Flux Factory

Tarot Parade ArcanaCrawl: Creek to River
2025-05-17 19:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | 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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Costume + Luminaria Workshops
2024-10-12 13:00 - 17:00 | 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.

Spiritual Machines: Closing Performances
2024-09-21 12:00 - 17:00 | Flux Island, 404 Colonels Row, Governors Island
Three performances on the penultimate day of Spiritual Machines: Venus RX by Midheaven or Nah, The HTMLgardeness – Sowing HTML but Harvesting AI by Ursula Endlicher, and Powered by the Glitch by Adelle Lin Yingxi.

Venus Rx | Midheaven or Nah2022-2024 (ongoing), Fabric, candles, idols, Goddess paraphernalia, ritual items, cardboard, tinsel, mylar and other household bric-a-bracSolidarity requires a felt connection displaced by techno-capitalism. Venus Rx is a performance that happens within 1-on-1 encounters which invite participants to tap into their interior feminine energy represented by planet Venus. While I am using technology to quickly ‘read the stars’ from a hand-held device, the exchange requires an element of sharing, storytelling, vulnerability and empathy which challenges the absence of human feeling promoted by artificial intelligence and Big Tech.

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The HTMLgardeness — Sowing HTML but Harvesting AI | Ursula Endlicher2024, WebAR, gif animation; acorn coffee, dried pears and cherriesThe HTMLgardeness – Sowing HTML but Harvesting AI is a series of AR-Walks and experiences triggered by scanning the bark of trees, a natural QR-code. A critical yet playful series, it features the HTMLgardeness, a character played by the artist, reflecting on climate and systems, code and fragility, while offering AI-generated harvest.

In these walks guests are invited to venture out into different neighborhoods to discover, with smart phone and the artist’s WebAR “bARk” in hand, the HTMLgardeness’ trees and portals to reveal her tree-inspired AR dances, while sampling tree-specific drinks and snacks offered along the way.

For Spiritual Machines the HTMLgardeness’ surroundings will be extended to the Colonels Row neighborhood on Governors Island where she’ll inhabit five trees!

The augmented trees continue to be active and can be visited also after the event using the artist’s WebAR “bARk” at: https://html.bark.garden.

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Powered by the Glitch | Adelle Lin Yingxi2024, screen, computer, webcam, custom 3D models, AR softwarePowered by the Glitch explores the intersection of art, technology, and social activism through feminist cyborg theory and an interactive augmented reality (AR) installation. Audiences engage with their inner glitch, becoming feminist cyborgs through AR, challenging norms, and embracing identity fluidity.

The project interrogates how virtual personas influence real-life identities, proposing a synthesized identity merging both realms. Embracing the glitch as resistance and transformation, it disrupts binary logic, celebrating hybridity and the in-between, aiming to dismantle societal expectations of women’s perfection and constant performance for the world’s gaze.

Rooted in Legacy Russell’s concept of the glitch as “a form of refusal, a strategy of non-performance,” the project interrogates the possibilities within conformist systems. Participants will explore new forms of identity that emerge from the disruptions and imperfections inherent in both technology and nature. Additionally, the project will feature a cyborg feminist AR performance, offering a dynamic exploration of these themes.

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Spiritual Machines presents interdisciplinary works by leading contemporary artists encompassing new media, video, sculpture, installation, and performance. The exhibition closes September 22, 2024.

View full exhibition information.

Flux Factory 2024 Benefit
2024-09-12 18:00 - 20:00 | The Suffolk, 55 Suffolk Street
🦩Purchase Tickets🦩

Celebrate Flux Factory’s 30th anniversary and support the founding of our new venue Flux IV through a catered reception and community gathering.

Perennial favorite DJ Vinyl Richie will spin records at this catered rooftop reception, a small silent auction of artwork from friends of Flux will be available, and a variety of new clothing designs will be for sale hand-made by Flux’s community.

Since 1994 Flux has hosted over 300 Artists-in-Residence, both local and international, as well as staging over 700 exhibitions across all disciplines. Flux hosts over 75 annual multidisciplinary events; all are free to the public while all participating artists are compensated.

