Costume + Luminaria Workshops
2024-10-12 13:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Governors Island, Colonels Row House 404A
In conjunction with the exhibition Island Luminaria Two, a series of Costume + Luminaria Workshops will take place where you can create light art and costumes for the Flaming Creature Crawl 2, a nighttime luminary parade. No need to bring materials, we will have them on site.

Workshop DatesSaturdays and Sundays, October 5 & 6 and October 12 & 13, 1-5 PM

Flaming Creature Crawl Two Saturday, October 19, 5 – 7:30 PMLanterns will be held depicting the flora, fauna and celestial bodies of Governors Island accompanied by quiet acoustic music.

Flaming Creature Crawl Parade Two
2024-10-19 17:00 - 19:30 | Governors Island, Colonels Row House 404A
Join us for the Flaming Creature Crawl 2, a nighttime luminary parade. Lanterns will be held depicting the flora, fauna and celestial bodies of Governors Island accompanied by quiet acoustic music. For the fifth time in three years, we will parade maximum quality art of ecological reverence.

Want to join the parade? Review the Observed Species of Governors Island. Choose a species that hasn’t been picked yet (the below list is of species claimed by participating artists). A series of Costume + Luminaria Workshops will take place on the island, Saturdays and Sundays, on October 5, 6, 12, and 13 from 1-5 PM, where you can create light art and costumes.

SPECIES ALREADY CHOSEN FOR PARADE

Pink Flamingo (Flux), Praying Mantis, Wild Indigo Duskywing, Common Checkered Skipper, Chantrelle, Fish, Sea Turtle, Yellow Rumpled Warbler, Bird Nest, Human, Twelve-Spotted Skimmer Dragonfly, Black Saddlebags Dragonfly, Goldenrod, Indigo, Patridge Pea, Lace Beetle, Firefly, Bald Eagle, Rat, Red Tailed Hawk, Isabella Tiger Moth, Mulberry, Worm, Anglerfish, Cormorant, Coral

PARADE ROUTE

Screenshot

Flux Factory Open Studios
2024-11-02 13:00 - 17:00
Flux Factory404A Colonels Row, Governors IslandOpen Studios: Saturday, November 2, 1 – 5 PM

Join us on November 2 for Flux Factory’s Open Studios on Governors Island. Our last event this season on Flux Island, we’ll be closing out our fourth year celebrating our beloved resident community. Explore the work of 9 artists, our season-end exhibition and Island Luminaria Two.

PERFORMANCES

1-3 PM: Lera Lerner invites you to a participatory performance with the Non-Clairvoyant Tarot Deck3 PM: Daria Orlova and will owen will be performing a sound composition with a collaboratively created sculpture. The sculpture itself is meant to perform on its own and collaborate with Daria and will.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Itala Aguilera is a visual artist born and raised in Mexico City, based in New York City where she works as a teacher at the Textile Arts Center and as a costume designer. Through her artistic practice she imagines an alternative reality in which the objects that surround us aren’t made for profit, but instead are compelling and reveal the complexity of human emotions.

Yasmeen Abdallah is an interdisciplinary artist, working across intersections of sculpture, textiles, painting, and social engagement. Drawing from the personal and the political through elements of memory, empowerment, trauma, resilience, and persistence, her work takes shape in various capacities from minimal gestures to maximal installations. This work is inspired by contemporary culture, history, space, place and personhood. She is interested in the stories told, and secrets kept by imprints and objects that speak to our contemporary culture.

502 Bad Gateway is the artist duo of Alexander Baumann and Robert Ruth, whose collaborative artistic disciplines include motion capture performance, oil painting, 3D game development, sculpture, vintage tech restoration, building audio synthesizers, animation, and filmmaking. Their practice focuses on integrating their artistic methods with deprecated technologies from many different eras, drawing on the history of usage to underline the intent of the work. With a foot in the world of experimental film and live performance, and the other in fine art and installation, 502 Bad Gateway desires to break the traditionally static, immutable nature of gallery work, by incorporating the real-time responsiveness of interactive live performance.

Zack Handler is a Brooklyn-based multimedia artist interested in representing worlds that feel at once utopic and neptunian. In creating spaces that reflect boundless fantasy and somber interiority, Zack is possessed by the idea that emphasizing imaginal spaces can reawaken narratives for alternative futures.

Lera Lerner (b. 1988, Leningrad) is an artist, curator, and mediator based in Paris. Through participatory projects, she investigates the paradoxical nature of expectations, the energy of side effects, the ethics of lying, suppressed desires, distracting maneuvers, and the possibilities of interspecific and cross-disciplinary communication.

Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow is a Jamaican-American interdisciplinary artist living and working in NYC. Her work often explores site-specificity through performance and installation art while investigating colonial histories pertaining to her Afro-Caribbean, Asian, and European heritage. Lyn-Kee-Chow’s work has been shown internationally.

Amelia Marzec is an American artist engaging with communications infrastructure to inform a speculative future. Their current project, Itinerant Signal Institute, examines the effect of local emissions on global climate change, and an ethnography to denote the changing of seasons.

Sally Beauti TwinWhy is the sky blue water wet? These are things that Sally Beauti Twin, the world’s most vacuous artist, hasn’t considered yet…but plans to do so soon. Artists make the dreams that make the future. In the future Sally wants some dreams. Like bubbles, her art levitates viewers to empyrean realms. Like other trans artists she paints with a love of nature and tonalist fantasy.

Daria Orlova is an trancedisciplinary artist from Murmansk. At the beginning of her artistic activity, Daria built total utopian installations, placing her works and the viewer there as direct participants in the interaction process (“Cafe of Dancing Lights”, Winzavod, Moscow; “Shimmering Letters. Agency of Memory”, Future3, Kiel). Now her practice pays more attention to situativeness, invisible choreography and mistakes. Total installations have become routes. The artist tries to fix the movement of thoughts, bodies and their agents by drawing with her eyes closed, moving away from an open dialogue with the artistic process, turning off one of the senses. Errors that neither a person nor a technique can exclude from their work are guides and assistants in recognizing images. Daria is also engaged in sound, listening, research of acoustic environments, for communication with non-human agents. Archives field recordings and collages them, turning them into a special kind of sound documentation. Composes sound plays and operas, plays noise and drone on modular synthesizers.

