art collective – brooklyn spaces

chicken hut

oriana on 18 May ’15

[I’m counting down to the release of the Brooklyn Spaces book by doing one mini-post per day, sharing teasers of some of the places you’ll find in it. This is the last one—the book is out tomorrow!]

neighborhood: bed-stuy | space type: living space | active since: 2000 | links: n/a

In a Brooklyn that gets more sanitized every day, there are still a few wild holdouts, and the Chicken Hut is one of the last men standing. “This is our reckless abandon studio,” says Greg H., who started the space with fellow woodworker JPL in the attic of what was then a working feather-processing factory. “It’s our home and the place where we’ve done every crazy fucking thing we’ve ever thought of.”

Chicken Hut bedroom [pic by Alix Piorun]

For fifteen years the Hut has been home to a revolving cast of more than 80 artists, builders, and renegade makers, from puppeteers to sculptors to luthiers. The space serves as an archive of their creations: robotic aliens, giant rubber sea creatures, and papier-mâché animal heads. Over the years the space has hosted art salons and open studios, as well as fundraisers for fellow artists, like Swoon and the Swimming Cities crew. And then there are the bikes. Chicken Hut is the unofficial clubhouse for the New York chapter of the mutant-bike-building group Black Label Bike Club. They’re also responsible for the annual freak-bike bacchanal Bike Kill, one of the craziest street parties of the year since 2002.

Chicken Hut founder Greg H. at Bike Kill 2014 [pic by Alix Piorun]

The Hut is also notorious for its parties—the crew throws a half-dozen jubilantly anarchic bashes each year, and each event contains many worlds: a dance floor helmed by housemate DJ Dirtyfinger here, a thrash metal band playing over there, a dirty marionette show down the hall, and a barbecue on the roof—with some 600 people bouncing back and forth among them.

Filthy Savage plays a wild party [pic by Walter Wlodarczyk]

The Chicken Hut is one of the longest-running underground outposts left in Brooklyn, a boisterous patched-together family that feels increasingly out of place amid the neighborhood’s myriad new condos and buttoned-up populous. The residents are currently in loft-law proceedings, and if they win, the building will be brought up to residential code and they’ll be granted the right to stay. “If I can’t live in this place, there’s no way I would stay in this city,” Greg says. “The grit and character this city is globally renowned for is just gone.”

Want to learn more about the Chicken Hut, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

the cave of archaic remnants

oriana on 20 Nov ’13

space type: art studio & performance venue | neighborhood: crown heights | active since: 2012 | links: facebook

The Cave is a huge basement studio in an artists’ loft building in Crown Heights. It’s a multifaceted space: part performance venue, part rehearsal studio, part gallery, part community gathering space, and it’s inhabited by a collective of musicians, dancers, sculptors, and artists.

all photos by Alix Piorun

Currently the Cave is being used as a set for an immersive dance performance called “The Cave: Archaic Remnants and the Methods of Transfer.” That name encompasses the space (the Cave), the dancers (Archaic Remnants), and the musicians (Methods of Transfer). The set, sculptures, and installation were designed by Laura Cuille, and nearly a dozen artists contributed music, dance, choreography, and more.

There will be one final performance of this unique site-specific piece on November 21st—buy tickets here. But first read my Q&A with Laura and two other contributors, Don and Arielle.

brooklyn spaces: Laura, how did the idea of this performance come about?
Laura: We all came into this space a year ago, and there was already music going on, and visual arts, and movement, but it was really loose and divided. At the time I was making life-size sculptures, and the idea of working with music and dance was in the back of my head. I was actually looking for a different space to install the sculptures, but then I realized I could put them here. So I started building the set and it just clicked that this was something we could all do together and all build off of to make it a whole.

brooklyn spaces: Don, how did the music come together? Were you inspired by the sculptures?
Don: We were collaborating together but separately, if that makes sense. The energy of creation ended up bringing our practices to a solid line instead of two parallel lines. Laura and I are kind of the same, as far as the way we work. I’m the audio version of her.

brooklyn spaces: Arielle, what’s your role?
Arielle: I’m behind the scenes, helping. I’m like the host.

brooklyn spaces: How would you describe the show to someone who hasn’t seen it or will never seen it? What are you trying to evoke with the performance?
Don: I would call it a Pompeii cave sculpture with visual stimulation and movements to cinematic music. It’s not that I wouldn’t call it dance, but I think it’s a little different. It’s almost like live shadow puppets feeding off of the music.
Laura: I think the theme is really universal. I was reading Carl Jung’s The Red Book while I was working on this piece—I’ve always been inspired by music and literature to drive me in my art. And I’ve always worked with the human figure because that’s all we can really perceive of. With the Cave it came to me like a spark, because I was just dealing with raw human emotion and psyche and all the things that are at the root of what drive us and have not changed in the history of human existence. All the other shit in society is basically just decoration and different ways to confuse what’s actually driving us, which is really raw and primal. The symbol of the Cave, and then the dance and the music—it explores all these themes, the primal human condition, confusion and pain and all these things, and accepting it more than trying to find a conclusion to it.