Your contributions will help Flux get across the final hurdles to open our new venue Flux IV, located on the Hunters Point South waterfront. Flux has recently purchased this space through NYC and the support of recent Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer as well as Gotham, but the initial buildout of our space will not be possible without a community of supporters rising to the occasion at this gala. Flux needs to raise $150k to build HVAC and a bathroom for our new space to meet minimum code requirements.

With your support, the impact of this 30th anniversary celebration will be a community art space that persists to serve Long Island City for another 30 years and beyond!

🦩Purchase Tickets🦩

Rebecca Hon Solo Exhibition Opening Reception
2024-08-19 20:00 - 23:00
Please join us for a solo presentation of works by Hong Kong-based artist, Rebecca Hon. Hon focuses on modern Chinese ink art, especially on the exploration of contemporary Chinese ink, and the integration of digital technology and traditional culture, hoping to create works that have both traditional connotations and contemporary new styles. Rebecca loves observing social changes of Hong Kong, she uses an art perspective to analyze the vicissitudes of Hong Kong’s current changes, and uses her works to form a visual dialogue about Hong Kong’s cityscape, lifestyle and historical memory.

Reception: Monday, August 19, 8 pmRSVP to info@fluxfactory.org

Visiting Hours:By appointment, info@fluxfactory.org

Artist Bio

Rebecca Hon graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with Master of Art in Fine Arts and won many awards internationally, such as the Gold Award of 2021 UOB Art in Ink Awards, UOB Best Ink Art Work of the Year 2021, The Hong Kong Human Rights Arts Prize 2021, Third Prize winner of Da Dun Fine Arts Exhibition Taiwan, etc. Her works have been sold in Ravenel auction in Taiwan, also exhibited in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore, middle east, United Kingdom, and Scotland. Rebecca has also been invited to organize art and painting lectures for different institutions in Hong Kong, such as the Hong Kong Palace Museum, Hong Kong Cultural Museum etc. She is currently a PT painting lecturer at the Hong Kong Metropolitan University, and PT design lecturer at the University of Sunderland, UK and HKCT.

This residency exhibition is sponsored by United Overseas Bank (UOB).

Spiritual Machines Opening Reception
2024-08-17 12:00 - 17:00 | Flux Island, 404 Colonels Row, Governors Island
What do we retain about our humanity through cultural shifts that leave us accelerated far beyond what our ancestors dreamed of?

Spiritual Machines, an art exhibition at Flux Factory on Governors Island, opens Saturday August 17, from noon-5pm. The exhibition presents interdisciplinary works by leading contemporary artists encompassing new media, video, sculpture, installation, and performance.

View full exhibition information.

Process Group Exhibition Opening Reception
2024-07-27 12:00 - 18:00 | Flux Island, 404 Colonels Row, Governors Island
Join us for the opening reception of the Process Group exhibition. Also on view on this date is the Golden Colonel group exhibition. View complete Process exhibition details.

Solar Power for Artists Workshop Series
2024-07-27 10:00 - 2024-07-28 17:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Learn about solar powered sound art, kinetic sculpture, design methods, and more! Workshop sessions include 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.

All workshops will be taught by Alex Nathanson and are for adults. Need-based/ sliding scale discounted admission is available by request. Email alex@energytransitiondesign.com to request discounted admission.

Register on Eventbrite

Saturday July 27

Workshop #1

10am-1pm: Design Methods for Solar Art and Education Projects

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

Workshop #2

2pm-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 28

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 Power Art Project Play Testing

Participants will be shown new projects from the upcoming Solar Power for Artists book to play 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.

About the Instructor: Alex 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.