WILL OWEN, originally from western North Carolina, US, is an artist, composer, and curator currently based in Philadelphia, PA. Will graduated in 2022 with a Master of Fine Arts from UPenn and received the Sprintz Prize and Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship award. Will is currently a Master’s level Thesis Advisor at NYU’s Integrated Design and Media program. Will’s work is about urgent state changes: physical, emotional, political, and environmental. Often working with historical and site specificity, Will works with many mediums to convey conceptual ideas, but returns most often to three: Sound, Sculpture, and Food.

Artificial Inhabitants: Arbrasson Workshop
2024-11-03 13:00 - 16:00
Workshop Registration: GiveLivelyTickets: $250*Need-based and sliding-scale tickets available

In this workshop, Daniel Fishkin will provide a short history lesson and demonstration of the Arbrasson, a unique rubbed wooden idiophone from France. Workshop participants will also learn the fundamentals of building their own arbrassons using simple handtools such as a Ryoba saw and a Kanna.

Friction idiophones are distinct in the history of musical inventions. Unlike string instruments, which are popular everywhere from past to present, friction idiophones are uncommon, but are always remarkable in their sonic character. The Livika is one such curious case. Hailing from New Ireland, the Livika is a carved log consisting of three “tongues” that is rubbed by moistened palms moistened to produce a piercing, loud cry. Its name refers to birdcalls, and it was played at Malagan funeral ceremonies. Curator Eric Kjellgren writes, the Livika is “both a first of its type and a revolutionary design” Unlike the jaw harp, which is found all around the world, the Livika is singular to Melanesia—there are no other world instruments like it. Yet it is considered “extinguished” by the field: there are no practicing indigenous players, and only about 50 known instruments exist in museums around the world.

The Livika was recently reincarnated: José Le Piez, a sculptor based in France, created the “arbrasson” in 1992—carving notches into polished logs, he crafts wild polyphonic sculptures that resonate when rubbed. Le Piez discovered the concept accidentally—he did not know the Livika. Yet his instruments extend the Livika, featuring more notes, and wider tonal range. In Summer 2023, Fishkin met Le Piez in his studio in Bordeaux, where they began an international partnership as instrument builders, sharing designs and keeping the future of the Arbrasson burning bright.

Workshop Leader Bio

Daniel Fishkin’s ears are ringing. He has performed as a soloist on modular synthesizer with the American Symphony Orchestra, developed sound installations in abandoned church sanctuaries, and played innumerable basement punk shows. Daniel’s lifework investigating the aesthetics of hearing damage has received international press; as an ally in the search for a cure, he has been awarded the title of “tinnitus ambassador” by the Deutsche Tinnitus-Stiftung. He is the only luthier that studied with Hans Reichel, the inventor of the daxophone, a thin hardwood strip played with a bow which sounds somewhere between a badger and a cello. Daniel’s instruments have traveled the world, and are played by musicians in Canada, USA, Norway, Germany, France, Japan, Denmark, Kazakhstan, and Australia. In 2015, Daniel formed The Daxophone Consort, the USA’s only ensemble dedicated to realizing new compositions and performances with this instrument. In 2016, Daniel was awarded a Project Grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage to stage his lifework Composing the Tinnitus Suites on a large scale. In 2022, Daniel was awarded the P.I.G. prize from the Art Foundation of Danish designer Henrik Vibskov. Daniel received his MA in Music Composition from Wesleyan University and studied privately with composer Maryanne Amacher and with multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart. He has taught seminars on instrument design and electronic music at Bard College and the Cooper Union. He is currently a PhD Candidate in Composition and Computer Music at the University of Virginia.

Our Stories of Migration: A Family Playtime Experience
2024-12-08 12:00 - 16:00
Date: Sunday, December 8, 12:00 – 4:00 pmLocation: RSVP to info@fluxfactory.org for venue information.

Join artist Natalia Nakazawa for a collective playtime experience centered around textiles and storytelling, stemming from the ongoing project, Our Stories of Migration.

Our Stories of Migration details human movement through art objects and storytelling. Participants are invited to embroider their own ancestral, present, and future paths onto the surface of a world map tapestry, which has been constructed with public domain digital images mined from major encyclopedic museum collections, reconfiguring them as tangible objects for individuals to interact with through intimate encounters. Each image highlights a different object from the collection that embodies historical moments of cultural exchange.

Families and friends are invited to engage in intergenerational conversations in this hands-on activity. We additionally invite you to participate in Flux Factory’s mutual aid infrastructures by bringing books for a book exchange, clean and warm clothes for neighborhood donation, and/or food for Flux’s community fridge.

Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, create, and share stories as a family! We can’t wait to see you there!

BioNatalia Nakazawa is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist and educator working in painting, textiles and social practice. A child of Latin American (Uruguayan) and Asian (Japanese American, yonsei, 4th generation) diasporas, her work is deeply in touch with multi-generational cultural legacies. Natalia’s community-driven projects explore ideas of transnationality, cultural identities, storytelling, archives, and patterns of migration. Blurring the boundaries between education, activism, and art making, each of her projects is based in collaborative processes, inviting participation and collective imagining. In her jacquard textiles series, the artist pulls images from the online open access collections with a focus on objects that embody historical moments of cultural exchange. Nakazawa’s work encourages critical engagement with personal histories, utilizing the familiar, warm format of the tapestry as a means of creating objects that can be simultaneously comforting and disruptive.

Natalia received her MFA in studio practice from California College of the Arts, a MSEd from Queens College, and a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work has recently been exhibited at Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), Arlington Arts Center (Washington, DC), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), The Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Lafayette College Galleries (Easton, PA), and The Old Stone House in Brooklyn (NY). Natalia has been an artist in residence at The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, MASS MoCA, SPACE on Ryder, Wassaic Project, Facebook AIR, Interlude Artist Residency, CAMPO Garzon, Triangle Arts Association, and Wave Hill Winter Workspace.