Arielle: Piña Bauche’s dance troupe describes themselves as a “theatrical dance company,” and they use that notion of theatre. There’s something so cinematic about the music in this piece, there’s a sort of theatrical interpretation of movement, symbols that come across with the sound as a sort of shadow and reflection of the dance. And the music, it feels like a movie score. The way it builds and falls is really cinematic. And also, the idea with this piece is that you stay in the Cave, you never leave it. After most performances you leave a space immediately, so whatever experience you’ve had or however it’s affected you, you take it with you, alone. But for this, we’ve brought other artists and musicians to continue performing after the performance, incorporating the vibe or energy from the show. That way, for the audience, whatever feelings you’re having, you don’t have to be isolated with them and you don’t have to just leave. So this isn’t an isolated performance, it’s a performance within a context, within a space, and within what’s to come afterward.

brooklyn spaces: Have any of you ever done a site-specific, multi-faceted performance like this before?
Arielle: No, it was new for everyone involved.
Don: But doing it all this in the space made it really comfortable, almost like playing in my living room. Which is not to say that I didn’t get nervous; I definitely did.
Laura: I agree, the process was so natural. It just moved so easily and so magically.

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on being an artist in Crown Heights these days?
Don: I love it here. I think it’s the perfect blend of people. It’s all ages, and it’s not loud; Bushwick, which I do love, is just a lot louder. People are working really hard all over the place there, but Crown Heights is a little more mysterious, there are all these random things happening. There are a bunch of people doing really cool things right in this building. There’s a dude building boats! Tug boats, like pure wood, cedar and stuff. The people around here are so interesting, and there’s so much passion.
Arielle: This neighborhood is a lot more community based, and a lot less commercial. It just seems so natural.

***

Like this? Read about more unconventional performance spaces: Gowanus Ballroom, Gemini & Scorpio Loft, Brooklyn Lyceum, Dead Herring, Bushwick Starr, Cave, Chez Bushwick

silent barn redux

oriana on 17 Jul ’13

neighborhood: ridgewood | space type: music, art, events | active since: 2013 | links: website, facebook, twitter

By now everyone probably knows the storied history of the Silent Barn. The band Skeletons started the DIY venue in their Ridgewood apartment in 2005 (which I profiled back in 2009), and until 2011 it was a raucous, dingy, rollicking good time—and then they got ransacked. Around $15k worth of equipment was destroyed, and then the city came in and evicted them. That probably should have been that, but the Silent Barn launched a Kickstarter, which brought in more than $40k. So they decided to start over, but this time, to be as legit and legal as they could be.

the Husk; photo from Showpaper

Fast forward to early 2013, and the Silent Barn 2.0 opened its doors in Bushwick. The new incarnation is definitely a continuation of the Husk (which the original space is now called), on a much bigger scale. The building itself is a lot lager—three floors and a yard, with eight bedrooms, thirteen roommates, three stages (or more, as needed), an art gallery, a dozen art and recording studios, and on and on. The scope is bigger too; in addition to music shows nearly every night, there’s the Babycastles videogame collective, science art, Aftermath Supplies artist reuse shop, multimedia video art events, a supper club, piñatas, theatre groups, and a whole lot more. And the community involvement this time around is huge: there are about 150 people participating, in various degrees, in the conceptualizing and running of the space. Administration is framed on the metaphor of a kitchen, and there are about 60 Chefs, each responsible for keeping a small aspect of the Barn going. It’s all volunteer, all consensus, and all making it up as they go along. It is, I think, pioneering a new way to do DIY—intentional, flexible, transparent, and innovative. (Want to join in the fun? Go here.)

Here’s a short Q&A with Katie, the Press Chef, and below that I asked two questions of a dozen different Barn members: 1) What’s your favorite event you’ve participated in here, and 2) Why, out of all the myriad ways you could be spending your time, is Silent Barn where you want to be?

brooklyn spaces: From the structure of the collective to the special vocabulary to all these working groups—did that evolve spontaneously as you figured it out, or was there a model you were working from?
Katie: We’re making it up as we go. We have weekly Kitchen meetings with all the Chefs, and part of that is Stew, which is all our discussion topics, whether it’s what murals are coming up or how to deal with conflict resolution; everything goes in the Stew and we work it out together.

all pix by Alix Piorun unless noted

brooklyn spaces: I love that. I feel like this space is really breaking new ground in a lot of ways, sort of changing the meaning of DIY in Brooklyn.
Katie: Well, there’s a responsibility here. Places come and go, you know? When the Husk was ransacked, we had such a huge reaction from the community, so it was our responsibility to do things the right way. After the Kickstarter, we could have re-opened the next day—and then probably gotten shut down again. So we decided to focus on longevity. I think we’re really on the right path. People always try to define DIY; we’re still doing it ourselves, we’re just doing it differently. It’s not like we’re trying to change the model for other spaces; this is just what we have to do. Plus look at this! This place rules! This never would have happened if we hadn’t taken the route we took.

Martha Moszczynski’s painting and piñata studio

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on the neighborhood? What’s it like being in Bushwick now, especially after having been in Ridgewood?
Katie: We’re really trying to make ourselves an asset to the neighborhood. We go to community board meetings every month. We want people to know us and recognize us, to know that they can come to a show or book a show or play a show or put up some art. We really want to find new ways to integrate with the community and make our presence a positive thing.

***

brooklyn spaces: What’s your favorite event you’ve participated in here?

Katie: I like the ones that seem to be holistic Barn, like when there’s a house show and a complimentary show downstairs. Like the Modular Equinox, which took place in every single room. It was really neat to have that kind of foot traffic everywhere, even in the “private” areas.

Tricia: Lani’s birthday party. We had been holding our breath waiting for a liquor license for so long, and I think that was the first show where we’d really come into our own. It was this giant wild night, everyone went crazy, just the whole Barn partying.

