Not content to throw a mundane holiday fund-raiser, the upstarts from LIC artist collective Flux Factory shook things up at their Not-So-Silent Auction. Fluxers and their friends lined the walls and topped display tables with original works (check out some of the items in our slide show). While those attracted bids, less financially endowed partyers could spend $25 on a knockoff work by one of the carnation-wearing artists on hand. They would even create small alterations to the original. Matt Levy emceed the event in a teal suit, while Nato Thompson of Creative Time and Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City were honored with plaques bearing a gas mask and a loudspeaker, respectively.

The Floating Neutrinos were a bohemian family who sailed around the Northern Hemisphere in house boats made of scavenged wood. I actually met them on-board one of these funky floating domiciles in 1998 while gathering sound for an NPR story about the State of New York’s efforts to evict them from the Hudson River off of Lower Manhattan. When Papa Neutrino, a.k.a. David Pearlman, dropped by my loft to pick up a copy of the NPR story, he asked if the piece mentioned his plan to cross the Atlantic and establish a floating orphanage in India. I told it did not and Papa Neutrino– may he rest in peace– was quite annoyed. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I thought there was no way the scrappy houseboat was capable of a trans-Atlantic voyage, especially after watching a harrowing video of it being tossed around in 12-foot swells off of Labrador. Some months later, sitting on a bench at the Union Square farmer’s market in Manhattan, I looked in disbelief at the front page of the New York Daily News. The Neutrinos, who were aiming for France, had landed in Ireland!

A few years later, the Neutrinos drifted into Port Isabel, Texas where a 19 year-old college dropout named Constance Hockaday was living with her parents. Hockaday, a rather alienated young woman, immediately became enthralled with the idea of living on a boat and not paying rent. Before long, she was on the boat, so to speak. Her life hasn’t been the same since.

That was ten years ago and if you sit with Hockaday, as I did recently, and listen to her explain the impact the Neutrinos have had on her worldview, or her admiration of Nancy Boggs, who presided over a floating brothel on the Wilamette River in 19th Century Portland, Oregon, you definitely come away with the sense that if anyone was going to create a floating hotel on Jamaica Bay in New York City, it would be Hockaday.

Over the course of a month from early June till early July, she and a small crew of DIY volunteers transformed an old houseboat and the fiberglass hulls of four abandoned motor boats into a “boatel.” This cheap hotel is located at a marina in the Rockaways, a strip of New York City waterfront that has become a destination in recent years for young hipsters. Marina 59 is situated on an inlet with a bird’s eye view of jumbo jets taking off from John F. Kennedy airport. The five vessels are attached to two pencil docks and a floating platform on to which Hockaday has erected a wood frame for a movie screen. Hell, if you’re going to make a floating hotel, why not include a “boat-in” movie theater?

The marina is a fitting location for these unconventional accommodations. It has a couple of goats on the premises that roam around “mowing” the lawn, two shipping containers being transformed into an art gallery/performance space, and one of the houseboats at Marina 59 is an off-the-grid vessel named Jerko where sustainability workshops are held. Jerko includes a composting toilet on a raft. Where else would you moor a boatel but a few paces from Jerko at the end of Dock C?
“I did throw around the idea of creating a floating brothel but I don’t know if I’m quite madame material,” Hockaday says with a straight face.

For as little as $50, you can spend a night at what has been christened the Boggsvile Boatel. Ms. Nancy Boggs, a houseboat that is more than 40 years old and can supposedly sleep up to five, is named after the infamous Oregonian madame. It goes for $100 a night and is described on the boatel’s web page as a “down-home love nest” with two beds, one of which “can fit 3.5 people… It is the perfect place to roll around with more than one or two.” Okay…

The rest of the boatel consists of motorboats sans engines. Most are around 30 feet long. They don’t have electricity, so guests rely on candles or flashlights. And the boats don’t have working bathrooms, so it’s a long walk down Dock C, past some picnic tables and a parking lot, to Marina 59′s showers and toilets. The marina’s communal bathrooms have a sign warning tenants not to scale fish in the sink under penalty of expulsion.

Boatel guests get a warning, too, after signing a liability waver. The welcome letter informs them that the boatel is not a real hotel. “This is an adventure at best and an art project at worst,” it says. And the letter warns “if we feel that you are too drunk or obnoxious, we reserve the right to send you home in a taxi at your expense.”

Still, despite the lack of amenities and the fact that the boatel is at least an hour by subway from Manhattan, it’s sold out for the rest of the summer. The place is supposed to close on Labor Day.

Among those who spent a night there are Brooklynites Greta Gertler and Adam Gold, who were celebrating their third anniversary. The couple has a band called The Universal Thump.

“I didn’t realize how much I actually really enjoy watching planes take off,” said Gertler, as a steady stream of jumbo jets ascended from Kennedy Airport and soared east over the Atlantic. “It’s just a matter of stopping for a while and watching what’s around you. New York is generally a great place to do that but this takes it to another level,” she says with a laugh.

Gertler and Gold sat on the deck of the Queen Zenobia drinking beer as the sun set on the not totally rustic maritime getaway. Later they barbecued sausage on foot-high grills in the darkness. It was so cool at the marina that evening, your MAKE correspondent wished he had brought a flannel shirt.

If it weren’t for the periodic roar of jet planes taking off and the A train rumbling by on elevated subway track a couple of blocks away, it’s easy to forget you’re in New York City. The Jamaica Bay nature preserve is off in the distance and as you look into the bay, JFK’s air traffic control tower sticks out over the tree line. On one side of the inlet there’s a public housing project and on the other a school bus parking lot. The boatel also has a great view of a sunken tugboat, portions of which become more visible with the changing tide. The old tug is symbolic of what happens to old vessels that are not worth salvaging. It was simply left to rot dead in the water.

Marina 59, like so many other boat marinas around the country, has been plagued by owners abandoning their vessels. Owner Ari Zablozki was eager to donate fiberglass motor boat hulls to Hockaday’s wacky project. The abandoned boats cost several hundred dollars each to have junked.

“People abandon their boasts very quickly,” complains Zablozki, who has movie star good looks and happens to own a bar in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. “Once the engines in these fiberglass-hulled boats are gone, they’re basically worthless, so the people who own them usually just dump them on the marina. When I took over a year and a half ago, there was about 90 junked boats piled on top of each other in the back. It’s horrible. It becomes a giant junkyard, so you have to really stay on top of it.”

It can cost as much as $10,000 to replace a failed engine in a motor boat, according to Nobby Peers of Whitworth Marine Services in Patchogue, Long Island. Boat owners usually decide that with new boats costing around $15,000 to $20,000, it doesn’t make sense to sink so much money into a battered fiberglass hull, says Peers who makes his living doing marine engine restorations.

Needless to say, Zablozki was more than happy to donate the abandoned boats at his marina to Hockaday’s boatel. He was introduced to Hockaday by the Flux Factory, a Long Island City-based arts group that organized Sea Worthy, a series of exhibitions, installations and boat trips celebrating the city’s marine heritage. Flux Factory helped Hockaday gather donations of building materials and decorating supplies from two local non-profits, Build It Green NYC and Materials for the Arts. Hockaday is reported to have spent $2,000 out of her own pocket on the boatel, some of which went to a neon sign at the end of Dock C that proclaims “BOATEL.” She’s also collected lumber in dumpsters around Queens and Brooklyn for the project. Some of the volunteers came from a mention in Nonsense NYC, a weekly email that lists quirky art projects. “We have a barbecue pit and the swimming is good,” the call for volunteers noted.

“Some of the biggest work that we did was actually getting the boats to float,” explains Hockaday, who has an undergraduate degree in Participatory Community Development from Prescott College in Arizona. “We had to put them on cranes, lower them into the water, found out that they leaked like all hell, plugged them up, sealed them. This and that. I mean, that was probably the bulk of the work.” There was also some upholstering done with a staple gun and ripping out a lot of old, moldy carpet inside the boats. Hockaday insists she’s not trying to bring Burning Man to Far Rockaway.

“There had to be an element of it that was adventurous enough to really feel like you were stepping off of that dock and into a different place, but not so aesthetically overwhelming to separate it from what is already here and already really beautiful,” she explains.

Many of the working class fishermen who keep their boats at the marina were unaware of the boatel’s existence. But Rob Bryn, a 34 year-old musician who sublet his apartment in Brooklyn for the summer and is staying in a fiberglass hull he is renovating on Dock B, is hip to the boatel scene. Bryn spray painted his name on the hull of his craft and placed several five-gallon buckets with house plants on the bow.

“The economy being what it is, this is a vacation spot that’s a subway ride away,” he points out. “So the fact that people can come on down here and get acquainted with this place, I think is great.”

One of my favorite things about New York is the waterfront. As a tour guide, I pound pavement and strut the streets, but getting onto the water, with the Harbor breeze in my hair and the salt spray in my nostrils, thats the stuff. So when I heard about participating in The Battle For Mau Mau Island, two weekends ago, I couldn’t say no.