Can It Be I'm Not Meant To Play This Part?
2024-12-15 17:00 - 17:30
RSVP to info@fluxfactory.org to reserve your seat

Combining narration, reenactment, found footage, karaoke, animation and a sprinkling of augmented reality, Li-Ming Hu’s Can it be I’m not meant to play this part? explores representation, identity and cultural production through the artist’s experiences as a professional actor and emerging artist, in conversation with key moments in the history of Asian American theater.

Li-Ming Hu is an interdisciplinary artist and recovering actor from Aotearoa/New Zealand who is currently based in New York City. Often employing a carnivalesque sensibility, her work engages with the imperatives of our high performance culture, and draws on her experiences in the entertainment industry to explore the relationships between cultural production and the performance of subjectivities. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Flux Factory and the International Studio and Curatorial Program, NYC.

Panel Discussion: International Artistic Exchanges – Predicaments and Bonds
2025-03-04 18:30
Flux Factory and Residency Unlimited invite you to a panel discussion with Anna Chistoserdova, Eva Khachatryan, and Tatiana Kochubinska. The event will be moderated by RU Curator Data Chigholashvili and takes place at Residency Unlimited, 360 Court Street (main green church doors), Brooklyn NY 11231.

The keynote speakers will present their work on various forms of exchanges in arts and culture. Concentrating on the Eastern European and post-Soviet contexts, they will discuss their experiences with different predicaments and approaches when organizing international collaborations and residencies. The panel discussion will explore the importance of establishing bonds and networks throughout the years of working internationally, which turned out to be essential in continuing artistic and cultural exchanges despite various conflicts and restraints that have characterized the region and the countries therein.

This program will be streamed online via Zoom at this link.

Strategies for Global Exchange in times of Political, Economic, and Social Strife
2025-03-08 10:00 - 11:00
A panel at TransCultural Exchange Conference moderated by Susan Katz, Flux Factory Program DirectorMarch 8, 10 – 11 AMParticipants: Anna Chistoserdova, Kendal Henry, Eva Khachatryan, Tatiana KochubinskaConference Registration: https://transculturalexchange.org/conference-2025/registration/

Calling Participants: The Diaspora is Home
2025-04-27 12:00 - 16:00
Image: Xyza Bacani, Dancers, 2017.

Xyza Cruz Bacani will host a free public photo booth for her project, The Diaspora is Home. Participants will receive a free Instax print and a digital copy of their photos.

Photo booth on site during AUTISM: Awareness, Acceptance, and Advocacy Day Date: April 27, 2025 12:00-4:00 pmLocation: Jewish Center of Jackson Heights Address: 37-06 77th St., Jackson Heights, NY 11372 Nearby trains: E, F, M, R, 7 The Diaspora is Home is supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, Fujifilm USA, and Flux Factory.

Tarot Parade ArcanaCrawl: Creek to River
2025-05-17 19:30 - 20:30 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Image: Flaming Creature Crawl 2. Photographer: Harri Bailey.

Tarot Parade Arcana Crawl: Creek to River will be a joyful night parade in southwest Queens, gathering more than 125 people along Newtown Creek and the East River at Flux IV in Hunters Point South, to Gantry Plaza State Park, and back.

Per the Tarot card theme, giant puppets will depict The Fool, The Magician, The Lovers, The World, and more of the 22 Major Arcana. Participants will dance and play during the parade; accompanied by hundreds of LED-lit, hand-held bamboo and paper sculptures; live harp, violin, and the sounds of waterways; and solar energy-powered projectors will show exciting animations en route. The tone will be inclusion and wonder.

Last Minute Costume-Making!Join us early at Flux IV from 2:00 – 6:30 PM. The parade begins at 7:30 PM.Parade RouteThe meeting point for the parade is Flux IV. The parade will travel north insider of Hunter’s Point South Park to Gantry State Plaza, and will reverse course back to Flux IV.Workshop LeadersCostume-making workshops are led by Sally Beauti Twin and Heather Rose Piper. In Sally’s New Orleans youth, she formed parades for more than 20 years. This will be her 6th NYC parade in 4 years and a culmination of her cultural background. A former intern at Long Island City’s Henson Creature Shop and a winner of a 2025 Henson Grant, Heather is a high quality puppet and costume maker, a perennial Mermaid Parade star and professional scenic artist.

Opening Program: Shared Grounds
2025-06-28 15:00 - 20:00 | Hunter’s Point South Park, Center Boulevard, Long Island City, New York, 11101, United States
Design: Gonzalo Guererro, Secret Riso Club. 2025.

Please join us for the opening performances of Shared Grounds, co-presented by Flux Factory and Finnish Cultural Institute in New York (FCINY) in Hunter’s Point South Park, featuring five newly commissioned performances by Carmen Baltzar, Kastehelmi Korpijaakko, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Jemila MacEwan, and Lotta Petronella — three Finnish artists and two New York-based Flux Factory artists. Performances take place from 3:00 – 8:00 PM and we warmly welcome you to an afters event at Flux IV, 8:00 pm ’til late!Shared Grounds is curated by Elina Suoyrjö (FCINY) and Meghana Karnik (Flux Factory). For more information on the exhibition, visit Shared Grounds.OPENING PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

3:00 – 3:30 pmLotta Petronella, sparrows & mystics Location: Luminescence Sculpture (Center Blvd, between 54th & 55th Aves)A choir with neighbors of Hunter’s Point

3:45 – 4:15 pmKastehelmi Korpijaakko, Negotiation (an attempt)Location: Salt Marsh in Hunter’s Point South Extension (Center Blvd, between 55th & 56th Aves)A press conference on the waterfront

4:30 – 5:00 pmCarmen Baltzar, nothing to be seen (a closed practice), accompanied by Sandy Williams IVLocation: Backyard of Flux IV (56-21 2nd St) — audience views from public walkway behind venuewhen a child passes on young, a sapling can be planted in the place of their burial. this way, it’s possible to continue visiting your child and watch them grow. this is a burial event.