Joe Ahearn (Showpaper): This question never gets easier. I’ve seen / thrown / taken part in easily over a thousand shows at Silent Barn! My favorites are those that come out the blue from old friends, the ones that have strange challenges, the ones with moments that feel like magic, the ones that somehow discover a new way to use a place that thousands of bands have been playing with for years.

zine library

Mila (website): I trust that if I show up on any given night, I will see something intriguing. One evening that stands out is the Public Meeting we had in May,“Women in DIY.” It was amazing to see the room filled with women who have done really extraordinary things. It felt supportive and positive, inspiring and motivating, to be a participant in this community.

Theresa (Internal Events Chef): The Wild Boys Immersive Party, which had performances, dream machine, food, piñata, art, community costumes, etc.

another living room; sometimes transforms into the Hawkitori Dinner Club

Larissa (Paesthetics Octopus): No offense to the events (and I’ll give another shoutout to that Modular Solstice night when there were three completely different events going on simultaneously), but it’s the times in between the events and the things that happen because events are going on that I most remember.

Arielle (Aftermath Supplies): My favorite events are the ones I don’t show up for on purpose. I’ll be working in the shop or my studio and there will just be someone singing their heart out or the most nasty thrash band totally destroying. I stumble into the show room with total awe and appreciation of what’s going on and that I happen to be there to witness it.

Deep Cuts (barber shop + record shop)

Nathan Cearley (Dark Cloud Chef): On the one hand, I really love the Modular Synthesizer Solstice and Equinox shows I curate here, because I always include so many individuals who are part of the community and have such crazy visions about weird electronics. On the other hand, I really love our weekly administration meetings because it’s crazy how much we get done for a group with no traditional top-down hierarchy. Both “events” speak to the possibility of surprise still existing in such a dead, predictable, monotonous society.

***

brooklyn spaces: Why, out of all the myriad ways you could be spending your time, is Silent Barn where you want to be?

Brandon: I used to do house shows in Michigan, and the intimacy and humanity of that scale of cultural happenings was really important. When I moved to New York I was so depressed, going to all these crappy clubs where they tally at the door how many people paid for your band. It just sucked. And then I found the old Barn and it was so different. It’s a way to exist in New York and interact with other people on a much more human level.

Gravesend Recordings / Future 86 Recording Studio

Katie: I think that’s what a lot of our answers are, actually. I’m from a small town in Mississippi, where there aren’t any clubs or bars or anything, so it’s only DIY stuff, jamming with your friends, playing in someone’s basement or on the beach or whatever. And I was so depressed when I moved to New York too; I got stuck in this dorm with these people I didn’t get, and the Husk was the first place I felt at home. It’s home and family, that’s why we do it.

Larissa (Paesthetics Octopus): I love working toward the future of Silent Barn along with all these other pretty incredible people who all have such different talents and viewpoints, knowing that I might never had the change to even meet them otherwise.

backyard during Warper blockparty

Tricia: I’m here because I can be. I can’t think of anywhere else that would say, “Hey neuroscientist, come have a space!” Not only can I learn about art and music and DIY culture, but I can collaborate with artists. It’s just amazing to do science and art in the same space. And to show it to people who want to see it!

Theresa (Internal Events Chef): Being here lets us work with a bunch of people who are good at things we’re not good at. For a recent show, Martha made a huge dick piñata for us. It would have taken me ages to figure out how to make a dick piñata! There’s so many skillsets here. You can just email the Kitchen saying, “I need this weird thing. Does anyone have it or can anyone do it?” and you get three emails back saying, “I can do that!”

another living room; paintings by Devin Lily, photography by Nina Mashurova

Arielle (Aftermath Supplies): The constant friction and motion of interacting with people, art, life, and general day-to-day bullshit, like emptying trash cans or drinking coffee and sharing “that time I puked” stories over a taco. Navigating a place that is a whole made up of parts, and all the interesting drama that brings about, while ultimately having a community of people who’ve got your back. A second place to call home, to take creative refuge in.

One the living rooms; art by Lena Hawkins, Lani Combier-Kapel, Jen May

Lani (Volunteer Chef): It’s easy to get wrapped in bar culture here, or to just go to a show and leave to go home, fall asleep, and go to your 9–5 job. That’s not the life I’m interested in; I want to be immersed in the art and music that happens here. Being involved in Silent Barn satisfies a part of my personality that helps me grow as an artist and musician.

Eli (Art Chef): Silent Barn is an excellent experiment in joining art, life, and politics. We’ve managed to corral so many brilliant people and force their conflicts and concordances into creating something with the potential to be truly new and exciting.

Nina (hosts Phresh Cutz): It’s this great community environment that really supports experimental ideas or any kind of creative thing. My whole life, the events I’ve really enjoyed and been inspired by have been in community-based creative art spaces like this, so it’s really great to support that and help facilitate it by giving people space to do what they want to do.

Phresh Cutz, photo by Meghan O’Byrne

Kunal (Babycastles): The thing that’s important is the promise of this strange experiment actually producing something of immense value to the world. Once we get all the pieces solidly in place, a massively successful mechanism of including participation from almost anyone interested, a successful “community-building” pathway for any new voice interested in gathering and growing any piece of culture inside of a stew of culture, successfully extending the value of all this community, strengthening the celebration to our direct neighbors and thereby to the city as a whole as a truly exhaustively functioning projection of the social ecosystem that the world should be, the potential for the thing to be so strong that it continues to channel and nurture and organize new voices in art and communication almost entirely, and finally, some sort of flowering and seeding aspect, where the energy is too much for the small space, and the vision encompassed inside starts to blow up, fly with the wind to surrounding areas, and just take over life in the city itself, and the ideas propagate strongly and successfully. Stuff like that.