Last summer Flux Factory, an art collective based in Long Island City, organized a number of bus trips around the tri-state area. Then the bus got sold. And Flux Factorians learned how to build canoes. Therefore, this summer Flux declared The Summer of the Boat, with all sorts of funny boat-themed events, most of them taking place at Marina 59 in the Far Rockaways. When Swimming Cities, (another fantastic art collective who plans to sail to the Ganges in October) asked Flux to participate in the Inaugural Battle for Mau Mau Island, then they Swimming Cities asked me and Matt to MC, we knew it was going to be another one-of-a-kind NYC summertastic event. How could it not? Do-It-Yourself boat builders, toxic punks, ancient Rowman warriors (get it?) and art stars of all kinds came out to the southern tip of Brooklyn, in Gerritsen Beach to participate. They came with rafts, catamarans and real-deal motorboats for a day of water-based activities.

Once we were on the anchored, engine-free Chris Craft, armed with megaphones, we opened our mouths and did what we do best – talked loudly. First up – a circumnavigational, 4 mile, row-powered race around Mau Mau. Competitors included an arty catamaran called “Good Enough,” an ancient skeleton revived as a canoe named “Lazarus Rex,” a go-nowhere raft entitled “Mermaid Sea Monkeys,” and a sad, barely connected batch wooden planks that went by the crafty title of “S.S. Botulism”. The winner was a no-nonsense team of rowers called “The Notorious G.I.G.”

After the race, all participants came ashore for the event that everyone was waiting for…the Boat Joust! Just off shore, two teams of rowers in 15-ft canoes picked up as much momentum as possible while warriors, standing in the back of each canoe & clad in floatable armor aimed 10 ft long Styrofoam jousting poles at each other. Most of the time somebody fell off, but if you ask me, everyone was a winner!

After the Boat Joust, it was time for a well-deserved drink. Where else to head but to a DIY bar installed underneath a Belt Pkwy bridge!? Duke Riley; artist, provocateur, submarine builder and mastermind behind a giant Roman-style aquatic battle undearneath the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows in 2009, built his bar out of driftwood and lined the “liquor shelves” with vintage bottles found on Bottle Beach, near Dead Horse Bay. Called the Dead Horse Inn, drinks cost a measly five cents and one could get any whiskey, gin, vodka or rum drink they thirsted for.

Lit by tiki torches, with the sun setting over Manhattan so very far away, yet the outline of the Empire State Building still very visible. It was one of the more memorable moments in the bar, when all the day’s warriors raised a glass to celebrate NY’s aquatic culture and wondered aloud at this magical arty, marshy, reedy no man’s land, stil within New York City.

After hearing about Flux Factory artist Constance Hockaday’s floating art project/ boat hotel in the Rockaways last month, we decided to take a little staycation and check out the Boatel for a night. The once-abandoned boats, tethered at the end of fisherman’s favorite Pier 59, are by no means luxury accommodations, and Hockaday is quick to stress that this isn’t a real hotel. Instead, it’s a gathering place for creative types to pontificate and play music at the Floating Theater, take rowboats out on Jamaica Bay, and stay up all night drinking whiskey. Here’s a look at what to expect, and our talk with Hockaday about the floating project, which will be up through Labor Day.

Where did idea for this whole thing come from? I named the Boatel for Nancy Boggs, who ran a floating brothel in Portland. I didn’t want to do a brothel, ethically, because I’m not a sex worker, so it just didn’t feel right. But I did want to do a boat hotel. I’ve been building on the water for ten years, I was involved with Swimming Cities a few years back. My dad is a marine biologist, I’ve always loved the water. I used to write poems to the ocean. I’ve always had a fascination with the water.

How long did it take to put the Boatel together? Flux Factory picked up my proposal in March. In June, I met Ari, the marina owner, and he also wanted a Boatel. He donated all the boats.

What were the boats before? They were just abandoned boats, trash boats really.

What did you have to do to boats to turn them into a Boatel? Basically I had to rip out the interiors, put in paneling, seal up the leaks so they would float. [Laughs.] Most of them, I had to strip the entire insides. Then I got to decorate [motions toward the assorted nautical knicknacks.]

How did you promote the Boatel? Did you do any advertising or was it more word of mouth? No, none. Flux Factory has a really dedicated group of artists who follow them. And then when the New York Times picked us up things got a little crazy. Now it’s getting huge. BBC was here shooting earlier today, some Chinese television station is coming tonight…it’s pretty nuts.

Who are most of the people who stay here? It’s mainly other artists. But it varies, too, we’ve been selling out pretty much right from the get-go.

The programming at the Floating Theater—was that always a part of your idea? [Ed note: The night we visited, artist Jeff Stark came aboard the floating theater to discuss Moby Dick backed by a live stand-up bass and video projections.] Absolutely. We’ve shown videos, documentaries about water, heard from people who are doing political or scientific things with water, all sorts of stuff. We didn’t just want it to be this bar scene full of drunk people– even though sometimes it can turn into that, at least there was some smart stuff beforehand.

What happens at the end of the season? On Labor Day, we’ll pull the boats out, and tear them down. I’m sure the marina will do something with them.

Will there be a Boatel next year? I’m sure. I think the marina definitely wants to do something again. I’ll probably help them get it set up, but I’m kind of hoping that I’ll get called to some other part of the planet to do a Boatel there.

The newest form of hospitality has opened on the shores of Far Rockaway. Think a series of boats from the 70’s and early 80’s that have been re-crafted by artist Constance Hockaday to serve as “boatels.” Six boats in total, the majority were former fishing vessels salvaged from the area and now given a new life at Marina 59 at Far Rockaway.

29-year-old Hockaday drew inspiration for the Boggsville Boatel and Boat-In Theater from the 19th century pioneer Ms. Nancy Boggs. Boggs ran a floating brothel in the Willamette River to evade the authorities. Although a different type of entertainment from what Boggs’ vessel provided, the Boat-In Theater offers movies and lectures focused on water-related themes. They are hoping to screen Random Lunacy, a documentary based on the Floating Neutrinos, and Last Free Ride, a documentary about a houseboat community in the 60’s and 70’s in Sausalito, California. If you are looking to have a more “Boggs-like” experience, you may be lucky enough to catch a water-themed vintage porn show.

While many would think of staying on a boat as a luxury, the prices make it quite accessible—$50-100 is suggested for a night’s stay. The boats provide a rustic, camping-like experience. They have no water or electricity, although the nearby marina provides all the necessary amenities such as bathrooms and showers. There are grills on the platform and guests are encouraged to bring their own food and drink. For local information, artist TJ Hospodar has established an “office of local tourism” that is located at the marina.

Unfortunately, if you are hoping to book a room at the Boatel, it is sold out for this season (a good sign for what was deemed an experimental, artistic project). Given the high demand, it will likely re-open next summer or at least prompt other local boaters to give a new life to their boats as well.

From now until September 4, the public is invited to participate in the evening film and lecture series that run Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. There are also many other seaworthy events scheduled for the summer. For more information on specific events or to RSVP to attend an evening night of entertainment, contact the Flux Factory, a Queens gallery that is helping support the project.

Art galleries in the summer tend to have the same breezy feel as high schools during the last week or two of classes. It’s still technically time for business, but not exactly as usual. Everything is more casual; curators are invited to be bold; partnerships are forged. This year a trio of nonprofit art organizations (Flux Factory, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and the Gowanus Studio Space) have come together to produce Sea Worthy, an ambitious three-part project unfolding over the summer—complete with workshops and water-bound excursions—that opened with a group exhibition.

The exhibition is a microcosm of the larger project. The waterways of New York City are the focal point, though much of the work of the roughly two-dozen participating artists engages broader maritime themes. Rachel Bacon, for example, contributes a 1:1 scale model of the wee dinghy used by some hopeful Cuban attempting the sea crossing to Florida. “Looking for a Safe Haven” (2011) may have little to do with the NY harbor, per se, but the idea of one man ready to risk life and/or imprisonment on such a vulnerable little vessel is something New Yorkers can appreciate. It seems like we read about bets gone bad regularly these days.

Quite a few artists set out on bona fide expeditions. Ciaran O’Dochartaigh’s video, “Subarctic Expedition” (2010 – 11), documents a two-part fishing voyage in Canada and Ireland for the elusive Arctic Char and its landlocked relative. Like O’Dochartaigh, Michael Arcega’s “Lexical Borrowing: saw horse by the sea shore-understanding Manifest Destiny”(2011) involved building a boat for the artist’s ongoing journey, which loosely follows Lewis and Clark’s route on numerous bodies of water across the United States. These projects share a common desire to integrate historical and quasi-mythical precedents with contemporary places and practices. They are less pioneering than poetic, since the object of the expedition is, precisely, the expedition.