5:15 – 6:00 pmJemila MacEwan, ZERO//THE BIRTH OF VENIS with live music by ExquisiteCorpLocation: Hunter’s Point South Kayak Ramp (near 2nd St & 56th Ave)A microbial awakeningA eukaryotic extinctionA molecular revenge

6:15 – 8:00 pmJodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Picnic: Harvest of the Soft Sweet SoundLocation: The Park of Barnie in Hunter’s Point South Extension (near Center Blvd, between 55th & 56th Aves)Cast: Leopoldo Bloom, Justin Sterling, Fitzmore Prince Codogan, Vidho Lorville, Trasonia Abbott, Hsiao-Chu (Julia) Hsia, Gabriella Bornstein, Ronit Levin Delgado, Anna Ting Möller, and Rose MalenfantA procession-cum-picnic performance

Accessibility: All performances take place in Hunter’s Point South Park (Center Blvd, south of 54th Avenue). The closest subway station is the Vernon-Jackson stop on the 7 (purple) line. The nearest ferry stop is on the East River Ferry to Hunter’s Point South Park. There are public restrooms next door to Flux IV (56-21 2nd Street, LIC) and by the East River ferry stop.

Flux Saturday: Li-Ming Hu & gil lopez
2025-07-19 14:00 - 18:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Li-Ming Hu, La Danse, 2025, faux fur on canvas.

Flux Saturday: Li-Ming Hu & gil lopezJuly 19, 2 – 6 PMFlux IV (56-21 2nd Street, LIC)Our serial public program and potluck is back! Flux Saturdays are organized by different artists each month and will take many forms including pop-up exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist presentations and more:

Li-Ming Hu — Fake It Till You Make It: Open Studio & Pop-Up ExhibitionLi-Ming Hu will be showing a selection of her fur paintings, which include renderings of works by Matisse, Mondrian and Warhol. She will be working on a new piece and happy to discuss and share her process.

gil lopez — Fluxy Brewery: Homebrew 101Join us for a crash course in beer making. Fluxer gil lopez will guide participants through all the steps of beer making using simple ingredients: water, malt, hops and yeast. The demo will include all necessary equipment, sanitation and the process of making wort, then start the fermentation process. Come early to help sanitize and stay late to pitch the yeast after the wort cools, but don’t miss the gil’s presentation (2:30 – 3:30 PM). Making beer is a multi-stage process, so join gil again on August 2nd for bottling day and a movie, then for our next Flux Saturday on August 16 for beer tasting and a crafting party.

Solar Power Art Methods
2025-07-26 10:00 - 13:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Workshop Leader Alex Nathanson of Energy Transition Design.

Learn about solar powered sound art, kinetic sculpture, design methods, and more!

This four-part workshop series includes solar power art design methods, solar power sound art, and solar powered kinetic art. Participants will build small solar art projects they can take with them. We will discuss the history of artists working in the field, common conceptual approaches, and a number of technical methods. No prior experience with solar power or electronics is necessary. Please note that these workshops are for adults. WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Saturday, July 26

Workshop #1

10am -1pm: Solar Power Art Methods

This workshop will introduce participants to the fundamentals of solar power design. A framework for conceptualizing and creating solar power art and education projects will be introduced. The framework will be introduced to participations through a series of small hands on experiments and projects.

Workshop #2

2 – 5pm: Solar Power Sound Workshop

This workshop will introduce participants to a range of techniques for creating solar powered sound making devices that can be applied to instruments, installations, performances, and more. We will discuss the history of the field, common conceptual approaches, and a number of technical methods. All participants will build their own solar powered instrument in the workshop.

Three techniques for building instruments will be demonstrated:

Direct drive acoustic instruments

Solar powered analog synthesis

Sonifying light frequencies

Sunday July 27

Workshop #3

10am -1pm: Solar Power Kinetic Art Workshop: Bots, Drawing Machines, & Kinetic Sculptures

This workshop will introduce participants to a range of techniques for creating small solar powered robotic devices that can be applied to making sculptures, draw bots, percusion instruments, and more. We will discuss the history of artists working in the field, common conceptual approaches, and a number of technical methods. All participants will build their own solar powered mechanical creature or device.

Workshop #4

2pm – 5pm: Solar Art Tutorial User-Testing

Participants will be shown new projects from the upcoming Solar Power for Artists book to user-test. They will be given the choice of a number of different projects to experiment with. This workshop will build on the techniques and concepts from introduced in previous workshops. All participants will build a project they can take with them. Participants will get the most out of this workshop if they have already attended at least 1 of our other workshops.

Workshop LeaderAlex Nathanson is a designer, multimedia artist, technologist, and educator who has been working with solar power for a decade. His work is primarily focused on exploring both the experimental and practical applications of sustainable energy technologies, particularly photovoltaic solar power. He is the author of the book A History of Solar Power Art and Design and leads the education platform Solar Power for Artists as well as the design studio Energy Transition Design LLC.Workshop FeesRegister here. Discounts are automatically applied if enrolling in multiple workshops: 15% off for 2, 20% off for 3, and 25% off for 4. Additional need-based / sliding scale discounted admission is available by request. Email alex[at]energytransitiondesign[dot]com to request need-based discounted admission.

Solar Power Sound Workshop
2025-07-26 14:00 - 17:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City

Solar Power Kinetic Art: Bots, Drawing Machines, & Kinetic Sculptures
2025-07-27 10:00 - 13:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Workshop Leader Alex Nathanson of Energy Transition Design.

Solar Power for Artists: learn about solar powered sound art, kinetic sculpture, design methods, and more!

This four-part workshop series includes solar power art design methods, solar power sound art, and solar powered kinetic art. Participants will build small solar art projects they can take with them. We will discuss the history of artists working in the field, common conceptual approaches, and a number of technical methods. No prior experience with solar power or electronics is necessary. Please note that these workshops are for adults.WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Saturday, July 26

Workshop #1

10am -1pm: Solar Power Art Methods

This workshop will introduce participants to the fundamentals of solar power design. A framework for conceptualizing and creating solar power art and education projects will be introduced. The framework will be introduced to participations through a series of small hands on experiments and projects.