Hieroglyph Thesaurus performing

Joe Ahearn (Showpaper): Silent Barn acts as an artistically inclined autonomous zone, where we get to make the rules and share the work we want and are excited by. I don’t think it’s too different than the DIY ethos of other collective art spaces in Brooklyn and around the world throughout history, but I happen to live here and want to be able to participate directly in the culture I consume, and this is as solidly sustainable a way to do so, on my own terms, that I’ve found in New York.

Mila: The Barn is a place where my ideas about what I can and can’t do are constantly challenged. I am constantly forced to reexamine how I think and how I do things, because infinitely more is possible, permissible, and at stake. Plus it feels like family.

Title:Point theatre company’s desk/workspace.

Nathan Cearley (Dark Cloud Chef): I participate in the Silent Barn because it’s giving vitality and substance and life to the concept of constructing our own world—a concept that I find hyper-American but strangely near extinct in this country today. I love experiencing the art and ideas that all these diverse individuals create and, in a broader sense, I love helping to create the space that makes that human freedom possible.

***

Like this? Read about more collectives: Flux Factory, Monster Island, the Schoolhouse, Hive, Bushwick Project for the Arts

flux factory

oriana on 7 May ’12

neighborhood: long island city | space type: art collective, nonprofit | active since: 1994 | links: website, facebook, twitter

all photos by Maximus Comissar (unless noted)

Yes, I know Flux Factory is in Queens. For what it’s worth, they actually started in Brooklyn—in the Monster Island building—and they’re one of the longest-running art collectives currently active. More importantly, though, they are, individually and as a group, terrifically creative, sensationally ambitious, and just unbelievably fun. I change the standards of what I’m going to cover on this site all the time, but the best way to sum it up is this: If I think something is fabulous, I want to cover it. And Flux Factory is fabulous.

some of the fabulous Fluxers

Housed in a converted greeting card factory in Long Island City, Flux has fourteen art studios and a staff of six. That’s around twenty people give or take, and in 2011 they held seventy-five different events (here’s a sampling), including art shows, installations, performances, screenings, workshops, lectures, and more. Everything at Flux is done, per their mission statement, with a “rigorous commitment to the collaborative process.” They have four major thematic group shows each year, involving art, performance, and community events, utterly transforming the gallery space each time. Recently there was “iSpy,” a “participatory collaborative game show” that encorporated guessing games, livestreaming, piñatas, feminism according to World of Warcraft, and tweets from the Flux toilet whenever it was flushed. Before that was “Banquet for America,” a month-long extravaganza that saw the gallery redone as an entire village, with a fifty-foot banquet table-cum-catwalk down the center and each artist manning his or her own shop, “selling” things like donuts and haircuts and feminist karaoke (I meant to sing “I Will Survive,” but I ran out of time). In addition, there are dozens of smaller projects, including educational initiatives, resident solo and group shows, guest-curated projects, Flux Radio, and a monthly potluck. There was a death match debate to discuss how artists are interacting with the #OWS movement. There have been lectures on social hijinx, interviewing skills, and kayak-building.

iSpy

Have I given you a sense of the incredible creativity and diversity of the artists in this group? This is why we live in New York, you guys, or at least why I do: to be able to see and participate in this kind of expectation-thwarting, envelope-pushing, rambunctious creative glee. And listen: the Fluxers are always looking for new friends, new volunteers, and new collaborators, so please, go on up to Queens and check them out. But first check out my interview with Executive Director Christina Vassallo, Residency Director Douglas Paulson, Press & Curatorial fellow Georgia Muenster, and artists Jason Eppink, Adrian Owen, and Richard Nathaniel.

brooklyn spaces: Is there a unifying theme among the artists here? How do you decide who gets to have a studio?
Christina: We’re not focused on a specific genre or discipline. It’s really people who are interested in working collaboratively; that’s our main criteria.
Douglas: Flux is an intentional community, and we rely on consensus-based decision making. The artists choose the next residents, conceptualize and generate the work for the shows, figure out who’s doing the chores. We discuss everything, and everyone has the right to object or bring new terms. Of course, there’s never unanimous agreement on anything, but after a discussion, the people who might not necessarily agree at least feel like they’ve had a chance to be heard. One thing that comes up a lot is the idea of “fluxiness,” which is a word we all know but no one can actually define. It’s the way we describe whatever it takes for someone to endure being part of this crazy mess.
Adrian: I think it’s wrapped up with the idea that we often take on ambitious projects that we’re not quite sure how we’re going to do and then figure it out as we go.
Georgia: Fluxiness to me is a cross between ingenuity and impossibility. And the color green.
Adrian: We want to make sure we’re perceived as professional as well as fun. So that’s part of fluxiness too, knowing that we have the heads behind all these crazy things we’re trying to do.
Jason: Yeah, but also? Fuck professionality. I think it’s more being able to execute what you can and pulling it through somehow. A lot of our peers don’t execute at the level we do. We actually make shit happen.
Georgia: We do so so so much. It’s kind of preposterous how much we do.
Adrian: Getting a fully functional administration rolling has allowed us to produce so much more.