This is not the case for Reid Stowe who spent roughly three years at sea (two of them alone) continuously. His “Cape Horn Whale Chart” (2009) consists of a map that traces his course (he used GPS to log his location daily) mounted on a piece of sail from his boat. When Stowe noticed he was inadvertently outlining the shape of a whale, he adjusted his tack and completed a performance-based GPS drawing. The work has more than a touch of Romanticism’s mystical nature to it, if only because Stowe’s journey seems so incredible—it is a world record after all.

This character of mysticism comes through in other works that feature more subtle gestures than Stowe’s. Anne Percoco’s “Kilmer Shrines” (2008) and George Boorujy’s “New York Pelagic” (2011) are both projects that cater to serendipity and coincidence while simultaneously drawing attention to our often-overlooked relationship with the ocean. Percoco built shrines at the sites of the drainage system on Rutger’s campus, which flows into the Raritan River and onward to the Atlantic. Recycling detritus to construct her sparse arrangements, these humble monuments were off any official paths, which meant one often simply stumbled upon them. Boorujy’s project involves sending messages in bottles. He puts one original drawing (of an open ocean bird) and one explanation/questionnaire in each bottle, which is engraved with the title of his project and capped with a good wax seal. It would be a nice thing to find: that’s Boorujy’s hope, if not his expectation. He launches his work into New York’s waterways, an act that simultaneously highlights our nasty habit for polluting and our glorious capacity for sacrifice and gift giving.

The Achilles heel of summer shows with expansive themes is a tendency to lack serious cohesion. So it’s a testament to the curatorial team’s savvy that such an ample spread of work—sculpture, drawing, photography, mixed media, and performance-based video—could be brought together without incurring too much conceptual static. I’ve been to plenty of thematic exhibitions that sprawl and drift like the great Pacific garbage patch. This is not one of them. There may be a lot of boats here, but this is much more than a boat show.

For just $50, you can spend a night at the “boatel” that just opened in Far Rockaway.

Yes, the 30-foot-long motorboats converted into floating hotel rooms have some drawbacks: Light is provided by citronella candles, jets taking off from JFK across Jamaica Bay can be deafening and it’s a long walk down the dock to Marina 59′s bathroom and showering facilities.

So, of course, the place is sold out for July.

And August.

And through Labor Day – though it may extend the season and add additional weekdays to its Thursday-Saturday availability.

“I’m not trying to bring Burning Man to Far Rockaway,” insists 29-year-old Constance Hockaday, the Texas native behind the project. “I just wanted it to be adventurous enough so that when you were stepping off of that dock and onto this dock it feels like you’re in a different place.”

Mission accomplished. Hockaday and a crew of volunteers spent a month renovating four abandoned fiberglass motorboats at the marina, which are now tied to a floating platform with a frame for an 8-foot-by-12-foot movie screen.

If you’re going to make a boatel, why not throw in a “boat-in” movie theater?

The fifth boat in the boatel, a 1967 houseboat described online as a “down-home love nest,” can sleep up to five and is named after a 19th-century madame named Nancy Boggs, who ran a floating brothel on the Wilamette River in Oregon. The renovated houseboat, which comes with a deer head mounted on an interior wall, goes for $100 a night.

“I did throw around the idea of creating a floating brothel but I don’t know if I’m quite madame material,” Hockaday says with a straight face.

Hockaday grew up in Port Isabel, Tex., and earned a bachelor’s degree in Participatory Community Development in Oregon. When she was 19, Hockaday spent time with the Floating Neutrinos, a bohemian family who sailed a houseboat made of junk around the Northern Hemisphere.

In 1998 the Neutrinos clashed with New York State authorities over their right to anchor the funky floating home in the Hudson River off of Chambers St. That summer they sailed for 60 days from Newfoundland to Castletownbere, Ireland. They were aiming for France.

Four humans, three dogs and a piano survived a Force 9 gale during the transatlantic voyage. Hockaday cites the Neutrinos as a major influence on her worldview.

It’s a worldview with a heavy dose of Do-It-Yourself attitude. Although the hammer-wielding woman is reported to have spent $2,000 on the boatel, she collected lumber in dumpsters around Queens and Brooklyn for the project. Building and decorating supplies were donated by Build It Green NYC and Materials for the Arts, two non-profits who helped, thanks to Flux Factory, a Long Island City-based arts group.

The boatel is part of Seaworthy, Flux Factory’s series of exhibitions, installations and boat trips celebrating the city’s marine heritage.

Flux Factory also introduced Hockaday to the owner of Marina 59, Ari Zablozki, who was eager to donate fiberglass motor boat hulls. The marina, like so many other around the country, is plagued by tenants abandoning their boats, which cost several hundred dollars each to have junked.

“People abandon their boasts very quickly,” says Zablozki. “When I took over a year and a half ago, there was about 90 junk boats piled on top of each other in the back. It’s horrible.”

Zablozki is determined to transform the marina, which is mostly used by working-class fishermen.

A project on the website Kickstarter has raised more than $12,000 for an art gallery and performance space that is being made out of two shipping containers at the marina. A houseboat known as Jerko, which is used for workshops on rainwater harvesting and building solar panels, is anchored within a few yards of the boatel.

The DIY vibe appeals to Rob Bryn, a 34-year-old musician who sublet his apartment in Williamsburg and is spending the summer in one of Zablozki’s abandoned fiberglass hulls. Bryn’s “floating cabin” is on a dock adjacent to the boatel, which he thinks is a worthy concept.

“The economy being what it is, this is a vacation spot that’s a subway ride away,” said Bryn. “I think the fact that people can come down here and get acquainted with this place is great.”

Not everyone in the neighborhood thinks the boatel makes sense. When informed of the project last week, David Giles, who lives eight blocks away, was incredulous.

“All I can say is that something needs to be done about that.”

The marina and Flux Factory have made sure they have a legal life preserver of sorts. 
Boatel guests are required to sign a liability waiver and they get a letter informing them that the boatel is “not a real hotel. This is an adventure at best and an art project at worst.”

The Rockaways adventure continues with Constance Hockaday’s
Boggsville Boatel and Boat-In Theater.

Nancy Boggs was clever. To keep authorities at bay, the Victorian-era madam ran her floating bordello on the Willamette River in Portland, OR, easy to move to the opposite side at the first hint of a potential raid. It was this 19^th century legend that inspired artist and boat builder Constance Hockaday – she spent time nurturing her passion for the aquatic life with the Floating Neutrinos, the intrepid family who lived on rafts of recycled junk – to create the Boggsville Boatel and Boat-In Theater in Far Rockaway, a flotilla of refashioned vintage vessels that had been abandoned at Marina 59.

“I’ve always been interested in water and its ambiguities,” shares Hockaday, the daughter of a marine biologist. “It’s so cool to use water to create a world and destination outside the law. But I’m not a sex worker, so I made a hotel instead.”

Hockaday unveiled the ambitious boatel – four circa ‘70s and ‘80s leisure fishing crafts and a 1967 houseboat – earlier this month, backed by Long Island City art collective, Flux Factory. Despite the constant roar of planes taking off at JFK overhead and having to sign a liability waiver, the $50-$100-a-night rate proved so popular among the curious, the boatel, only open on weekends, instantly sold out through its Labor Day run. “I’m surprised. I didn’t expect people to be that excited,” Hockaday points out. The good news is, because so many others are clamoring for a night on a 30-foot yacht or rustic floating cabin, today Hockaday will announce the boatel is expanding its schedule to Wednesdays and Sundays throughout the season.

There may not be Frette linens at this boatel, but guests will find a ready-to-please concierge in artist TJ Hospodar. Hospodar has not only drafted a two-sided map showing a detailed section of the peninsula and pointing out Jamaica Bay highlights, but he offers guided tours and a car service as well. “I also have loaner bicycles for self-exploration, because my intent is that guests see and love the area and that they have an overwhelmingly pleasant experience while on-site and also nearby. Simply put, hospitality is my primary concern.” In particular, Hospodar is thrilled to be involved in Hockaday’s project because “I invest in work that finds the audience actively engaged, whether that includes my performance as tour guide or taxi driver or just the simple fact that the guests have ventured past the galleries and museums of New York to the eastern edge in their effort to find far more rewarding a time.”

For those who can’t slot in a night on deck or require a rain shower, the Boat-In Theater provides water-themed entertainment such as viewings of Jacques Cousteau’s Clipperton: The Island Time Forgot, Porter Fox’s lecture on trekking Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, and Thursday night seafood boils. “I’m excited about sharing ideas on water and its presentation of inspiration and freedom,” Hockaday notes.

Marina 59, the five-acre waterfront marina and event space helmed by Ari Zablozki, was a choice spot for Hockaday’s project, but until she found out about it through Flux, she had never investigated Rockaway’s burgeoning arts scene. Having grown up on a barrier island in Texas, however, she is familiar with Far Rockaway’s distinct landscape. It’s the surge of Brooklyn hipsters who now make The Rockaways their weekend playground juxtaposed with the long-time locals that is proving to be Hockaday’s most eye-opening experience. “Rockaway’s a really interesting place; the marina is right by the projects. But I want to make that part of the conversation.”

