Flux Factory’s inaugural building-wide exhibition

on view every Saturday and Sunday 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.

Housebroken remains on view every Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.

Curated by Jean Barberis and Georgia Muenster

Participating artists: Carey Ascenzo; Ali Aschman; Man Bartlett; Ranjit Bhatnagar; David Bohl & David Kagan; Brandstifter; Adam Brent; Matt Bua; Paul Burn; Ian Burns; Lucille Calmel; Paula Castro; Cyprien Chabert; Gabriel Cohen & Megan Snowe; David Court & Carolyn Lambert; The Deterritorialized Church; Kerry Downey; Jason Eppink; Cassandra Ferland & Boyd Shropshire; Tracy Gilman, David Schleifer & Lauren Silberman; Nick Golebiewski & Marin Tockman; Eckart Graeve; Kathryn Hamilton; Amy Lynn Herman; Peter Hristoff; Thom Hutchison; Jaime Iglehart; Doreen Jakob; Anna Lise Jensen; Benjamin Johnson/BADSTUDIO & Hiroko Takeda; Darren Jones & Ryan Roa; Jack Kalish & Katie Westgate; Bernard Klevickas; George Kroenert; Sara Krugman; Elizabeth Larison & Jesse Novak; Fabienne Lasserre; Matt Levy; Michelle Levy; Amy Longenecker & Christopher Ulivo; Nelson Loskamp; Caroline Mak; Greg Martin; Lili Maya & James Rouvelle; Olive McKeon; Ian Montgomery; Martina Mrongovius; Georgia Muenster; Jo Q. Nelson; Nick Normal; Issa Nyaphaga; Adrian Owen; Molly Page; Clare Parry; Douglas Paulson; Damon Pelletier & Chess Venis; SKOTE; Brendan Ravenhill; Annie Reichert & Etosha Terryll; Rob Rhee; John Roach; Julius Schmeidel; Eugenia Semjonova; Igor Siddiqui; Terence Smith; Julia Solis; SP Weather Station; Jeff Stark; Josh Thorpe; Gabriela Vainsencher; Hein Verwer; Barbara Westermann; Meng-Hsuan Wu; Chin Chih Yang

It seems like just yesterday. In fact, it was the early ’90s. Grunge was au courant. A fresh-faced saxophonist from somewhere down South had just taken the White House. And you could still get large empty warehouse spaces in Williamsburg for next to nothing. We moved in without rooms or a toilet to piss in. Literally. We were pissing into a hole in the middle of the floor. I never did find out where that hole went. But it didn’t matter. Mystery was in the air. Only later did the art arrive. First mystery pissing, then art, I always say.

What did Flux Factory stand for back then? I don’t remember. But it stood, and that alone was an accomplishment. Stefany’s (Shuffy) mother visited us once in that first year. A few weeks later we received a large package in the mail. It was a box of fire alarms, extinguishers, and an escape ladder. The Braun Brothers built a music studio right in the middle of the space and recorded Negatones songs between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning on most weekdays. Once, for reasons long forgotten, the landlord tried to brain me with a crowbar. He missed, and later we had tea.

Then the French arrived. Jean and Seb blew in on a cloud one day and said, “Let’s have a show.” But of course! Jean had been living on a planet of happy bubbles. He brought a suitcase of those bubbles to Brooklyn. Days later, the bastards blew up the towers and we moved to Queens. Stay ahead of the curve, we thought, stick to the margins. We were starting to feel a sense of confidence. Not one of us knew what anyone else was doing but sometimes we’d look at each other in the glow of late-night tinkering on a just-about-to-open show and we’d nod in the way that says, “Freedom, goddammit, just a little bit of frickin’ freedom.” We nominated Shuffy queen of the new art ship and continued to make things up as we went along. Our philosophy was tape and the ability for tape to hold fabric tunnels together. Our mantra was “Good Enough!” Our ethics were to let everyone talk until sheer exhaustion made us love each other. Has anyone ever had a better idea?

Just as Shuffy and I were petering out the Gods sent us a savior out of Israel via Toronto. This messiah we called “Chen”. Chen picked up the pieces and started things anew. She blew some dust on Jean’s happy bubbles, tweaked the gonogonatros and extra-invigorated the wingdingers. Thank Heaven. It’s a new era. But a lot is the same, too. A spirit of mystery and hole pissing has maintained itself all along.