Banquet for America

brooklyn spaces: Do you find any conflict between the organization required and the creative space of doing these sorts of projects?
Adrian: Yeah, that’s what we’re navigating all the time. It’s like herding cats trying to organize artists.
brooklyn spaces: Jordan from Silent Barn said exactly the same thing about musicians. Tell me about a favorite event or exhibit you’ve seen or been a part of here. I came to the opening of “Banquet for America” last month, and it was absolutely incredible.
Christina: That show was particularly fluxy in that it required extensive participation from the artists and the audience, with all the artists’ shops and performances. The more serious side of the show was an anti-capitalist statement about how mom-and-pop shops and independent retailers are getting pushed aside by big-box retail stores. Another show I loved was “Sea Worthy,” which, in typical Flux fashion, experimented with the boundaries of what an exhibition could be. It was in conjunction with the Gowanus Studio Space and EFA Project Space, and Swimming Cities contributed as well. We paired artists with boat builders to make a whole flotilla of artworks, and we brought members of the public around the New York City waterways. Again there was a serious discussion beneath the presentation: The water is the largest open space in New York City, and we wanted to show people that there are ways we can reclaim it.
Douglas: One of my favorites was “Congress of Collectives.” It was completely different from these sorts of spectacle-heavy shows. We invited representatives of more than thirty collectives from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, and we set up projects, discussions, panels, and talks designed to explore what it means to work collectively.
Georgia: One of my favorites was “Going Places (Doing Stuff),” our bus tour series, where you’d get on a bus and not know where you were going.
Jason: That’s what I was going to say too!

brooklyn spaces: I didn’t know that was a Flux project. Where were some of the places that you took people?
Jason: This was a three-summer project. The first year I went on three of them, and it blew me away, it totally made my summer. I wasn’t part of Flux then, but when I heard they were doing it again, I had to get involved. My friend Matt Green and I led one called “Quest for Immortality.” First we went to visit the Self-Transcendence 3100, which is a 3100-mile foot race around a single city block, started by the late guru Sri Chinmoy. Then we met Ashrita Furman, who holds the most Guinness World Records, and we set our own records, like “most people flossing their teeth with the same string of dental floss at once.”
Adrian: I beat some fifteen-year-old girl’s record for speed-eating a bag of Skittles.
Jason: Next we went to visit a monument of Crete that this old guy has been building in his yard in Bay Ridge, and then we went to Staten Island and climbed these abandoned liquid natural gas towers. We finished at Lemon Creek State Park, where this guy has been building rock cairns along the beach for about ten years. It used to be this trashy, gross place, and he has completely transformed it.
Adrian: I have two favorite Flux experiences: “The End of the End of the End,” the last show at the previous space, and “Housebroken,” the first show at this one. They were absolute mayhem from a curatorial standpoint, but just so much fun. Every single room had something happening in it at all times. There were like 200 artists involved in each. Every nook and cranny was programmed. It was intense and awesome.
brooklyn spaces: Did you perform or curate or make something for them?
Adrian: My metal band White Limo played both, and at “Housebroken” I sang opera in the shower with the door open and the shower curtain closed, wearing gold trunks. One girl actually pulled back the curtain because she probably thought it was a recording, and she just screamed and ran out.
Jason: Another awesome thing about that show was that everyone was invited to give us something we could keep, as a way to have artists help us finish the space. Most of the artworks that you see around this space came from that show.
Richard: I think my favorite experience is the monthly Flux Thursday. It’s all the people you know and tons of people you don’t, and everybody’s showing work and drinking and talking and high-fiving.
Georgia: Those are potlucks. We love to feed people.
Richard: Also the Greenpeace stuff was dope. We worked with them to sell real estate on top of black coal mountains. Just light stuff, you know.
Adrian: It was the performance-art portion of a project for a coal awareness tour they were doing with one of their Ice Breakers. It was in Chelsea Piers, right next to the driving range. One of our artists got hit by a golf ball.

brooklyn spaces: So when an artist has a studio here, is it only about working collectively?
Douglas: No, everyone here is pursuing their individual art and their own career in one way or another as well.
Christina: Through the years we’ve gotten really good at focusing on the collaborative aspects, and now we’re starting to get better at nurturing the individual simultaneously.
Douglas: Flux used to be a lot of people in their early twenties who just got out of school, but now it’s older, more serious. We had a Fulbright Scholar here, we have career artists. But we’re extremely conscientious about maintaining the existing community. We’ve dedicated one studio to people who have had a residency here already, so there are always former residents coming back. That’s extremely important, and it’s something that we’ve been very conscious of as we’ve transformed to a formal residency program: how to maintain that kind of cohesive fluxiness.

brooklyn spaces: How do you think Flux is affected by being in Long Island City?
Christina: There are so many things we get here that we wouldn’t get anywhere else. If we were in Manhattan we’d just be another group fighting for the same resources and the same eyeballs and audience.
Adrian: It definitely makes it harder to attract foot traffic, though. Queens holds such a stigma—even though it’s easier to get here than to most of Bushwick. It’s like, “Did you say Queens? I don’t know, man.” So that’s a big hurdle.
Georgia: It’s somewhat absurd to me; there are dozens of arts organizations out in Long Island City. Sculpture Center, Noguchi, PS1, Fisher Landau, Socrates Sculpture Park, Museum of the Moving Image…
Douglas: And the fact that we’re not in Brooklyn has allowed us to make our own identity rather than being just another Bushwick space.
Jason: I feel like if we were in Brooklyn we’d be overrun. I think it’s kind of to our advantage that people think it’s not as easy to get here. The people who want to get here, get here. It’s already an awesome, big community.
Adrian: We’re starting to get a few relationships locally. We’ve been here long enough, and people are starting to figure out what we’re up to.
Jason: I love that the people from the neighborhood see us as these crazy art people. We get to be that for a lot of New York. My first experiences of Flux were like, holy hell. This is much better than art. It’s wacky and playful people doing really exuberant things. I actually think that gets back to what fluxiness is. I think that’s sort of our legacy.
Adrian: I totally agree. That’s exactly what happened to me. I had a friend who lived in Queens and I was like “What? I’m not going over there.” And then Flux asked my band to play, so I made the trek—and I’ve been here for seven years. My eyes were opened in a whole new way. I was like, “You can do this?”
Georgia: It’s the same story for me too. The sense of playfulness is just unmatched anywhere else.
Jason: There’s no context for this sort of stuff in mainstream culture. To be exposed to this happening? It’s amazing.