As boat christenings go, this one was rollicking. In lieu of a Champagne bottle smashed against a hull, there was late-night bourbon and diving off the roof of the Queen Zenobia into dark waters lighted with natural phosphorescence. Nine strangers in bathing suits floated on an overwhelmed inflatable raft; a couple held hands on a pair of deck chairs; a moose head in a houseboat was decorated with a headlamp and a bra. Though the official ceremony would come later, on Friday night the Boggsville Boatel and Boat-In Theater, New York City’s newest and perhaps loopiest tourist outpost, was open for business.

Toting overnight bags and beer through a pounding rainstorm, guests arrived by A train or car at Marina 59, a working-class pier used by fishermen and pleasure boaters in an inlet off Jamaica Bay in Far Rockaway, Queens. Their home for the night was a floating hotel, a motley assortment of decades-old watercraft — four refurbished pleasure boats and a houseboat — moored around a jury-rigged floating platform. In calmer weather it will be the site of movies and lectures; for now it served as a midnight party space.

“It’s kind of a post-apocalyptic adventure,” said Katie McKay, 34, a designer from Brooklyn who was staying aboard the houseboat with four friends. “It doesn’t feel like you’re in New York at all.”

The Boatel is the work of an artist, Constance Hockaday, who said she hopes to attract the romantic and the adventurous — and amid them, the marina’s neighbors — to this unlikely getaway. Under the auspices of Flux Factory, a Queens gallery, it will be open for reservations Thursday through Saturday all summer long, an experiment in urban vacationing and D.I.Y. ingenuity. July is nearly sold out already.

“When you think about it, the water is the last remaining open public space,” said Jean Barberis, the artistic director of Flux Factory. “As artists and creative people venture more and more into the outer boroughs, there’s less and less unclaimed territory on land. But the water is still completely open.” Mr. Barberis said he sees the Boatel as part of a recent movement of artists exploring New York’s waterways, like Duke Riley, who staged a naval battle in a reflecting pool in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, and Swoon, the street artist behind the wide-ranging flotilla of paddle- and steam-powered junk rafts known as Swimming Cities.

For Ms. Hockaday, 29, the project is the fulfillment of a longtime desire to exist on the water in a way that is creative and financially self-sustaining. “My friend and I always argue about whether or not living on the water is like living at the end of something or living at the beginning of something,” she said in an interview on a houseboat the weekend before the Boatel opened. “It’s just always sort of felt like the leaping place.”

The project is not licensed as a business, and the nightly rental fee, which ranges from $50 to $100 depending on the boat, is billed as a donation. “Let’s first get one thing straight,” reads a welcome letter sent to its guests. “We are not a real hotel. This is an adventure at best and an art project at worst.”

And it’s not exactly an escape from New York. The placid, even lush water view is offset by the encroaching realities of city. The rumble of the elevated subway line nearby is outdone only by the roar of jets; Marina 59 sits directly beneath a flight path for Kennedy Airport. Housing projects with a population of nearly 4,500 — including factions of the Crips and the Bloods, according to the city authorities — overlook one bank of the inlet; a school bus depot sits on another. Boatel guests share space in the marina with civil-servant boat owners like Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Sanitation Department workers.

Ari Zablozki, the owner of Marina 59, inherited it a decade ago and began actively managing it in 2009. He knew nothing about the job; he owns a bar, Zablozki’s, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At first, he said, “we’re like, oh, maybe we should build a yoga studio.” But Mr. Zablozki, 42, saw potential in the marina as it was.

Having recently taken up classical painting and sculpture, he thought it could be an artists’ enclave, imagining a Storm King on the waterfront. He donated berths to artists including Ms. Hockaday and gave her the boats she used for the project, which would have been junked otherwise. For now Marina 59 is a money-losing venture, but Mr. Zablozki said he hopes that growing interest in the Rockaways — recently discovered by the Brooklyn-bohemian set as a cheap vacation destination — will keep visitors coming. “If I can figure out how to pay my real estate taxes with art, I will,” he said.

Mr. Zablozki said he had not investigated licensing for the Boatel. Calls to the Coast Guard, the Port Authority, the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs and the Finance Department (which oversees hotel taxes) to determine who might have jurisdiction over it produced a lot of quizzical reactions. A representative for the Hotel Association of New York City would not comment, except to say that it sounded like a city issue. Flux Factory requires Boatel guests to sign a liability waiver, and it is clear about risks like falling in the water. “I think if we do our job right, it should feel kind of illegal,” Mr. Barberis said.

Ms. Hockaday, who grew up on the water, in Port Isabel, Tex. — her father was a marine biologist, her mother a librarian — has been involved in outside-the-mainstream maritime projects for a decade. At 19 she was working renting beach umbrellas when she encountered the Floating Neutrinos, a family of wanderers who sailed around in a junk boat, and she dropped everything to help them build a 50-foot catamaran. Later she joined Swoon for two legs of her Swimming Cities project. She moved to Portland, Ore., completed an M.F.A. degree and began building a boat by hand as an art project.

In Portland she discovered the legend of Nancy Boggs, a 19th-century madam who flouted the authorities by running a floating brothel in the Willamette River, and who served as inspiration for the Boggsville Boatel. (“She’s like a female gangster,” Ms. Hockaday marveled.)

Even for an experienced artist-sailor, though, the Boatel proved overwhelming. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” Ms. Hockaday said the weekend before opening. The Boatel has no outside financing; it was built largely with found materials, donations and volunteers. (During an overnight visit, this reporter served as one of a half-dozen volunteers, cleaning cushions and anchoring boats.) So far Ms. Hockaday, who began working on site in early June, has sunk $2,000 of her own money into it, mostly for food and insect repellent for volunteers and a $200 neon “Boatel” sign. She hopes to recoup her investment, she said, but is not looking to make a profit.

Living on the Boatel is a bit like camping. The boats have no electricity and no functioning kitchens or bathrooms (though the marina has a spiffy new bathroom, complete with shower, and there are grills on the platform). And there is a concierge, T J Hospodar — or, as he bills himself, “the director of the office of local tourism” — to take guests on guided tours of the area.

Though Ms. Hockaday had never set foot in the Rockaways before she began her project, her fondest wish is to engage people in the community; she is planning to offer films and talks for the neighborhood children, in addition to documentaries and art lectures. “The boats and the hotel, at the end of the day, it’s like this elaborate scheme to have an audience,” she said.

Already life at Marina 59 is making for only-in-New-York juxtapositions. Over dinner with a bunch of the marina’s fishermen one night Ms. Hockaday said, a question arose: “What the hell is a hipster?” Ms. Hockaday offered that she was one, probably, and a younger fisherman added that they could be identified by their tight pants. Another night Ms. Hockaday and her volunteers were queried about their sexual orientation, in a conversation that was friendly but pointed.

Beth Perkins, a photographer who, with her husband, Keone Singlehurst, an art handler, took over the tackle and bait shop, Mr. Bait, in 2010, said the shift toward artists may initially irk some of her regular customers, mostly shore casters who live in the projects or nearby. “I think there’s going to be tension,” she said. “a little bit of a fear factor, because it’s change.”

But Richard Hunter, 68, a retired diesel truck mechanic and fisherman, was typical of many marina regulars who said they felt generally positive about the project. “I still don’t understand it,” he said. “But I thought it was a good thing” to introduce new people to seaside life.

If the Boatel succeeds, he added from aboard his boat, the Fishunter, “I’m going to put a vacancy sign up.”

When we first announced EFA Project Space’s SeaWorthy exhibit, we hinted that there were more sea-themed activities in the works for the summer months. The wait is over, the calendar has been filled, and it’s swimming in crafty festivities. Highlights include a Trajinera boat build, a christening ceremony and boat launch organized by artist Brindalyn Webster, and the construction of a mobile shrine led by Anne Percoco. August sees a weekend of Alalba Eco Tours that explore and document waterfront docking spaces, and for those who have an interest in sleeping at sea, the Contance Hockaday’s Boggsville Boatel project allows folks to rent boats by the night, entertainment included.

Time Out New York
By LINNEA COVINGTON
June 27, 2011
Read the original here.

The phrase summer school typically conjures memories of trying not to fall asleep in a stifling classroom while the rest of your friends are out playing. But Flux Factory’s Summer School series, beginning Saturday 2, is quite different from those boring daylong sessions; instead, instructors will lead classes on such eclectic topics as silk-screening, reading a tarot deck and “consciousness-raising.” “We turned to our expansive network of Fluxers [members of the collective] to submit class ideas,” says executive director Christina Vassallo. “In the end, we wanted our syllabus to strike a balance between bizarre and totally practical.” Stock up on pencils and notebooks, and check out four of the coolest seminars.

Hackposium (Sat 2 at 4pm; free)
What you’ll learn: “I consider hacking to be using things in a way other than their intended purpose,” says Summer School cocurator Jamie Idea. This free expo focuses on that act of transformation, featuring discussions, demonstrations and lectures on incorporating hacking into daily life. Topics covered include lock-picking, culture jamming, and the ethics and logistics of Dumpster diving.
One cool thing: The afternoon will touch on the concept of circuit-bending, as participants learn how to alter remote-controlled toys and obsolete iPod accessories, among other things.