God knows there are more important things in the world, but I will always love Flux Factory especially. One thing art does, at least, is to make sure that the actual world doesn’t get too grumpy and set in its ways. At Flux, we always figured out new ways. Usually, they were worse than the previous ways, but they were ours. We built a world together over the years. It took a long list of crazies and their unemployed friends to do it. But we built a world together. I will not ever forget that. And the story continues.

Love to all,

Morgan Meis, original Founder

OPENING FEB 19th, 8pm till late (click for info)

Thank you to our amazing volunteers!

Lamia Akar, Nicole Caruso, Sheila Donovan-Moore, Eileen Emond, Moses Gates, Justin Grotelueschen, Melanie Hegge, Charlotte Herzig, Elizabeth Larison, Carly Leibman, Karen Lynn Miller, Ian Montgomery, James O’Meara, Sarah Overholt, Michael Owen, Terence Smith, Damon Peletier, Sammy Phuntsog, Margaret Rosario, Tucker Sabath, Shalin Scupham, Christina Vassallo, Kerra Vick, Elizabeth White, and Lucy Yang.

Housebroken remains on view every Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.

Housebroken is made possible with public funds fromNew York State Council on the Arts,New York City Department of Cultural Affairs,
and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

We are grateful for the support of Campari,
Build It Green!, and Materials for the Arts

At long last I made a connection with the Flux Factory. They’d been on my radar for about two years, during which time I had made several feeble attempts to contact them via email and telephone. Over the course of those two years, I remotely watched them wrangle through ‘life threatening’ issues like finding a new space, as their former ‘factory’ had been committed to another purpose, and for a while they ran a ‘virtual factory’.

The Flux Factory is an amalgam of artists that seems to operate as a sort of socialistic whole. Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what that means either, but intuitively I think it’s an apt description. Click here to read the full story about the Flux Factory in the LIC / Long Island City neighborhood of Queens.

This month’s Flux Thursday is on March 11th, from 8 pm on.

Come for the potluck dinner and performances, stay for the sheer awesomeness.

Works and performances by Elizabeth Larison, K. Olive McKeon, the Metric System, and S.L.Á.T.U.R.

Suggested donation, $15 (tax-deductible)
Open bar courtesy of Campari, 21+
Please rsvp to rsvp@fluxfactory.org

click here for our facebook event invite!

Join us on Friday, February 19th for Housebroken, Flux’s inaugural show! In celebration of our newest home, we’ve invited dozens upon dozens of artists to create works throughout the building. Housebroken is easily our biggest project ever, with over 100 installations, performances, and homey additions to our factory…. Eclectic performances and unparalleled reverie begin at 8 pm, continuing on into the night.

Housebroken will remain on view every Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.

click here for full project information.

On Goings, Happenings and Performances for Feb. 19th:

8:00 – 9:00 Nick Golebiewski & Marin Tockman Souper Ate dinner party and projection, kitchen

8:00 – 9:00 Adrian Owen: Arias in the Shower

9:00 – 9:30 Olive McKeon, Quiet raucous on the kitchen table

8:00 – 11:00 Nelson Loskamp: Electric chaircut, gallery annex

8:00 – 10:00 David & David perform Self Help Singing Sculpture, elp,gallery

10:00 – 10:30 White Limo rocking metal in the pit

10:30 – 2:00 DJ Taliesin and Mosholu Park with video art by NES.Avi

Throughout the evening:

Anna Lise Jensen: Conversation Piece in the library

Matt Levy: Action Misdirection, tours of the building. Find him.

Lucille Calmel: Intimate performance and screening in downstairs studio.

SKOTE: To grok (pronounced /ˈɡrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity.

Tracy Gilman, David Schleifer & Lauren Silberman Make It Happen in the office

more info click here..

Housebroken is made possible with public funds from New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs,and the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

We are grateful for the support of Campari, Build It Green!, and Materials for the Arts.