***

Like this? Read about more art collectives: The Schoolhouse, Rubulad, Swimming Cities, Monster Island, The Hive, Arch P&D, Silent Barn

swimming cities

oriana on 3 Oct ’11

neighborhood: gowanus (and the world!) | space type: art collective | active since: 2001 | links: website, blog, facebook, twitter

update, Nov 2011: Want to see some absolutely amazing photos from Swimming Cities’ incredible trip down the Ganges in India? Check ’em out on their blog here.

***

With this post, I am thrilled to say that I’ve covered all the spaces that inspired me to start this project! Not that I intend to stop; I’m just really excited to have finally gotten to talk to everyone I’d initially set out to, and to celebrate all their crazy brilliance.

So let’s talk about the crazy brilliance of Swimming Cities. They’re a nebulous art collective of somewhere between ten and thirty people who build boats out of found materials and sail them all over the world. The boats themselves are essentially floating works of art, and the group does visual, musical, and dramatic performances atop them as they go. The first project, started by Orien and Callie (also known as Swoon), was the Miss Rockaway Armada (since splintered into its own collective), which went down the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans in 2001. The next project, Swimming Cities of the Switchback Sea, went down the Hudson River, from Troy to Deitch Projects in Long Island City, in 2008. Then in 2009, Swimming Cities of Serenissima sailed down the Adriatic Sea, starting in Slovenia and winding up in Venice to crash the Biennale. And now, in September 2011, Swimming Cities Ocean of Blood is making their way down the Ganges in India, starting in Farrukhabad and ending in Varanasi for the Diwali festival.

photo by Tod Seelie, from Arrested Motion

They’re a well-connected group in the Brooklyn underground & art communities. Over Swimming Cities’ history, all manner of artists and collectives have taken part, including members of the Madagascar Institute, the Toyshop Collective, the Infernal Noise Brigade, GreenBusTour, Black Label Bike Club, Flux Factory, and dozens more. Much of the initial work on the Ocean of Blood boats was done at Serett Metalworks, and they throw crazy themed fundraising parties at the Gowanus Ballroom, Electric Warehouse, Chicken Hut, the warehouse on Ten Eyck, 285 Kent, and lots of others. The collective is also naturally involved in the Burning Man community and participates in Maker Faire, often winning awards for their ingenious floating creations. You can donate to their Kickstarter campaign to help them get home from India, but first check out my interview with Orien (third from left) and crewmember Angie (far right).

Ocean of Blood crew

brooklyn spaces: How did this all get started?

Miss Rockaway Armada boat

Orien: I had a boat and was living on the Gowanus Canal, and Callie lived a few blocks away. We met at Pratt, and she would hang out on my boat and we’d talk about building a floating performance art space. Then I left and spent some time in India, and she did Miss Rockaway Armada with several other artists. After that we did the Hudson River and Venice projects together, and then Callie was giving the project up, so I asked her if I could keep it going. India was the obvious choice for me; it’s my favorite place. But there was a lot of ambiguity about whether this would actually happen. I’m not a famous artist, I don’t have any money, I don’t have backing. But it gradually gained momentum, and now Swimming Cities has a presence beyond its association with Swoon and the other projects.

boats in Venice, photo by Tod Seelie, from Brooklyn Street Art

brooklyn spaces: Before we get too much into India, what was it like being in Venice for the Biennale? How was the reception?
Orien: Being in Venice with a boat is so much fun. I don’t recommend going there if you can’t get a boat, it’s just going to drive you crazy. And the reception was great, everybody loved it. Except when we went into the Arsenale, which is a military base, like a fortified marina, this big square with water and some sort of promenade around it. We went in there with Dark Dark Dark playing on the roof we and tied up the boats, and they came and cut our lines and told us to fuck off. But come on, we basically came uninvited in junk boats, so of course they did that.

brooklyn spaces: Okay, so now tell me about India. How many of you are going over, how many boats do you have, how did you set it all up?
Angie: There’s five boats, eight people are going, and we have a couple of Indian people there. We sent a scout a few of months ago, and he lined up places for us to stay and to store stuff, and people to help us, and institutions and permits and things like that.
Orien: They government wanted to know what we were doing. They don’t want to be like, “Oh, you’re doing a performance? Great!” and then you get there and quarter a cow or do something really offensive. But we got a letter of support from the Ministry of Culture that says something like, “Your project is not specifically offensive to us from a cultural perspective.”

sketch for part of the Diwali performance

brooklyn spaces: The highest praise. What are the performances going to be?
Orien: We’ll be pretty far out on the water, so it’s not practical or logistically possible to have sound or a plot. It’s going to be a gradual, five-day visual performance with a very vague narrative. It’s kind of like architectural puppetry.
Angie: We’ll have a big mechanical sculpture involving lights and movement, and at the end the boats come apart.
Orien: It sort of demonstrates the function of what makes the object interesting.

five boats in radial formation, photo by Ben Mortimer

brooklyn spaces: What do you guys do in between trips?
Angie: We have a lot of events. Most of them are fundraisers, but this summer we did the Battle for Mau Mau Island in Gerritsen Beach, where we got all our friends to form boat gangs. There was a race, a battle, and boat jousting.

