Finkelpearl, Queens Museum of Art Director, recalls their time together with mixed emotions.

“At one point they dug into the museum, in between the walls, and were sort of peeking out at visitors. Then they painted a sign on the roof and added a model of the Flux Factory Pavilion to the Panorama . . . Kind of funny, kind of annoying,’ he says.

However, he adds, ‘We remember our roots. We think Flux Factory is great and would write them a recommendation, but a lot of museums aren’t ready for them.’

‘We want to break down the formal concept of galleries and have more fun, make it less snooty and show interesting work,’ explains Kerry. ‘Things on a wall are distant and people miss being able to touch and smell. People are craving more intimacy with art.’

THEY COME IN PEACE

Though Fluxers may occasionally traumatize, they are primarily focused on helping.

A website missive explains, ‘Artistic vision can only reach its fruition when it is linked to the grander struggle to improve and enrich the community at large.’

“Our ultimate goal is a real exchange with the community where they give us input into what they enjoy seeing.

‘The more people that know about us, the more people can take advantage of us,’ said Barberis.

The Flux Factory also provides a series of free weekly classes to the public through their Tech Initiative. Topics range from Linux, electronics, sewing, filmmaking and photography to puppet making, sewing and, for those who find recycling too passee € knitting with plastic.

If you build it, they will write.

This past May, the Flux Factory, an art collective based in Long Island City, New York, was transformed into a writing laboratory. In the 2,500-square-foot gallery space, three novelists settled into small live/work units custom designed and built by artists and architects chosen through a competition. The installation, aptly titled “Novel,” paired the designers with the writers to develop and refine their concepts for the space they would inhabit for the duration of the month. Like the writers, individually occupied with their respective narratives, each structure was self-contained; although they provided visual screens, they were still permeable to noise….

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A not-so-novel writing method

Writer Ranbir Sidhu just finished a novel while locked in an architect-designed habitat for 30 days, 22 ½ hours each day. The publicity stunt by Queens artist collective Flux Factory resembles another mentally focusing experience known as ‘poverty’ …

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