Workshop #2

2 – 5pm: Solar Power Sound Workshop

This workshop will introduce participants to a range of techniques for creating solar powered sound making devices that can be applied to instruments, installations, performances, and more. We will discuss the history of the field, common conceptual approaches, and a number of technical methods. All participants will build their own solar powered instrument in the workshop.

Three techniques for building instruments will be demonstrated:

Direct drive acoustic instruments

Solar powered analog synthesis

Sonifying light frequencies

Sunday July 27

Workshop #3

10am -1pm: Solar Power Kinetic Art Workshop: Bots, Drawing Machines, & Kinetic Sculptures

This workshop will introduce participants to a range of techniques for creating small solar powered robotic devices that can be applied to making sculptures, draw bots, percusion instruments, and more. We will discuss the history of artists working in the field, common conceptual approaches, and a number of technical methods. All participants will build their own solar powered mechanical creature or device.

Workshop #4

2pm – 5pm: Solar Art Tutorial User-Testing

Participants will be shown new projects from the upcoming Solar Power for Artists book to user-test. They will be given the choice of a number of different projects to experiment with. This workshop will build on the techniques and concepts from introduced in previous workshops. All participants will build a project they can take with them. Participants will get the most out of this workshop if they have already attended at least 1 of our other workshops.

Workshop LeaderAlex Nathanson is a designer, multimedia artist, technologist, and educator who has been working with solar power for a decade. His work is primarily focused on exploring both the experimental and practical applications of sustainable energy technologies, particularly photovoltaic solar power. He is the author of the book A History of Solar Power Art and Design and leads the education platform Solar Power for Artists as well as the design studio Energy Transition Design LLC.Workshop FeesRegister here. Discounts are automatically applied if enrolling in multiple workshops: 15% off for 2, 20% off for 3, and 25% off for 4. Additional need-based / sliding scale discounted admission is available by request. Email alex[at]energytransitiondesign[dot]com to request need-based discounted admission.

Solar Art Tutorial User-Testing
2025-07-27 14:00 - 17:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City

Solar Art Tutorial: User-Testing
2025-07-27 14:00 - 17:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City

Flux Saturday: Draw A House, Bottle Beer & Watch a Movie
2025-08-02 14:00 - 18:00
Our serial public program and potluck is back! Flux Saturdays are organized by different artists and take many forms, including pop-up exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist presentations and more.

Workshop: Draw Me A House with Jonas VansteenkisteDraw me a house’ is a participatory project in which anyone can participate. The assignment is simple; draw us a house and fill in a short questionnaire. All submitted drawings and answers will become part of the ongoing project, which collects and archives how people classify houses.

Screening: Bottle Beer and Watch a MovieJoin Alicia Grullón and gil lopez for a curated compilation of film clips from the late 20th and early 21st centuries that explore themes of overconsumption, government conspiracy, patriarchy, and community- offering a cinematic mirror to our current moment. From blockbuster hits to cult favorites beloved by cinephiles, some clips are beer-themed, others not, but all provoke reflection. These classic summer selections raise questions we’re lucky enough to recognize now as cautionary tales. Between beer-making sessions or during breaks, we’ll share a short, informal conversation over a cold one—unpacking what surfaced for us in the viewing.

This event is part 2/3 of gil lopez’s Flux Homebrew 101.

Flux Saturday: A Screening, A Tasting, A Learnshop, Oh My!
2025-08-16 14:00 - 18:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Our serial public program and potluck is back! Flux Saturdays are organized by different artists and take many forms, including pop-up exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist presentations and more.

Screening: Itala AguileraItala Aguilera (2025 NYSCA Fellow) presents the 2025 video work Dinner Time, a performance video made in collaboration with filmmaker Joshua Bogatin, with sound by Neve Jahn. The video features performer Jorge Cervantes eating a pair of shoes off of the artist’s feet and will be part of a future exhibition at Flux IV, titled Tierra Mojada (Wet Land).

Tasting: Homebrew 101 (Part 3) with gil lopezThe final part of a crash course in beermaking, gil lopez invites you to a tasting party to close out the three-part series, Flux Homebrew 101!

Learnshop: Making Mussel Island/Crafting the Creek with Priscilla StadlerMussel Island vanished 100 years ago, when it was dredged to make more room for industrial ships in Newtown Creek. Yet today mussels still thrive nearby—perhaps descendants of the island’s original inhabitants. Join the “Making Mussel Island” learnshop to make creek-related crafts and learn more about Newtown Creek’s fascinating history, science, and mussels in a relaxed, fun environment!

Image: Itala Aguilera, Dinner Time (film still), 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

Flux Saturday: Draw Me A House + Solar Sounders
2025-08-23 15:00 - 18:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Our serial public program and potluck is back! Flux Saturdays are organized by different artists and take many forms, including pop-up exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist presentations and more.

Workshop: Draw Me A House with Jonas VansteenkisteDraw me a house’ is a participatory project in which anyone can participate. The assignment is simple; draw us a house and fill in a short questionnaire. All submitted drawings and answers will become part of the ongoing project, which collects and archives how people classify houses. https://www.jonasvansteenkiste.com/

Solar Sounders — Installation by Daniel Fishkin Solar Sounders are synthesizers played by sunlight—no batteries or knobs, just speaker output governed by fluctuating solar power. The goal isn’t to conserve charge, but to make music. At Flux Factory’s Hunter’s Point South, weatherproof modernist boxes will adorn four exterior walls, following the sun’s trajectory from sunrise to sunset, producing day-long compositions. In the era of AI, Solar Sounders are Artificial Inhabitants. https://dfiction.com/

Flux Saturday: If Walls Could Talk
2025-09-13 15:00 - 20:30 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Our serial public program and potluck is back! Flux Saturdays are organized by different artists and take many forms, including pop-up exhibitions, performances, screenings, artist presentations and more.