About Solar Power for Artists: Solar Power for Artists is a design studio and education platform focused on both creative and traditional applications of sustainable energy, particularly photovoltaic solar power. We’re making sustainable energy tangible, accessible, and understandable. We provide a wide range of design and education services for community organizations, cultural and educational institutions, and businesses in the sustainable energy industry. Our education platform provides accessible, often open source, resources for learning about creative applications of photovoltaic solar power. This includes an historic archive, workshops, and tutorials, among other initiatives. More info is available at https://www.solarpowerforartists.com/

The Third Saturday
2024-07-20 12:00 - 18:00 | Flux Island, 404 Colonels Row, Governors Island
We no longer remember what it commemorates, but The Third Saturday is a holiday at The Golden Colonel! We’ll celebrate it with a reprise of Bed Piece by Mark Shaw, an opportunity to play Monster Cards by Ben Galady, and will also offer a group therapy session “for dying artists” called The Last Painting** led by artist and psychotherapist Shushanik Karapetyan.

**Accessible Event.

Location: 404A Colonels Row, Governors Island NYC

This event is a part of The Golden Colonel, curated by Heather Kapplow and Itala Aguilera.

The Golden Colonel Opening Reception & Ribbon Cutting by Martha Wilson
2024-07-13 12:00 - 18:00
404A Colonels Row, Governors Island NYC

Please attend the grand opening of The Golden Colonel, featuring a ribbon cutting by pioneering feminist artist and Founding Director Emerita of Franklin Furnace, Martha WIlson. Take a tour of the facility, meet some residents, and try out some of our activities! On this date you’ll have the opportunity to experience Bed Piece by Mark Shaw after the ribbon cutting, and at 4pm, a Remembering/Forgetting Spellcasting Ceremony** by Carrie Hawks.

This event is a part of The Golden Colonel, curated by Heather Kapplow and Itala Aguilera.

**Accessible Event.

Striped Light
2024-07-09 19:30 - 23:00
RSVP to stripedlight.nyc@gmail.com for visiting detailsDoors at 7:30, performances begin at 8

Folk Music : Chris Corsano, Ches Smith & Nate WooleyMichelle YomDaniel MalinskyTuesday July 9th Entry: $15

Hello! This month our show falls on a Tuesday, please take note. This is it — our Summer show — it’s gonna be amazing. We have a brand new trio put together by Nate Wooley (“Folk Music”) with the unbelievable combination of Chris Corsano and Ches Smith.These are musicians at the top of their game, working it out in an intimate space. It doesn’t get much better.

Dictée is one fascinating book. Michelle Yom will be performing Sonic Annotations on Dictée. And, an electro-acoustic solo from Daniel Malinsky. If we are lucky we’ll get to hangout on the roof afterwards. Stay cool!$15 admission – 100% of the door goes toward performersFollow @striped_light on instagram to stay in the loop for future concerts.

You Only Get One Body
2024-07-07 12:00 - 17:00 | Flux Island, 404 Colonels Row, Governors Island
Location: 404A Colonels Row, Governors Island NYC

Image: Itala Aguilera.

A very (literally!) laid back sunbathing event about elder-visibility and allyship.

Bring your grandparents, parents or yourself; a blanket; some sunscreen; and water, and come celebrate the anniversary of the 1992 court ruling that allows chests and breasts equal access to the light of day in the state of New York, while also celebrating bodies of all ages, shapes, sizes and genders. This is a preview event for The Golden Colonel, a speculative retirement home for artists on Governors Island that will open on July 13, 2024. The Golden Colonel will still be under construction, so not yet open to the public, but July 7 is an official holiday for the organization, celebrated annually with elder- (and ally-) optionally topless sunbathing. We invite you to join us to help kick off the first annual You Only Get One Body!

This event is a part of The Golden Colonel, curated by Heather Kapplow and Itala Aguilera.

**Accessible Event.

Striped Light & Lucas Abela present Frankenstein 3
2024-06-17 19:30 - 23:00
RSVP to stripedlight.nyc@gmail.com for visiting detailsDoors at 7:30, performances begin at 8$15 admission – 100% of the door goes toward performersFollow @striped_light on instagram to stay in the loop for future concerts

Our monthly Mondays Striped Light experimental concert series is in its 8th iteration with a special presentation by Australian sound artist Lucas Abela with Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Chuck Roth, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Brandon Lopez, Marcia Bassett, Samara Lubelski, Bob Bellerue, David Watson & Sandy Ewen.