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.

http://manbartlett.com

–

Sent from [his] iPhone

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

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

Opening Reception Dec 3rd, 6-9pm

Exhibition runs Dec 3rd – 8th, 2009
Open Hours: Saturday 12-6pm or by appointment
To schedule a viewing please call 718 707 3362

Flux Factory is proud to present a collaborative exhibition by Paula Castro and Cyprien Chabert.  Castro, a renowned Argentinian artist and member of Flux Factory’s international residency program, and French artist Chabert will create an installation and present drawings of geological wonders and fabricated landscapes to be accompanied by a small library of handmade books.  The exhibition includes a selection of books from Nick Normal’s “Expansive Library,” an ongoing collection of facsimile knowledge.

“Euclidean Space”

Opening Reception Dec 17th, 6-9pm
Exhibition runs Dec 17th – 27th, 2009
Open Hours: Saturday 12-6pm or by appointment
To schedule a viewing please call 718 707 3362

Anna So Young Han is a Korean artist and a member of Flux Factory’s international residency program. Her work straddles the line between painting and sculpture, creating magnificent visual experiences that reference op art and hard-edge abstraction.

www.andreadezso.com

http://www.breadandbuttercollective.com

The Bread and Butter Collective is a group of print makers dedicated to earning their daily bread while creating a space to enjoy life’s butter: community, progressive change, and creative process. We offer artists affordable access to silk-screening supplies, equipment, and work with both for-profit businesses and politically progressive organizations and individuals to create printed matter. With the studio as our base, collective members are able to support social change by subsidizing activists with money earned from commercial jobs. in this way, we are able to leverage our skills to earn a living while contributing to our community.

http://www.freedimensional.org

freeDimensional (fD) advances social justice by hosting activists in art spaces and using cultural resources to strengthen their work. We…

1. Provide resources and safe haven for oppressed activists and culture workers.
2. Facilitate knowledge-sharing among art spaces who actively participate in local community organizing.
3. Engage the art world and mainstream media to heighten public awareness and influence policy change on critical issues.

http://spweatherstation.net

Co-founded by artists Natalie Campbell and Heidi Neilson in 2007, SP Weather Station is an interdisciplinary project that collects weather data, hosts a Guest Lecture Series, and organizes weather-related publications, events, and exhibitions.

Saturday 11/28 at 6pm
Central Booking, 111 Front Street, Gallery 214, Brooklyn, NY 11201

Brandstifter and HuelsTrunk are celebrating the funky collages and cut-up texts of their recent release,Antibodies.  They will perform sound loops, give lectures and screenings, sign books, and present limited handmade editions of their book.  Antibodies is part of the artist book collection of MoMA.  The release will be followed by a performance by Sk Orchestra with Casio Sk1s, strips of modern plastic, and vintage circuitry.  The orchestra samples conventional elements of the sonic spectrum, fuel for regeneration.

Antibodies is a collaborative book project by interdisciplinary artist and musician Mainz-based Brandstifter (Firestarter), currently residing in New York, and word-and-sound artist Dirk HuelsTrunk from Frankfurt.  A modern guidebook meant to enhance our understanding of mental and physical health, it also establishes a well-balanced relationship between truth and folly.  Antibodies disconnects body parts, misunderstanding first aid manuals and distorting medical facts.  Absurdities and nonsense are applied to strengthen the vital immune power and keep inherent performance constraints at bay. Brandstifter used a yellowed German first aid book from the 1930’s as the source for his absurd collaging.  The Antibodies text, cut up, crafted, and collaged by Dirk HuelsTrunk, is based on medicine and nursing books.  With the help of modern surgery, it is possible to twist the cold-technical-abstract-bureaucratic language of medicine and give it a poetic surreality.

Antikörper/Antibodies €“ Brandstifter & HuelsTrunk

Lichtblau Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2009

24 collages and a silkscreen print

24 cut-up texts in German and English

English by Fred W. Bergmann

www.lichtblau-verlag.de

Best Deal of the Century
(It’s true, with inflation)

Join us for a stellar night of performances, music, free booze, and excellent people.