Snails—Exploring the Next Frontier in Urban Farming (July 14 6:30–7:30pm; $15)
What you’ll learn: If you’re not the type to get squicked out by handling slimy gastropods, this is the class for you. Using South American Apple snails, artist Melanie Cohn will expound on their usefulness, how to raise and cook them, and the benefits of keeping them as pets. “They’re fun, easy, and kind of like fish in that they are calming and soothing to watch,” she explains. Participants will also receive a starter kit with a snail and a week’s worth of food.
One cool thing: Yes, we said cooking: Cohn will share recipes for the little buggers during the class; plus, she promises to teach you how tell the sex of a snail by looking for a boy’s “special package.”

Marzipan as a Medium (July 17 3–6pm; $60)
What you’ll learn: The pliable almond paste, which is traditionally used to make edible decorations for cakes and other confections, will be a medium for abstract art during this lesson led by artist Hanna Nordgren. She’ll provide the marzipan, food coloring and luster dust (to give the pieces a pretty sheen), but you should bring your own tools. (What constitutes a “tool” is up to you—Nordgren uses all sorts of objects, including the edge of a tin can, to make her shapes.)
One cool thing: Nordgren’s session was inspired by molecular gastronomy whizzes, including Wiley Dufresne and Grant Achatz. “[Marzipan] is like the working man’s food sculpture,” she says.

Herbal Concentrates (July 21 7–9pm; $25)
What you’ll learn: Stephen Switzer, who is the herb gardener and apothecary manager of Brooklyn’s Third Root Community Health Center, leads a course on herbal healing and the tinctures, syrups and salves you can make with plants. Among the restorative potions that you’ll concoct during the two-hour class are a calendula salve for skin health, and a tincture of tulsi (or Holy Basil), which helps alleviate stress.
One cool thing: “Food itself is medicine,” says Switzer. You ingest many common herbal remedies daily without even knowing it—garlic, ginger and cayenne pepper are all believed to have healing properties.

HIGHER LEARNING! Flux Factory, 39-31 29th St between 39th and 40th Aves, Long Island City, Queens (718-707-3362, fluxfactory.org). Sat 2–July 28; time and price vary; visit website for details.

As summer approaches, many New Yorkers head to the beaches along Long Island or the banks of the Hudson, to escape the heat island and pavement jungle. A few others build boats themselves to explore the East River or other waterways of the five boroughs. The life aquatic is a slice of open space in New York that few New Yorkers truly get to experience. New York City has 700 miles of coastline and 72 islands, but many New Yorkers rarely make it out to the waterfront, much less get in the actual water. In an attempt to buck that trend, Seaworthy, an art exhibition that opened this weekend at EFA Project Space celebrates the spirit of these artists, boatbuilders, and mariners with a series of public screenings, performances, lectures, workshops and artist-led excursions on the water.

When one thinks about midtown Manhattan, water may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But the curators at EFA working with Flux Factory and the Gowanus Studio Space have developed complementary programs that will not only get you thinking about the water in novel ways and will also teach you how to build a boat and take you out on the water.

One of my most memorable moments in NYC was riding in the Tide and Current Water Taxi, a rowboat water taxi built and run by artist Marie Lorenz. Looking at the Manhattan skyline while paddling in a rowboat through the treacherous waters of Hell’s Gate was humbling and exhilarating. Seaworthy reminded me of this trip. It leads you to think about a boat as a tool for collective action, and also as an opportunity for private reflection and freedom.

All of the artists in Seaworthy, use water and access to the water as a subject for their art. One of the highlights of the exhibit was George Boorujy’s NY Pelagic. George had been thinking about the giant garbage patches in the Pacific and wanted to do a project that highlighted our connection to, impact on, and ignorance of, the ocean and its wildlife. George also wanted to make a statement about what is considered garbage in our society and what items we as a society value. So he decided to create original drawings of pelagic (open ocean) birds and place them in glass bottles along with an information sheet about the project and his contact information. George then seals the bottle, and launches them into the water and their unknown fate. One of George’s NY Pelagic bottles was found in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, by a marine biologist, a few days after George released it in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Another highlight from the show was Jonathan Kaiser’s Janet II, a personal, portable vessel made out of garbage including chairs and plastic bags that show the second life that “garbage” potentially can have.

You can check out their pieces at EFA project space through July 29th. Throughout the rest of the summer, the Gowanus Studio Space is hosting a series of workshops on boatbuilding and nautical culture. Artist Natalia Porter will lead a Traditional Mexican Trajinera Building Workshop in partnership with architecture students in Xochimilco. After the Trajinera is launched, it will host a week of floating dinner conversations.

Another boat, an old boat constructed primarily from scrap material will take people for a ride along the Gowanus Canal. Mare Liberum, another Gowanus Canal art collective, will build a fleet of boats that can be built in a single afternoon.

The nautical events I’m most looking forward to are the public voyages curated by Flux Factory. A floating hotel, called Ms. Nancy, made out of reclaimed materials, will be moored at Marina 59 in the Rockaways and open for weekend rentals. Last, but not least, Gabriela Basterra, Andy Bichlbaum, and Jeff Day will present “Eco-Activist Sailing Tours,” aboard the Alalba, a 50-foot ketch.

With activities like these, who knows what hidden treasures New York harbor holds. Ahoy!

June 10, 2011

Read the original here.

With the weather warming, a sea-themed exhibition sounds pretty damn refreshing. For SeaWorthy: An Exhibition, EFA Project Space’s curatorial committee has assembled work by artists who use the boat as a means for collective action, reflection, and freedom. The show includes a range for media, from models to videos, and features art-scene luminaries like Duke Riley, Tod Seelie, Swoon, and Mat Bua. Some highlights include: Anne Percoco’s Kilmer Shrines, monuments that honor the under-appreciated drainage systems of New Jersey; and Jonathan Kaiser’s Janet II, a vessel built from refuse that transported the artist in foreign waterways. This exhibit is one part of a larger program taking place throughout the summer that includes public screenings, performances, workshops, and artist led-excursions on the water.

A once-derelict marina in Far Rockaway is becoming fertile ground for experiments in the arts and sustainability.

Now used primarily by fishing boats, Marina 59 on Jamaica Bay near Beach 59th Street in Queens will be the summer home of ArtBloc, a nonprofit that creates mobile art units out of shipping containers.

It will also host a houseboat turned floating environmental lab dubbed Jerko the Gowanus Water Vacuum, and will become a location for Sea Worthy, a multifaceted project encouraging artistic boat-building and the use of New York’s waterways.

The marina’s profile boost comes at the hands of owner Ari Zablozki, who committed to cleaning up the property in 2009 in an effort to reverse the area’s decades of neglect. Prior to his arrival, the marina was a graveyard for decayed, abandoned boats; until last summer, its only amenity was a bait shop.

Later this month, two steel containers—20 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8 feet, 6 inches tall—will arrive at the marina courtesy of ArtBloc, founded by the husband-wife team of Angus Vail and Julie Daugherty. The containers can be set as a stage, gallery or general-event space, and the couple expects to host events such as concerts, art exhibitions and cooking demonstrations to bring more culture to Far Rockaway.

“It’s an underserved area,” Mr. Vail said.

Because this is ArtBloc’s first venture, the kick-off date will be announced later, to allow time to deal with hiccups along the way.

Mr. Vail isn’t worried: “The Clash didn’t know how to play the guitars when they started,” he said.

Based in Jersey City, Mr. Vail and Ms. Daugherty aren’t curators, but they are on the arts scene: He has managed the business affairs of rock bands (including INXS) since 1988, and she’s a physical therapist for American Ballet Theatre. Their idea for ArtBloc came in Jersey City, where they had hoped to establish an art gallery. The property they wanted wasn’t available, but on it sat a container.

“I thought, we could cut this open and use it as a stage in the summer,” Mr. Vail said.

Manhattan-based designer Tim Steele produced renderings in collaboration with Big Prototype, a design firm in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Flexibility and mobility were the priorities, said Mr. Steele, who designed cut-outs that can be fitted with pop-in windows or used as walkways depending on the configuration. TRS Containers of Avenel, N.J., implemented the designs.

“We cut out openings and welded in a structural frame,” said Frank Staropoli, the special-projects manager for TRS, which has transformed containers into climate-monitoring labs and pop-up stores. Prices for used 20-foot containers run between about $3,300 (for those with doors at the narrow ends) and $6,000 (with doors along the wide side, too).

The two containers will be delivered to Marina 59 via truck. Arriving by sea will be Jerko the Gowanus Water Vacuum, the houseboat renovated by Adam Katzman, coordinator of Expedition Gowanus, a group of creative environmentalists.