We have a super-rare visit to New York by Lucas ‘Granpa’ Abela, one of the truly stand-out sound artists/performers of our time. Folks, this one is simply not to be missed. On top of that, Lucas has put together a nine piece New York super-band to play a Frankenstein assemblage composition that he has made for this occasion: live improvising groups that will be ‘carved up’ in real time. And then stitched together. Kind of.

Initially viewed as a turntablist, Abela’s work has rarely resembled anything or anyone else. Early on he was stabbing vinyl with Kruger-style stylus gloves. Then he drag-raced the pope and pope-mobile across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a sonic showdown. He has performed deaf defying duels with amplified samurai swords. It was bound to happen, he was eventually hospitalized by high powered turntables that he’d constructed from motors. He landed pole position on Otomo Yoshihides’ Ground Zero remix compilation ‘Consummation’. And more. Much, much more. Lucas Abela is simply one of the sharpest artists working today, cutting a direct path through the same old.

June Flux Saturday — Saturn Return
2024-06-15 12:00 - 17:00 | Governors Island, Colonels Row House 404A
Flux Factory is celebrating its big thirtieth anniversary by exhibiting 37 alumni of our Artists-in-Residence program in Saturn Return, on view at Flux IV and Governors Island until July 1. For June’s Flux Saturday on Governors Island, we host performances including a set by DJ Smallcock.

Jessica Pavone Performance and Flux IV Reception
2024-06-01 17:00 - 21:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
Meet us beginning at 5pm for a special reception at Flux IV, with 17 works on view in our Saturn Return Group Exhibition.

As the golden hour approaches (~7:45), we’ll walk from Flux IV a few minutes away to sit on the grassy park lawn and watch a live sunset solo viola performance by Jessica Pavone in front of the Manhattan skyline.

Governors Island Opening for Saturn Return
2024-05-18 13:00 - 18:00 | Governors Island, Colonels Row House 404A
2 islands 2 furious! This opening reception on Governors Island is just part of the Saturn Return exhibition, which takes place both at Governors Island as well as at Flux IV. View full exhibition details for full schedule and exhibition information.

Flux’s fourth season on Governors Island kicks off with a group exhibition with a 1-day performance by Hey There Kapplow.

Artists Exhibiting on Governors Island (Colonels Row, House 404a) include: Angela Washko, Ben Galaday, Dario Mohr, Ethan Shoshan, Hey There Kapplow, Itala Aguilera, Jack Hogan, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Lee Tusman, Lena Hawkins, Lucas Abela, MaLo Sutra Fish, Maya Quattropani, 502 Bad Gateway, Ruby Kwon, Valentina Medda, and Zachary Handler.

Flux IV Opening Reception for Saturn Return
2024-05-15 18:00 - 21:00 | Flux IV, 56-21 2nd St, Long Island City
2 islands 2 furious! This opening reception at Flux IV is just part of the Saturn Return exhibition, which takes place both at Flux IV as well as on Governors Island. View full exhibition details for full schedule and exhibition information.

The opening reception for the Flux IV component of the Saturn Return group exhibition will coincide with the LIC Arts Open Kick Off Party, with performances curated by LIC Arts Open. This is our inaugural public event at Flux IV, and we’re thrilled to launch it as a part of a neighborhood-wide open studios festival!

Artists Exhibiting at Flux IV (56-21 2nd St, LIC) include: Alex Wolkowicz, Amelia Marzec, Caitlin & Misha, Cecilia Enberg & Eric Malmberg, Don Daedalus, Heidi Neilson, Li-Ming Hu, Lily Baldwin, Mare Liberum, Maureen Catbagan, Patrick Topitschnig, Richard Nathaniel, Roopa Vasudevan, Trasonia Abbott, Tray Tsui, WALKER TUFTS, Wieteke Heldens, and Will Owen.