With specially commissioned prints at extremely ridiculous prices.* Dec 10th, 2009

Open bar cocktails at 7:30

Performances at 8:30

Suggested Donation $20

39-31 29th Street
Long Island City, NY 11101

We’ll have box sets with limited-edition work by:

Brandstifter, Bread & Butter Collective, Andrea Dezso, Kerry Downey, Heather Jones, Aya Kakeda, Miwa Koizumi, Simone Meltesen, Nick Normal, Ward Shelley, and Swoon

Priced at a measly $1500 per box set

And!

Goody bags with limited-edition work by:

Parfyme, Paula Castro, and Georgia Muenster

and other surprises for only $50!

Performances and screenings by:

April March, Adira Amram and Nick Jones, Marie Losier, Nick Yulman, and Sxip Shirey

and surprise special guests!

Open bar cocktails start at 7:30

Performances at 8:30

Suggested Donation $20

*Art makes awesome holiday gifts!

39-31 29th Street
Long Island City, NY 11101

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.

Prior to Flux, Katrina attended SUNY Purchase and received her BFA in 2007 for painting and drawing. In 2009, she found her way up to Boston, MA and is a MFA candidate school at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Katrina is pursuing installation with different materiality and video from a painting background.

Along with painting, Katrina has also curated shows in New York and Virginia and has had literary publications review her shows, such as ArtNews.

She was involved in these Flux exhibitions:

Make Out Party

Everything Must Go

Flux Benefit 2008

You can check out her website: [www.katrinaneumann.com]

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.

Our recipes will be all-vegan, you can modify to taste.

We’ll discuss techniques, durations, temperatures, and health benefits of probiotics. We’ll have some samples for tasting and every participant will walk away with a self-made starter jar to enjoy later.

(Rumor is sauerkraut will also make an appearance!)

***

THERE ARE TWO AVAILABLE WORKSHOPS THIS MONTH. They’re identical so you need only sign up to one. We are using EventBrite to manage ticket sales and logistics. If you cannot sign up with EventBrite please let nick[at]geekathon[dot]net know – it’s a new feature for us too!

The workshops are $20, and will include tasting session! The fee will help pay for materials (cabbage!) and maintain Flux’s 501(c)(3) programming.

Thursday – 12 November – 7-9pm – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/474510273
Monday – 23 November – 7:30-9:30pm – http://www.eventbrite.com/event/481698774

Thursday, October 22, at 7:30 pm

In the early 1980s many German musicians were influenced by the punk movement and by visual artists (e.g. Joseph Beuys and Fluxus). Bands such as Die Tadliche Doris and Einsturzende Neubauten considered themselves performance artists and declared that only mistakes and failure could create something radical and new.

The affects of the 1980s creative scene in Berlin is still rippling throughout the art world, affecting artists around the world, though it remains largely overlooked.

Martin Buesser will outline this formative period in music history and its social context, and will play rare music and a short film.

Martin Buesser writes about contemporary art and music. His works include the book Antifolk and the CD Sidewalk Songs & City Stories, New Urban Folk.

$10 suggested donation

We will organize another workshop for December or January hopefully. Thanks for understanding!

Join Us on Wednesday, October 21 @ 7-9pm for our first artist-in-residence guided workshops!

MORE WORKSHOP! LESS SCIENCE!
The artist informs us that the event will focus more around the workshop, with a short introductory course on the history (not so much “science”) of LEDs – then we’ll make some toys!

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.

September 18th October 24, 2009

Opening Reception, Thursday, September 17 from 6-8 pm

Flux Factory and EFA Project Space are proud to present Arctic Book Club, on view from September 18 through October 24, at EFA Project Space in Manhattan.  Curated by Jean Barberis and Michelle Levy, this exhibition is the result of a several-month long process embarked on by a group of artists responding to Tété Michel Kpomassie’s book, “An African in Greenland,” an account of the author’s unique journey from his native Togo to Greenland.

On September 23rd at 6:30 pm, Arctic Bookclub welcomes Kpomassie to respond to the exhibition and reflect on his experiences since having left Greenland.

Artists:  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.

EFA Project Space
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
(between 8th and 9th Avenues)

Gallery Hours: Wed. through Sat. 12-6 PM

T. 212-563-5855, F. 212-563-1875

www.efa1.org

Artic-Circle_Press_release

9pm till late, $15 bucks.