Mr. Katzman purchased the boat for $1 at the 79th Street Boat Basin, then moved it to Gowanus and developed solar-energy and rain-water projects on it. “It started out as an experiment in building off-grid systems,” said Mr. Katzman, who had co-owned a solar-energy company. “I’m now into low-tech, do-it-yourself projects and doing more educational work.”

The move to Far Rockaway will allow the lab to be more accessible to the public than it was in Gowanus. Workshops on rain-water harvesting and building solar panels are planned, but in July and August, Jerko will primarily host a residency program that invites applicants (deadline is May 20) to try out sustainability projects—and possibly live—at sea.

The challenge is transporting the hulking boat to Marina 59 from Gowanus. “The currents between here and there are really strange,” Mr. Katzman said. “This boat has had so many additions, it doesn’t sit in the water as it was originally designed to.”

In addition to Jerko and ArtBloc, the marina will host boats created under the auspices of Sea Worthy, a joint project of Flux Factory, the Long Island City-based art collective; the Gowanus Studio Space, a workshop for creative types; and EFA Project Space, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.

Sea Worthy is in part an exhibition—of installations, models and more—that will open June 10 at the EFA Project Space on West 39th Street in Manhattan. It is also a series of workshops and excursions encouraging the use of the water. About 30 artists will create work inspired by the water, including actual vessels. “They’re art boats, essentially,” said Flux Factory’s artistic director, Jean Barberis.

Among the Sea Worthy projects at Marina 59 will be a renovated houseboat that can be rented like a hotel room. Mr. Zablozki also has plans to convert more abandoned boats into a “Boatel.” “Right now,” he said, “there is no place for people to stay.”

The bay-side marina is positioned along a key corridor: It is a short walk from the subway (at Beach 60th St.) and the beach. And with these newcomers, this corridor could be more active than it has been in years.

It’s possible that you’ll get stopped by a police officer at some point in your life—but what’s the best way to respond? On Thursday 27, National Lawyers Guild–NYC Street Law Team members Kate Watson and Paula Z. Segal (both students at the CUNY School of Law) will dispense practical advice for dealing with the fuzz. Find out what you can expect.

Paula Z. Segal: “The Street Law project emerged as a response to astounding stop-and-search numbers from the New York Police Department. Sometimes people jokingly refer to this workshop as ‘oppression management.’ We generally get a sense of the room, and talk to people a little bit about what their interactions with police are like, and then we break down the anatomy of an encounter.”

Kate Watson: “We do a lot of role-playing. We call up people who are attending the workshop, and we try to have one audience member be an officer, and one audience member be the person who is getting approached. We give them scripts, and we try to prepare them a little bit before we send them up onto the stage.”

Segal: “One of the most important parts of [the workshop] is actually giving everybody a chance to get into the role of a police officer, and to dissect the encounter from that perspective. When you’re the person on the street who’s suddenly being approached by a police officer, you don’t have a sense of where you’re at. All you know is, Wow, suddenly I’m talking to this cop.”—As told to Alison Zeidman

GET THE SCOOP Flux Factory, 39-31 29th St between 39th and 40th Aves, Long Island City, Queens (718-707-3362, fluxfactory.org). Thu 27 at 7pm; free.

Five rights that New Yorkers need to know

NLG-NYC Street Law Team members Kate Watson and Paula Z. Segal, who lead the “Know Your Rights” workshop at Flux Factory on Thursday, January 27, explain five legal rights that New Yorkers should be aware of. We encourage you to use these points as guidelines only, not actual legal advice. For further research, check with organizations such as the NYC Rent Guidelines Board, the National Lawyers Guild, or NYC.gov.

If you’ve been detained, mum’s the word.
Segal: “You always have the right to remain silent. You really don’t know how something you say might be construed; as we all know, anything you say or do can be used against you in court. You might be incriminating yourself, you might be incriminating a friend, you really don’t know.”

In criminal cases, you always have a lawyer—even if you, well, don’t (yet).
Segal: “As soon as you are in an encounter with the criminal justice system, you have the right to an attorney, and you can start referring to that person long before you meet them. [You can] say to a police officer who has detained you, ‘I don’t want to talk to you without my lawyer here,’ even if you’ve never met a lawyer in your life.”

You can say no to an illegal police search.
Watson: “You have a right to not be illegally searched. [Voicing dissent] doesn’t mean that you won’t be searched, but if [the search is] done without probable cause, or without reason, then whatever the police find can’t be used against [you].”
Segal: “[Say out loud that you don’t consent] even if you think you don’t have anything to hide, because you don’t know what they’re looking for.”

If you’re bundling up indoors, your landlord might be breaking the law.
Segal: “Between October 1st and May 31st, between six o’clock in the morning and ten o’clock at night, if it’s below 55 degrees outside, it has to be at least 68 degrees in your house. Between ten at night and six in the morning, if it’s below 40 it has to be at least 55 in your house, and your hot water has to be at least 120°F all year round. [If that’s not the case and] your landlord isn’t responsive, you can call 311.”

Eviction notice? Don’t pack your bags just yet.
Watson: “Go to housing court and answer the notice right away; then, your landlord can’t just put you out on the street. If conditions in your apartment are really horrible and you’ve been withholding rent until your landlord addresses them, your landlord [can’t simply] evict you. They have to prove that the eviction is legal and lawful.”—As told to Alison Zeidman

Nocturnalist | Fixations in Abundance
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
Read the original here.

On a side street in Long Island City, Queens, young people in artful dishabille ducked through the doorway of a factory marked Alfred Mainzer Inc. Greeting Cards on Wednesday night. Inside, they headed down a rabbit hole of sorts — a hallway with a beamed ceiling so low you had to stoop — into a very odd world.

They were there at the Flux Factory, an artists’ collective, to learn about passions and obsessions at an event called Expert Oddities, where a group of artists across a variety of disciplines lectured on oddball subjects upon which they had fixated.

In the towering fuzzy hat and bright red uniform of a British beefeater guard, Phillip Buehler explained his particular fixation: Major Zipper, the similarly uniformed mascot of the Conmar Zipper factory in Newark. He salvaged the icon’s eight-foot head while photographing the building as it was being dynamited. For the decade since, he has amassed a collection of the mascot’s logo-ed ephemera: pens, lighters, four-foot statuettes and, of course, zippers.

One lecture was billed as an exegesis on shaving. It was in fact on the little-known utopian treatises penned by the founder of the Gillette razor blade company, King Camp Gillette, who envisioned a world city powered by Niagara Falls when he wasn’t dreaming up disposable razors. Denny Daniel hauled a table of antique gizmos to the floor, his Museum of Interesting Things, including an Edison cylinder phonograph to “show people where their iPods came from.”

With a tight bun, spectacles perched on the edge of her nose, and a hunched stance, Ann Hirsch, 25, explained in a Steve Urkel voice that she was a former star of the VH1 dating reality show “A Basement Affair” and offered pointers about how others as pathetic as herself (her words) could land a part.

Suddenly she whipped off her hair clip and pulled off her top and skirt to reveal a skintight minidress and she was Annie, the girl on the show, revealing that her 15 minutes of fame had been, unbeknown to the show’s producers, a piece of performance art. “There is no real me,” she said later.

Ms. Hirsch’s wasn’t the only strip show of the night. An artist and part-time stripper named Lea Donnan, 33, presented a slide show of the tools of her trade — her underwear.

Did those groundbreaking thoughts in that Sarah Palin book get you thirsty for more tell-it-like-it-is knowledge? Do you want to work your noggin for once while cracking open a few brews tonight? Consider stopping by Flux Factory this evening for Expert Oddities, in which an array of self-proclaimed know-it-alls will get up and give nine-minute, visually aided presentations on a bunch of random subjects, from how to get on a reality TV show to popular dances from the early 1900s to Kyle MacLachlan’s character in Twin Peaks. Best of all, it’s BYOB and unpretentious, despite all of the “experts.” (The former Alaskan governor, alas, will not be discussed—sorry to tease you with that first sentence.) 39-31 29th St between 39th and 40th Aves, Long Island City, Queens (fluxfactory.org). 7pm; suggested donation $5.

Mice perch atop a cake, sickening with gluttony, as it collapses from their feasting. A mallet strikes a glass jar of yellow paint. A pyramid of Ivory soap is subjected to the dissolving effects of water, and patrons pick up guitars, smashing them against the wall. In a world in which art is often prized for its durability, increasing in value with age, “The Self-Destructing Art Show” at the Flux Factory in Long Island City takes on a particular challenge: construct something meant to ruin itself in three weeks.

Curators Jean Barberis and Georgia Muenster were inspired by a 1960 exhibition, “Homage to New York” in which the artist Jean Tinguely invited 250 guests to the Museum of Modern Art 50 years ago to watch as his eight-meter sculpture — made from city refuse including wheels, a bathtub, a go-cart, a piano, bottles, fire extinguishers and a weather balloon — committed suicide by sawing, hammering and melting itself to bits. A firefighter eventually put an end to the mayhem. According to Muenster, Tinguely’s piece failed to entirely destruct, so the crowd picked it apart, taking souvenirs from the smoking rubble. Apparently, making something built for ruin is not as simple as it would seem.