3:00 – 4:00 PMRhizome Fellowship Artist Talk: Zella Vanié & dre jácomePlease join Flux Factory’s 2025 Rhizome Fellows, dre jácome and Zella Vanié, for artist talks that will provide greater insight into their practice and process as they work towards an exhibition in 2026. dre jácome will speak about her interactive storytelling archive and installation, Earthseed, which weaves together land-based, Indigenous, and contemporary technologies. Zella Vanié will elaborate on We Be Coming Free, a zine series developed communally, through integrated workshops drawing on Black imagination, somatic wisdom, and contemporary critical thought. Rhizome Fellowships are an annual residency and exhibition opportunity that make time and space to forge stronger ties between Flux Factory and community-based practice engaging under-heard, under-seen, and under-supported voices in Queens. 2025-2026 is the inaugural year of the fellowship.

www.drerenate.xyzzellavanie.cargo.sitewww.fluxfactory.org/rhizome-fellowships/

4:00 – 6:00 PMFamily Workshop: Jiří Pitrmuc and Savka MarenićChildren, parents, and neighbors are invited to join Flux Factory’s international artists-in-residence, Jiří Pitrmuc (Czech Republic) and architect and artist Savka Marenić (Czech Republic/Montenegro) in a creative workshop exploring the Hunter’s Point South waterfront and its traces of wilderness. Together, we will practice being attentive to our surroundings, try to see space through different eyes than we may be used to, and experiment with a variety of objects and media as tools for discovery.

7:15 PM – 8:30 PM Performance: If Museum Walls Could Talk by Margarita KulevaThis performance is dedicated to revealing “behind the scenes” political struggles for creativity and cultural expression in wartime Russia. It draws upon a variety of less visible protest and dissent actions caused by the new wave of censorship and extreme police brutality. The performance is based on self-ethnography and interviews Margarita Kuleva conducted with Russian cultural workers since the beginning of the war. The event interweaves the voices of protesters, fragments of official discourse, seekers for stability, and those who’d like to escape into “pure art”, in one dramatic story that unfolds in dialogue with a media installation created by Daria Trubarova specially for the performance. www.margaritakuleva.comThis version of the performance is co-curated by N.A. The performance will be followed by a Q&A with N.A. and Margarita.

Image: Margarita Kuleva, {min}enligntenment, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Opening • Maureen Catbagan: Alagaan ang Salaysáy
2025-10-04 06:00 - 21:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Join us for the opening reception of Alagaan ang Salaysáy (Take Care of the Story), a solo exhibition by artist Maureen Catbagan. The artist’s new project honors Filipino nurses in Queens, Brooklyn, and New York City. Drawing on the migration story sparked by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and the 1970s nurse recruitment drives, Catbagan gathers oral histories from a community whose work has sustained the city’s healthcare system for decades. The words tita (aunt), ate (sister), and kuya (brother) recur—titles of care and respect that transcend bloodlines. Visitors are invited to read these stories vocally, transforming each into what Catbagan calls “a living monument of care.” In doing so, the exhibition turns listening into an act of devotion, infusing nurses’ labor into cultural memory.

Opening: October 4, 6:00 – 9:00 PM at Flux IV7:00 Opening remarks7:30 Performance by Cordillera Cultural Ensemble (CCE)7:45 Performance by Kinding Sindaw

Kinding Sindaw is a non for profit theater and dance theater established in 1992 and based in NYC that presents repertoire from living tradition and intangible cultural heritage of the Mindanao, Southern Philippines through performances, dance, storytelling, kulintang music ensemble and silat martial art. We are Honoring the Indigenous and Sultanate Bangsamoro and those in diaspora. Kinding Sindaw is non for profit, AAPI / BIPOC lead and membership. Founded by Artistic Director Potri Ranka Manis, a Meranao Bai Labi in diaspora in 1992.

Cordillera Cultural Ensemble is an ethnic group representing the Igorot people of the Cordillera Administrative Region in the Northern Philippines, primarily based in New York and other states. Our mission is to preserve and promote our indigenous culture and history through traditional dances, songs, and other cultural performances celebrating friendship, courtship, and other ethnic festivities, in collaboration with government and non-government organizations.

Image: Maureen Catbagan, Alagaan ang Salaysay: Potri Ranka Manis (video still), 2025. Courtesy of the artist.

Opening • Xyza Cruz Bacani: The Diaspora is Home
2025-10-04 18:00 - 21:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Join us for the opening reception of The Diaspora is Home, a solo exhibition by Xyza Cruz Bacani. This exhibition presents photographs of the Asian American diaspora, from portraits in living rooms to scenes of community gatherings, food traditions, and religious practices. Installed within a living room environment, Bacani’s work evokes belonging and cultural continuity, transforming the gallery into a space of warmth, reflection, and collective memory. The opening reception on Saturday, October 4 is accompanied by the presence of community members who appear in the photographs, sharing food they have prepared, and a tea demonstration by Anna Ye.

Opening: October 4, 6:00 – 9:00 PM at Flux IV6:30 Sushi demonstration by Chef Tab7:00 Opening remarks7:15 Tea demonstration by Anna Ye

Panel • Historias Entrecruzadas: In the Dome
2025-10-18 15:00 - 17:00 | Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Blvd, Queens, New York, 11106
Please join us for Historias Entrecruzadas: In the Dome with artists Natalia Nakazawa, dre jácome, and Matt Mottel. Moderated by Flux Factory’s Curator & Exhibitions Director Meghana Karnik, this conversation addresses the importance of telling our own stories in three perspectives rooted in social architecture, oral history, and community organizing. As more people live under threat of deportation and organized abandonment — what crucial learnings have arisen through the artists’ participatory projects?

Natalia Nakazawa engages people in creating spaces of resistance through collective map making experiences, recording oral histories, and 3D scanning objects through Our Stories of Migration. She is a Socrates Sculpture Park 2025 Artist Fellow.

dre jácome’s interactive storytelling installation, Earthseed, weaves together land-based, Indigenous, and contemporary technologies — inspired by temazcal ceremonies, ecological design, and the survival cosmologies envisioned in Octavia Butler’s Parable series. Modeled after the protective form of the pinecone, which opens and closes in response to its environment, Earthseed encodes intimate stories of survival onto seedlight sculptures, functioning as an emergent archive that reveals itself only through chosen protocols of entry. She is a 2025 Rhizome Fellow at Flux Factory.