Dead Gods Opening Event
2023-12-31 18:00 - 20:00
Join Flux for the opening event of the exhibition Dead Gods.

Opening Event: December 31, 2023Exhibition by appointment until January 7, 2024

‘Dead Gods’ is a living monument that honors our prehistoric fungal ancestors as sacred earthly deities.

In a moment where humans are set to cause the extinction of one million species, MacEwan is reanimating an ancient terrestrial fungal giant that enabled the proliferation and diversification of life on Earth today. ‘Dead Gods’ pays tribute to a specific prehistoric super-fungi called the Prototaxite. This evolutionary triumph gave rise to the billions of terrestrial life-forms that followed. ‘Dead Gods’ is a practice of inter-species ancestor worship as ecological action. It is created through respectful collaboration with contemporary mushroom descendants of the Prototaxites. The ‘Dead Gods’ reward our attention and care by growing edible and medicinal mushrooms that are gifted to visitors of the exhibition.

A widespread expression of deity worship has been the creation of effigies and shrines that hold space for experiences with the metaphysical and the sacred. In contrast, to supernatural or immortal gods, ‘Dead Gods’ are mortal, earthly, extinct beings, which tell the story of our ancestral bond to all life on earth. As deities, they present an interpretation of our planet’s natural history as a vehicle for evolutionary spiritual transformation.

‘Dead Gods’ is an ongoing project for which MacEwan repeatedly resurrects the Prototaxities by growing them, at scale, with their contemporary mycelial descendants. These resurrections increase in size and species diversity with each iteration. Reminiscent of a science-fiction narrative, reanimating these now extinct life forms examines the utopic desire to reverse the inevitable process of extinction. Long-term, MacEwan plans to resurrect the ‘Dead Gods’ on a scale comparable to the largest Prototaxities in the fossil record: 20 to 30 feet tall. For Flux Factory, MacEwan presents a multimedia installation of the ‘Dead Gods’ project including living fungi and video projection in a structure reminiscent of a shrine. This presentation is an offering to the divine process of death and renewal as we bring in the new year.

Artist bioJemila MacEwan is an environmental artist known for their earthworks, installations, performances and expanded cinema projects. Their work takes an expansive view of time and geography, often created through slow acts of physical endurance. MacEwan invites audiences to take an interspecies perspective for working through the overwhelming emotional toll of reckoning with anthropogenic climate change and mass extinction.

MacEwan has performed and exhibited extensively internationally including at; ARoS Museum (Denmark), The Australian Consulate-General, Pioneer Works (NYC), The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC), NYCXDESIGN (USA), and Skaftfell Center for Visual Art (Iceland). In 2022 MacEwan was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design, The Philip Hunter Fellowship, The BigCi Environmental Art Award and was invited by TEDxBoston to present as a Planetary Fellow. They have been invited to attend notable residencies including; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (USA), BANFF Center (Canada), NARS Foundation (NYC), and Ox-Bow School of Painting (MI). Their work has been published in Art in America, Boston Globe, SFMoMA Open Space, and Artist Profile Magazine. MacEwan has been generously supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Australia Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the Ian Potter Cultural Council and is a recipient of The Marten Bequest Traveling Scholarship.

THINGS I'VE SEEN Closing Event
2023-11-16 21:00 - 23:00
Join Flux for the closing event of the exhibition THINGS I’VE SEEN.

Closing Event: Thursday, November 16, 9-11pmRSVP for visiting information here.Reach out to christina@fluxfactory.org about gallery opening hours.

The closing event will consist on a gathering around the duo exhibition of Catarina Real and Gonçalo Duarte and a concert from Diogo Neto at 10pm.

Diogo Neto (pt) Born in Lisbon 1992, founding member of the independent label Edições Umbria. Plays synthesizers, saxophone and keys in various projects namely Quebra, Erosão and DMDM. His studies in architecture contributed to an acute sensibility for space modeling, light design and scenography. This research has been materialized in multiple installations across galleries and concert halls.

@diogonetomachado