West India Day fundraiser, photo from Laughing Squid

brooklyn spaces: What’s your motivation for doing this?
Orien: I’m really interested in boats as pieces of architecture, as objects. I come from an industrial design background, that’s what I went to school for. And all these people really enjoy being a family and having a common goal that isn’t about money or the banality of the homogenized world of bullshit. So I just keep doing it. It’s a reaction to the alternative. To exist in the actual world isn’t really an option for me; if I don’t do this, what the fuck am I going to do?

Bordertown party at Electric Warehouse

“Caddywhampuss,” which won Best in Show at the 2010 Maker Faire, photo from Makezine

brooklyn spaces: What’s next for you guys?
Orien: We’re probably going to go to Russia, down the Volga river to Moscow. I really want to go to Lake Baikal, which is one of the world’s largest lakes, it represents one-sixth of the world’s fresh water. It’s got seals and underwater caves, it’s insanely deep, and it’s in the middle of Siberia, there’s nothing near it. And surrounding Moscow is the Golden Ring area, the oldest part of Russia, so you have this really old architecture and culture.

welding pontoons with a martini, photo by Mayra Cimet

brooklyn spaces: Are you inspired as an artist by being in Gowanus, or in Brooklyn in general?
Angie: We were totally lucky to have Josh get that shop on the Gowanus.
Orien: Oh yeah. We built the first boat in this tiny place on Nostrand Avenue, and then Josh was like, “Guess what? I’m getting a new shop and it’s insanely massive and it’s on the Gowanus Canal.” It was just the most ridiculous luck we’ve ever had. This project wouldn’t have happened without Josh and Serett, it literally would not have. But other than that, I don’t find New York especially inspiring. It’s basically an impossible place to get anything done.

brooklyn spaces: But overall, has this been a rewarding experience?
Orien: Definitely. I have all the things I was looking for. We have the best friends anyone could have. We have something to do that isn’t awful, that doesn’t contribute to the greater horror, that doesn’t hurt people. No one has gained anything from what we’re doing, except maybe the beer distributors. Other than that, no one’s getting rich off us, which is nice. That’s about all you can ask for.

photo from Pipe Dream Museum

Like this? Read about more art collectives: Monster Island, Hive NYC, The Schoolhouse, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Flux Factory

monster island

oriana on 16 Sep ’11

neighborhood: williamsburg | space type: art gallery, studios, venue | active: 2004–2011

It feels a bit trite to talk about the demise of Williamsburg cool, an inevitability that only the most obtuse and culturally unaware would still argue isn’t happening, but it would be impossible to write about Monster Island—one of the last of this wave of DIY art and music spaces to succumb to the changing neighborhood—without mentioning it. Monster Island held on longer than most. Although the building will finally be torn down in October (to make room for yet another shiny new zillion-dollar high-rise, presumably), all the space’s components will be relocating elsewhere, and all the members of the collective seemed cautiously excited for a new beginning.

art studio

The two-story former spice factory is home to a massive amount of culture and art. You could reasonably call it a super-space, in the music sense of rock supergroups. There’s the Monster Island basement, one of the early DIY music spaces in the hood, among those where Todd P got his start. There are the two not-for-profit art galleries Live With Animals and Secret Project Robot, there’s Brah Records, and Oneida’s recording studio Ocropolis, and Mollusk Surf Shop, and Kayrock Screenprinting, and dozens of art studios and practice spaces. There have been hundreds of multi-media art shows over the years, and countless Brooklyn bands got their start or found their footing here, including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Animal Collective, DUBKNOWDUB, Golden Triangle, Ex-Models, Knyfe Hyts, K-Holes, Xray Eyeballs, Hair Jail, Invisible Circle, Try Try Try, and Divine Order of the Blood Witch, just to name a few.

outdoor mural painting

One of the really beautiful things about Monster Island is how interconnected everybody is; everyone has been in a band or side project together, helped each other put up an art show, swapped studios, worked in one of the shops, lived in each other’s rooms, and just generally collaborated on everything. While I was interviewing Eli—a longtime resident, worker in the silkscreen studio, member of a couple bands, and artist with some pieces on display for the block party—he knew everyone who walked down the block, introducing me to them by listing all the bands and art shows they’d been involved in at the space over the years. It’s a really beautiful family atmosphere, and while I, like everyone, am disappointed that this Williamsburg institution is the latest to be killed off by relentless real estate development, I’m confident that all the artists and all their creativity and energy will find many more places to thrive.

[all photos by Maya Edelman, from the final block party & “Nothing Gold Can Stay” art show]

art studio

brooklyn spaces: Is there something going on here basically all the time?
Eli: Pretty much. The galleries have art shows up about three weeks of every month, and there are music shows in the basement usually four nights a week. If I hang out for more than an hour, something will start to happen. Before I worked in the building I was here almost as much as I am now, working in the galleries, hanging out, helping people with their art, listening to my friends’ bands practice.

brooklyn spaces: It’s amazing how interconnected everyone is.
Eli: One of the things that’s always been exciting for me about Monster Island is the synthesis of art and music. Nobody does just one thing, and there’s always collaborations. Everyone’s in each other’s bands and makes art together. Kid Millions and I put out a book through Kayrock’s book series, and Wolfy and Kid Millions are doing a silkscreen poem book thing. Some of the hardest-working and most brilliant artists I’ve ever met are in this building.