Matthew Mottel builds geodesic domes as a performance architecture, based on Syeus Mottel’s (father) 1970’s photojournalism of Loisaida cultural organization CHARAS, who built geodesic domes in collaboration with Buckminster Fuller. This event is hosted in partnership with the 2025 Socrates Annual: Up/Rooted. Light refreshments will be provided.

About the Panelists

Natalia Nakazawa (b. 1982, Charlotte, NC) is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work spans painting, textiles, and social practice. As a child of Latin American (Uruguayan) and Asian (Japanese American, Yonsei) diasporas, she draws on complex cultural legacies to explore identity, migration, and storytelling. Through collaborative, community-driven projects, Nakazawa blurs the boundaries between education, activism, and art, inviting collective participation. Her jacquard textiles incorporate images from open-access museum collections, often highlighting historical moments of cultural exchange. These works serve as tactile archives; places to critically engage with memory. https://www.natalianakazawa.com/

dre jácome (b. 1992, Atlanta GA) is a transdisciplinary storyteller weaving across land-based and digital technologies. as a child of the andes mountains, magdelena river, and georgia red clay, she has been a lifelong student studying the subversive healing technologies found on the land and body. inspired by magical realism and the survival arts of everyday living, her work aims to oppose and propose experimental counter archives that honor and defend BIPOC intimate knowledge systems held in story, nature, and recovering cosmologies. with her background as a herbalist, historian, and cultural organizer, she grounds her projects with relational methods including archival research, oral history, critical ethnobotany, and partnerships with community organizations and chosen family. her work has appeared at Lincoln Center, Smack Mellon, and MOCADA Abolition House. she received a BA in History & Latin American Studies from Swarthmore College, and a MS in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. https://www.drerenate.xyz/

Matt Mottel (born 1981, New York, NY) is an artist, performer, and writer whose work enlivens primary source materials and creates collaborative projects that open access to subterranean culture. Social activism and cultural community run throughout his performances, videos, sculptures, and music. Rooted in his New York upbringing, Mottel holds a B.A. in Political & Cultural Studies from SUNY New Paltz (2003) and an M.F.A. in Digital Intermedia Art Practice from City College (2019). His projects have been presented internationally, including a co-improviser residency in Moers, Germany (2021), and the solo exhibition burnt truth at Gundula Gruber Gallery in Vienna (2021). He was an SPCUNY Fellow in 2022–2023. In 2024, Mottel co-founded Parents in the Avant Garde with his wife, artist and educator Nicole Lattuca. The collective makes intergenerational art and music with parents and children, with performances at The Stone (April 2024) and in Newburgh, NY. In summer 2025, they were educators-in-residence at Catskill Arts Space, where they developed Scribble Scores, an ongoing project exploring collaborative mark-making as graphic scores for sound and music performance. https://www.mattmottel.info/

Special Thanks: Themes discussed in this panel were developed in dialogue with The Clemente as part of Historias, a citywide program charting the impact of Latinx communities on NYC.

Image: From a Village Preservation event at The Loisaida Center titled, “Chino Garcia Oral History and Screening of CHARAS is Alive on Spaceship Earth,” 2018 (detail). Source link. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Block Printing Workshop with Sunaina Bhalla
2025-10-21 18:30 - 21:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Open to all beginners, learn how to print using traditional Indian carved wood blocks to create your own unique works of art. Led by artist Sunaina Bhalla, the workshop will begin with a brief history on wood block printing traditions in India and China, with demonstrations of different methods of block printing. Choose from over 100 motifs to practice on paper, and bring home your own tote bag with your printed designs. Participants are encouraged to bring additional materials and clothes from home they would like to print on!Workshop LeaderSunaina is a contemporary artist of Indian origin, living in Singapore. Educated in India, she moved to Tokyo in the late 90’s and has spent the last two decades in various parts of North and South Asia. Having completed her formal education as a textile designer specializing in print, she chose to pursue an immersive education in the traditional art form of Nihonga in Japan, where she spent 5 years studying under Suiko Ohta-sensei of the Kyoshin-Do school. She completed her Masters of Fine Arts degree from Goldsmiths University, London and Lasalle College of the Arts, where her thesis topic was ‘The Gesture and the Ritual of Pain’.Her work revolves around the repetitive and ritualistic nature of gestures and their traces. She explores the transformative effects of the deliberate infliction of pain on the human body during the curative process of alleviating disease and decay. By using materials analogous to the fragile nature of the body, juxtaposed with photography, fabric and embroidery, she examines the passage of time and the mark making that documents this process. Some of the materials used are blood test strips, gauze bandages and suture needles.

Using her personal experiences as a Breast cancer survivor and a caregiver to her daughter with Type 1 Diabetes, she documents the journey of trauma and relief through gestures as a visual language. Sunaina has exhibited in Japan, India, Singapore, Europe and the Middle East. Her works are in the permanent collections of the ESSL Museum, Vienna and Mumbai Airports Authority, India, and in various private collections globally. She also runs wood block printing workshops regularly in Singapore, Myanmar, Indonesia, USA and Australia.

Flux Factory 2025 Art Auction
2025-10-23 18:30 - 21:30 | The Suffolk, 55 Suffolk Street
At 55 Suffolk Street, Manhattan

Purchase Your Gala Tickets NoworPreview and Bid Online Now in our Silent Art Auction

Flux Factory’s Art Auction is back! The auction featuring over 50 artworks from Flux’s community will launch online on October 9 and culminate in a Gala on Thursday October 23.

The Online Auction is Now Live. Bid Today!

We’re excited to return for a second year to 55 Suffolk where you can enjoy the lovely rooftop view of downtown Manhattan with a catered open bar, gathering 150 of Flux’s supporters, artists and community members. This annual fundraiser makes Flux’s free public programs and affordable artist residency possible.