It takes centuries for plastic to decay, and it will be 100 years before a soda can returns to its original state.

In a world of permanence, the temporary becomes novel. “It adds preciousness to it to have it be ephemeral, because you really have to be there, rather than something you can have and it just collects dust” said Brendan Coyle, creator of the melting “Soap Pyramid.” “That being said, I am making a permanent piece of out of dust that will hopefully collect more dust,” the artist said in all seriousness.
Inside its kiddie pool, Coyle’s soap sculpture will dissolve to reveal a further structure inside over time. Muenster said many artists “leapt at the chance to make things that would fall apart,” but that it did “take a very certain type of person to be able to watch their artwork go up in flames.” Some of the pieces are meant to erode slowly, while others will meet a more immediate end.

John Roach’s “The Sweet Sound of Self-Destruction” focused on musicians driven to their own demise in an installation set up to resemble a motel room. Ash falls upon a record playing in the installation, destroying the original sound and altering it.

Artist Dana Sherwood tackled self-destruction from a literal and cultural perspective, housing six white mice in a hollow white cake made of mouse food and shaped like the New York Stock Exchange. A crowd gathered, watching as the mice slowly ate themselves into seemingly dangerous states. Sherwood said she decided to make a NYSE-shaped dessert because she wanted to explore “what happens when there is no restraint.” The cake began to collapse like the stock market, while two of the mice, chubby bankers munching on the fondant, looked ill from the endeavor. “The mice don’t know when to say no,” Sherwood said. “They ate their way out in 20 minutes.” Sherwood’s piece was as disturbing to some spectators as it was fascinating. Watching the mice eating while mingled with their own refuse, fur sticky with food, one could not help but wonder why they persisted in their gluttony — a reflection that was quickly turned inward as I thought of my own negative behavior patterns. I felt my self destructing! Step back even further, and life at its essence is a self-destructive, decaying process.

For artists Kerry Downey and Claudia Salinas, self-destruction is as conceptual as it is literal. Their video installation “Yesterday, Once More” wasn’t supposed to self- destruct, but perhaps taking its cue from the rest of the show, the projector broke on opening night.  The video featured images of domesticity thrown into disarray. Downey said she and Salinas were trying to focus on self- destruction from an emotional and feminist perspective. To Downey, the crash and burn aesthetic exemplified in many other pieces in the show represented a less-subtle masculine mode of annihilation. “Self-destruction has to be more conceptual. It has to be the things that are conjured up in one’s mind when looking at the piece — it’s about loss,” Downey explained.

Everything Moves, by Jean Tinguely. Photo by Akbar Simonse.

Opening today, and surviving for no one knows how long, is the Self-Destructing Art Show, at Flux Factory in Queens, NYC. In 1960, Jean Tinguely, a Dadaist and “metamechanic” artist (and maker in his own right) debuted and destroyed his Homage to New York in the sculpture garden at the MoMA. This exhibition is a homage to that homage, and the curators say “some pieces will go with a highly performative bang during the opening, and others will slowly dwindle and decay throughout the show. Nothing will survive!”

Participating artists (including some makers from the World Maker Faire): Ranjit Bhatnagar, Conrad Carlson & Ryan C. Doyle, Brendan Coyle, Daupo, Ben Dierckx, Kerry Downey & Claudia Peña Salinas, Nicholas Fraser, Ghostfuk3r (aka David Carson), Ryan O’Connor & Hackett, Douglas Paulson, Johanna Povirk-Znoy, John Roach, Dana Sherwood and Angela Washko.

Also check out this rare footage of Tinguely’s make-and-destroy machine, circa 1960!

See the original post here.

Fifty years ago, an artist named Jean Tinguely made his own version of “Mission: Impossible”: a work of art set to self-destruct. Titled “Homage to New York,” it was cobbled together from bicycle wheels, bottles, old bathtubs and other debris — and a crowd in MoMA’s garden watched it catch fire and disappear. Starting tomorrow, there’ll be an homage to “Homage,” featuring such works as a pyramid of soap under dripping water and a roomful of smashable guitars.

“The New York art scene is all about stuff you can buy and sell,” says curator Jean Barberis of “The Self-Destructing Art Show” at Long Island City’s Flux Factory. “A piece that destroys itself is really radical — it speaks against art as a commodity. Everything we build is going to be destroyed anyway, so why not embrace it?” The free show opens tomorrow at 11 a.m. and runs weekends till Nov. 23 at Flux, 39-31 29th St., Long Island City; fluxfactory.org.

September 14, 2010

Read the original here.

By Chris Evangelista   |   Aug 20, 2010

It was a sunny Saturday morning when Julia Vallera invited me to take part in a community-based art installation called Color Wheelz at Murray Playground in Long Island City. She was accompanied by Nick Normal from Flux Factory. Behind them was a white 1997 Ford van with colorful swirls throughout, and in front of them was a table filled with the necessary art materials. So, what is Color Wheelz exactly?

It’s a not-for-profit project that illustrator Julia Vallera started as a MFA thesis at Parsons School of Design. She hopes to showcase culture through the local resident’s perspective, and provides materials—such as felt, fabric and vinyl—in various colors. “I want people to tell their story or how they see their community through color,” Vallera said. Color Wheelz invites everyone to share their perspective by posting their art work on the van, followed by a video recording of people explaining the inspiration of their work (my colors were black, different hues of blue and bright summer colors in the shape of the city view from LIC’s Gantry Park).

With the help of Flux Factory, an arts organization “supporting innovation in things,” Julia Vallera is able to advertise Color Wheelz. It hasn’t been long, but the project has been well accepted by everyone; some 60 people participate every time. It’s impossible to miss because Normal places colorful triangles leading to the van. Many are intrigued and ask questions, but some, like the elderly man who participated with me, reminisce about the glory days and how much the community has changed through the years. Color Wheelz hopes to explore many other communities in New York City.

For more information about Flux Factory and Color Wheelz, please click here.

STATEN ISLAND, NY – August 21, 2010: Tour Participants walk through brush to an undisclosed location. The Ghost Ships of the Kills tour, led by artist Marie Lorenz, took participants by bus to climb empty and never used natural gas tanks and decrepit boats next to the Fresh Kills, a stream and freshwater estuary, next to the Fresh Kills Landfill. During the summer months, artist-innovated mystery tours supported and curated by Flux Factory take participants to undisclosed locations – with each tour having a theme – around the five boroughs and beyond.

From Pauline Pechin’s blog.

July 16, 2010

Flux Factory’s “artist-led” urban exploration tours are back for its third edition.

For the past two years, I had the pleasure of attending excursions to castle ruins, iridescent quarries and an abandoned subway station in the Bronx. Which doesn’t summarize nearly half of the adventures that can span multiple boroughs in a day. Each tour’s theme is unique. Strangers board a school bus to secret destinations that are revealed only upon arrival. When people sign up for each tour, they receive an email only indicating what to bring and where to meet. The rest is mobile performance art.

This year’s first tour, “Rock the Block”, took place this past Saturday (July 10). The trip was hosted by Yoni Brook, Jason Eppink, Liz Barry and Bill Wetzel (with a few special guests). I received an email that said to meet at 8:15 am and to bring gloves. When I arrived on bicycle (slightly past the 8:15 mark) there was already a cluster of people waiting outside of Flux Factory, kindly handing over the waiver forms we were told to print and sign.

We boarded the school bus, a white and green metal monster powered by veggie oil, which included a curtained off  “bathroom” stall with a bucket (The bus looks like it’s leaking if you pee. Otherwise sprinkle sawdust.). In the back was a full-size bed space, ideal for group lounges; the downside is that your head is closer to the ceiling when the bus hits a pothole (ouch).

A campy sign above the driver read: “If you puke, poop or pee sing Happy Birthday.”

On the bus I met a few first timers like Candace Lunn, who said she had heard about the tours a few years ago but wasn’t able to get on the tours until this year. “Every time I wanted to go it was already full.”

After crossing the Verrazano Bridge and passing a 99-cent store, a Perkins’ Family Restaurant and Zion Lutheran Church, we were in Staten Island. On foot we approached a wooded area enclosed by a chain-link fence, which had a slit that we slipped through one-by-one. Down a sloping path of vines and poison ivy, the group arrived at a compound ruin known as the New York State Farm Colony, a government experiment which previously housed indigents in exchange for their labor. Across the street stood Seaview Hospital, one of the city’s first tuberculosis wards. Inside the Farm lay a landscape of empty windows, rubble and broken staircases. A dark-haired woman dressed in Victorian attire graciously recited a monologue as Alice Austen, the photographer who spent her last years at the colony after bankruptcy. The woman’s name was Yvonne Muro, a volunteer from the Alice Austen House. And the monologue was written by Lawrence F. Schwabacher.