Auction Artists

Alex Nathanson | Alexa Hatanaka | Aliya Bonar | Allen Frame | Amelia Marzec | Amir Badawi | Angela Washko | Bahareh Khoshooee | Ben Galaday | Bhasha Chakrabarti | Cameron Granger | Candace Jensen | Caroline Woolard | Catalina Alvarez | Cayla Lockwood | Claudia Cortinez | Dana Sherwood | Danny Crump | Doug Paulson | Eboni Olivia Louigarde | Ellen Harvey | Farrah Karapetian | Flux Iron Chefs (Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, Lena Hawkins, Sarah Dahlinger, Will Owen, and Aliya Bonar) | Gino Romero | Greg Stewart | Jean Shin | Jevijoe Vitug | Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow | Joshua Goode | Joyce Yu-Jean Lee | Kendal Henry | Li-Ming Hu | Mark Dion | Maureen Catbagan | Melanie Delach | Melissa Joseph | Naeem Mohaiemen | Natalia Nakazawa | N.D. Austin | Patrick Costello | Petr Shvetsov | Rebecca Forstater | Roopa Vasudevan | Sally Beauti Twin | Sara Jimenez | Sarah Dahlinger | Space Invader | sTo Len | Swoon | Tod Seelie | Vadis Turner | Walker Tufts | Wieteke Heldens

About our Guests of Honor:

We are proud to honor Jean Shin and Shaun Leonardo for their visionary work in NYC’s cultural landscape.

Shaun Leonardo recently returned as Co-Director to Socrates Sculpture Park, a place where he had previously spent a decade in various positions. Shaun’s humorous energy embodies the Park’s spirit of presenting ambitious public sculptures in an accessible, prolific green space. An active and widely exhibited artist, Leonardo’s work critiques conventional masculinity by absurdly exaggerating depictions of sports and masculinity in performances and multimedia. His work has been featured at the Brooklyn Museum, Walker Art Center and LACMA, among many others.

Jean Shin creates sprawling installations transforming accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship with material consumption. Her notoriety exploded with a 2004 MoMA Solo Exhibition and she has since exhibited in over 150 museums. Jean serves as a faculty member at Pratt and on the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

2025 Auction Committee and Lead Donors

Melissa Joseph, Auction Chair | Jean Barberis | Tom Finkelpearl | Kendal Henry | Elana Herzog | Grace Hong | Houda Lazrak | Jane Lombard | Esen Karol | Natalia Nakazawa | Carla Nicdao | Jake Pratt | Nirmal Singh | Sallie Sanders | Eugenie Tsai | Walker Tufts, Auction Coordinator | Lilly Wei | Sarah Weitlauf | Anonymous Donors

Your involvement to make the gala a success is sincerely appreciated. To join the Auction & Gala Committee or sponsor the event, please contact Gala Coordinator Walker Tufts at walker@fluxfactory.org

Thank you to our Sponsors

Closing • FILAM Fashion Show & Artist-Led Exhibition Tours
2025-10-26 14:00 - 18:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Please join us for the second-to-last weekend our current exhibitions, Xyza Cruz Bacani: The Diaspora is Home and Maureen Catbagan: Alagaan ang Salaysáy, closing November 2. On October 26, Xyza Cruz Bacani and Maureen Catbagan will lead walkthroughs of the current shows, followed by a fashion show by ParadoxVestedRelics, accompanied by the electronic rock duo Turbo Goth.

Filipino baked goods and snacks will be served, sponsored by Arellano Pandesal and we will be joined by community organizations Chhaya, Filipino-American National Historical Society, and Ascend Applied Behavioral Analysis.

3:00 – 3:30 pm — Tour with Xyza Cruz Bacani

3:30 – 4:00 pm — Tour with Maureen Catbagan

4:00 – 4:30 pm — Fashion Show by ParadoxVestedRelics (PVR)PVR’s fashion manifestos propose a complete wardrobe of 12 looks, in theory one per month of the year, to complete a theme or concept. Our 18th manifesto, titled FILAM, unite Filipino and American cultural parallels and paradoxes through flashbacks of a nomadic childhood in the US, an adolescence in Manila, and adulthood in NYC. We present 12 looks that are familiar yet peculiar, sacred yet universal, and stem from personal experience. You’ll meet lola, manong, my classmate, the nurse, Carrie, and the Manananggal, among others.

ParadoxVestedRelics is a brother-sister duo (Paolo and Rina Raymundo) whose interdisciplinary approach to a prolific range of creative projects have amused and intrigued, flying under the radar since their return to NYC via Manila in 2002. Rina’s experience in the entertainment industry and Paolo’s background in fashion have led to an art installation at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and video art shown at Boston Center for the Arts. Paolo encourages community building as a co-host of swap meets, free events, technical workshops and art performances at Vers::clothing for people. With a motley crew of contributors, PVR has combined fashion, film, photography, performance, and music to produce work that explores identity, function, and the sociology of youth and sub cultures through a Filipino-American lens. They are always excited for new applications to bridge extremes by finding understanding in cultural parallels through fashion, craft, and art.Turbo Goth is a NYC based, electronic rock duo from the Philippines. Formed in 2008, Turbo Goth is composed of Sarah Gaugler (on lead vocals) and Paolo Peralta (on guitar/electronic sampler), they were originally the only electronic rock duo in the Philippines at the time. Turbo Goth’s music is semi-experimental electronic music with distorted bass synths backed by aggressive heavy beats, and guitars, stitched together by light vocals. Turbo Goth has had numerous performances in the Philippines and at Music Festivals in Asia, but after their show at South by Southwest in 2014, they decided to relocate, for a broader audience, finding a new home in New York by the end of that year. Turbo Goth’s notable international performances are 2011 Baybeats Music Festival in Singapore, 2012 CAMA Festival in Hanoi Vietnam, TURBO GOTH opens for OMD”History Of Modern” Manila 2012 at the Araneta Coliseum. 2014 South by Southwest in Austin Texas, 2015 CMJ Music Marathon in Brooklyn New York, 2016 Move Music Festival in Albany New, 2016 Northside Music Festival Brooklyn New York, 2016 Indie Week Toronto Canada and SXSW 2017, 2019 Official Showcasing Artist.