After a friend and I made our way to the basement, where the sewer pipes (and perhaps asbestos) were located, it was time to get back on the bus. A few minutes down the road we are told that we would be entering a private residence. Located on a quaint block called Cottage Place, the house’s immaculate exterior showcases stain-glass windows and black trim. The residence is owned by the artist John Foxell, a simple, humble-hearted man approaching 70 who kindly recites an elegant poem to the entourage, entitled “Vespers”, which he had written the night before during a usual bout of insomnia.

He explains that the house’s colors are in the vein of Halloween. Inside were endless bookshelves alphabetized and all read by Foxell. Silver old timey dial phones were located in each corner of the house. Also throughout the house were absurdist but impeccable arrangements of cartoon figurines (One featured the Catholic church, an “abused” baby and superheroes), skulls and bones (“For company, especially those who are good listeners”), and Gothic ornamentation rooted in religious symbolism. On a wall hung a photograph of Foxell with President Truman, whom he had interviewed as a student at NYU. Foxell apparently knew Sarah Jane Moore, the woman who attempted to assassinate President Ford, and the man who grabbed her arm, Oliver Sipple. While speaking to Brook on the bus, he dubbed Foxell a modern-day “Forest Gump.” I agree.

It was time to leave Staten Island. We finally arrived at Barren Island (known by the Dutch as the “Island of Bears”) in Brooklyn, roughly 20 miles from the Empire State Building. The place is also known as Dead Horse Bay, where once stood a rendering plant that disposed of dead horses. The island became a “primitive” recycling ground. Although people had been dumping their garbage since the 1850s, the location became what The New York Times labeled as the “perfect landfill”, according to Brook, because so few New Yorkers knew about the place. There to guide us was historical digger Dan McGee of The Manhattan Well Diggers (special guest #1), who scavenges for artifacts from similar locations throughout the city. The terrain of the island resembled a porcelain and bottle cemetery with glass fragments dating to the ‘50s. McGee admitted that he uses metal detectors, which he says have helped friends find old coins worth $10,000. Further down the beach, we came across a  “Marry Me” sign in the sand, crafted out of bottles, beside a reply that read: “Ok.”

On the way to our next stop we got stranded in a rain storm; supposedly the bus’s windshield wipers were broken. A handful of people exited the bus in their briefs to play in the rain and suddenly took off running for the nearby field. Luckily I had packed a swimsuit. I stripped out of my dress and ran to meet the group. Together we all played intense variations of tag until the rain stopped nearly an hour later.

From the Island of the Bears we were finally off to the Island of Coney, where the group roamed the boardwalk on a series of scavenger hunts to locate objects like a feather, penny from 1950, and a condom. We also had to locate people from different countries. Before long, we were on the beach playing a fierce game of Tug and War (gloves included).

Suddenly, Howard Richman, a local square dance caller with us (special guest #2), grabbed a microphone. From atop a bench he began instructing the entourage on the art of line dancing, while blasting hillbilly tunes. As we sashayed and dosey-doed, people on the boardwalk seemed puzzled but interested. We later pulled a few strangers to participate.

After an intense square dancing session, we were told to form a crouched line on the beach for a (loose) game of leap frog toward the ocean. While people were walking, straddling their legs through the line, I heard someone yell, “That’s not how you play leap frog!”

It was finally time to dive into the lukewarm, gritty ocean waters for the finale to our glorious day.  A game of  Chicken ensued. And being the professional that I was, my petite frame went down instantly – to the detriment of my gracious partner.

But there’s always next time. With one tour down, there’s six more to go.

By Leigh Remizowski

Friday, June 18th 2010, 4:00 AM

If a summer excursion doesn’t seem complete without a dash of mystery and a dose of unpredictability, this Long Island City artists’ collective may have just the thing for you.

The Flux Factory’s “Going Places (Doing Stuff)” program provides adventurous New Yorkers a chance to visit little-known places in and around the city during seven weekend trips planned by local artists.

“The catch is, they don’t know where they’re going,” said Jean Barberis, the group’s artistic director. “It’s a leap of faith.”

During the past two summers, participants have piled onto a vegetable oil-fueled school bus and found themselves on unexpected exploits – such as entering a rock quarry in Massachusetts reachable only by zip-line, kayaking through marshes in New Jersey and swimming around the Bannerman Castle on Pollepel Island on the Hudson River.

Flux Factory’s curator Georgia Muenster said they like to “keep it as vague as possible” before participants pile onto the bus.

The titles of each trip in this year’s lineup will be released next week.

“The titles have to be appealing, but they can’t reveal too much,” said Barberis, who remained tight-lipped about any details of this year’s excursions.

It’s this intrigue that makes the 35-person trips so popular.

“There is a lot of folklore about what had gone on the summer before,” said Michelle Levy, of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who has gone on two excursions. She took part in setting the world record for the most people to use one piece of floss at the same time; she swam in Brooklyn‘s invitation-only Dumpster pools, and she met the man who spends his days building rock sculptures on Staten Island.

“Everywhere you go you’re met by a different person who engages you in a different activity,” she said. “It’s like a Huckleberry Finn adventure.”

The Flux Factory commissions a different individual or team of local artists to concoct each of the six day trips and one overnight trip – which will span seven weekends beginning July 10.

Carolyn Lambert, of Ridgewood, has planned two “Going Places (Doing Stuff)” outings. She collaborated with artist Siobhan Rigg to create a trip dubbed “From Solid to Liquid” last August. They took people to the South Street Seaport, the Seaman’s Church Institute, Ikea and Kearney Marsh in New Jersey – all to explore the city’s connection with the melting Arctic Circle and the Northwest Passage.

“It was just fantastic to have people who are willing to trust you for eight hours and let themselves be at your whim,” Lambert said.

The trips are so popular that they often sell out in a matter of minutes. The cost for the day trips is $20 while the overnighter is $40.

Barberis has also been approached by an artists’ collective in Miami that wants to create its own version of “Going Places (Doing Stuff).”

“It’s a great project,” Barberis said. “I’m glad to see someone replicating it.”

Read the original article here.

Watch the video here!

A group of artists are showing they, too, have an inner scientist with an unusual art event in Long Island City this weekend. NY1′s Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

Beakers, Bunson burners, and dioramas may bring back bad memories of high school science class. But a new type of Science Fair is showcasing works by artists inspired by science.

Samwell Freeman considers technology is a life line.

“So this is a project called ‘Line Life’ and the idea is sort of to build a population of physical and virtual drawings,” he explains. “The drawings are built using accelerometer-based soft controller, and you gesture in the air and that is translated into a drawing, a physical drawing, that the robot makes.”

Science Fair takes place this weekend in LIC and is presented by two artist collectives, Flux Factory and The Metric System.

“So Science Fair is kind of based on the typical ‘middle school science fair,’ where we structured it to offer artists to submit their proposals based in some theoretical science project but in a visual form,” says Ambre Kelly of The Metric System.

Some of the science may be a bit tongue in cheek, but all of the projects do recall science class – like plant slides inspired by a real school science project, a glue gun used to prevent detection by satellite imaging, and artist Flint Weisser’s Kelvin water drop generator, which generates static electricity through water drops.

“I think physics is beautiful,” he says. “I mean, to me, that’s like the most beautiful system that I can collaborate with.”

There’s also a custom quantum teleportation experience, requiring the viewer to first share some information.

“It will basically send you to another point in space and time while you are simultaneously in Queens,” says artist Chad Stayrook. “It’s based on a questionnaire that each person fills out and we then tailor it to those answers.”

Artist Scott Kildall’s ‘science project’ calculates your stress levels, but instead of straight readings, he translates the stress and relaxation levels into other images.

“This one is giving me a relaxation response, and I can tell that because I’m getting a lot of imagery of things moving through the ocean really quietly and softly,” Kildall says.

[We] walked over to Flux Factory for Man Bartlett’s first New York solo show.  Barlett was at the space and when we arrived he was happy to see us. The place looked clean and a little solemn. Small ink drawings were placed under glass on a table, burned wood pieces hung on the wall, one large drawing was sitting on a drafting table, and another sculptural installation stretched across one wall. There was a constant trickle of people coming in to look at the art and everyone seemed receptive. Bartlett’s work was sparse and controlled. They were equal parts cerebral and emotional, no one side dominated the other. Veken and I shared a can of beer and lingered to see how the work would change. It felt a little religious, but I’m an atheist, what do I know.

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.

By Audrey Dimola

Despite the many changes our little-nabe-that-could is constantly undergoing, Long Island City’s arts community still finds a way to endure – always seeming to discover new ways to express itself. Last week’s Armory Fest did much to drive this point home, especially on a Long Island City Night art-hop from gallery to unique gallery, all within walking distance. For one, ever-evolving artist collective Flux Factory offered up a tour of their new 8,000 SF space and the colossal ‘Housebroken’ exhibition that takes place through every room (they even have an aviary!). Flux’s is another story of artistic triumph – they’ve reinvented themselves yet again, and on an even grander scale, after being pushed out of their previous space back in ‘08.

Read the whole article here.

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

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

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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