Live With Animals gallery

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about a particularly memorable art show.
Eli: These Are Powers did a record-release art show that was really exciting, probably 100 people had pieces in that. “Our Town” was the group show for the 2010 block party, and everyone built their portion of “our town.” I made a headshop with Sto from Cinders Gallery; Alison from Awesome Color and Call of the Wild and Red Dawn II made a leather bar, which was horrifying, this cardboard room with large-penised muscular men, and a glory hole and glued-down empty poppers bottles. Maya made a planetarium, Chris made a comic book store, Christine who works at the silkscreen shop made all these squirrels and pigeons and put them all over the place. It was an incredible show.

Man Forever

brooklyn spaces: Okay, now tell me about some amazing music shows.
Eli: The weirdest show was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ tenth-anniversary show. A lot of us have known those guys for a long time, so that show was kind of just for the fans. But it was so packed. Alex and I had to kneel on this ramp leading up to the stage and basically support the weight of the crowd on our backs for ninety percent of the set. And somehow that was awesome. Recently Oneida did a twenty-four-hour show, which was pretty insane. They played two-hour sets all night, and then at 5 a.m. they played their new record live during a pancake breakfast. Half the people had been up all night drunk, the other half were just waking up. It was one of the strangest shows I’ve ever been to.

K-Holes

brooklyn spaces: How about some good parties?
Eli: Every year Kayrock and Wolfy did a thing called Holly Jolly Sabbath the Sunday before Christmas. All the lights would be off, and they hung a Christmas tree upside-down and painted a pentagram on the floor below it, and we’d just sit around, drink mulled wine, get stoned, and listen to every Black Sabbath record back-to-back. Oh, and the first block party I ever came to, it was pouring rain and everything had been moved inside, and it was chaos, people packed in everywhere, just sweaty, giant craziness. I wandered from one place to another and band after band would start playing. It’s still probably the best party I’ve ever been to.

art studio

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being in Williamsburg, or Brooklyn in general, has influenced the space?
Eli: There’s some strong Brooklyn pride in this building. No one ever wanted this place to be something you could have in Manhattan. But at this point, being a space in Williamsburg has become a fight. When Monster Island started, there was no one on the street. There were prostitutes and people trying to pick up prostitutes, and that was it.

Monster Island basement

brooklyn spaces: So how does everyone feel about leaving?
Eli: It’s the same feeling as when you move out of an apartment, like “Oh man, I’m not going to live here anymore. But I get to live in this other place!” I mean, everyone’s sad that it’s ending, but nothing is really dying. This won’t be a place to hang out anymore, but that just means you’ll have to go to Secret Project’s new space in Bushwick or Mollusk’s new spot in Williamsburg. But still, I’m definitely keeping my keys to this building, or maybe we’ll have a key-melting ceremony or something.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any comment about the transformation of Williamsburg, all of that?
Eli: I’m sure I have a lot to say about that, but it’s old and it’s what happens. It will keep happening everywhere until some global catastrophe. To some degree, on some level, Monster Island brought it on ourselves. You do something that helps make the neighborhood cool, and the neighborhood will get cool, more people will start showing up, and then people with money will come in and ruin it. The cool thing is always going to precede the thing that is the cause of the destruction of the cool thing. There was a long time that I was saddened by the change, but at this point I’m kind of resigned to it.

Secret Project Robot

Like this? Read about more art & event spaces: Swimming Cities, Gowanus Ballroom, The Schoolhouse, Flux Factory, Vaudeville Park, Rubulad, HiveNYC

the schoolhouse

oriana on 4 Sep ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: art collective | active since: 1996 | links: facebook

According to The Bushwiki, PS 52 was built in 1883 and served as an arts-intensive elementary school until 1945, when it was sold for use as a manufacturing space.

I couldn’t find any information on what happened to it over the next fifty years, but the New York Times steps up to fill in the space’s modern history: in 1996, a twenty-something artist named Erin McGonigle found it listed as a rental in the Village Voice. The building was decrepit and overrun with debris, and Erin and some friends took five months getting it into livable shape. When they started living in the refurbished Schoolhouse they called themselves ORT, an acronym for “organizing resources together.” In 2002 the second floor opened, ushering in the second wave of the collective.

Some artists who passed through in those early years include: photographer David Linton, Yale drama critic Sunder Ganglani, poet Ariana Reines, composer Keiko Uenishi (who works with Issue Project Room), Grace Space director Jill McDermid, video artist Tia Dunn, Smithsonian dancer Samir Bitar, costume designer Kaibrina Sky Buck (who has paintings in the Museum of Sex), trash and performance artist Gertrude Berg, journalist Erika Yorio (who wrote for Nylon), musician Toshio Kajiwara, artist Elliot Kurtz, filmmaker Derek Deems, blogger EV Bogue, and artist Mariette Papic, who gave me a ton of information to help with this piece.

In addition to serving as home for a revolving cast of artists, the Schoolhouse (also sometimes called the Old Schoolhouse or the Old Red Schoolhouse) hosts plenty of events. A small sampling of the musicians who have performed there over the years: Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Magnum, Verbal Graffiti, Spanish Prisoners, Madame Beak, The Christopher Complex, Zachary Cale, Revival Times, The Asteroid #4, Hollow Jones, and DJ Polarity. Todd P has even put on some shows there.

The artists currently living in the Schoolhouse (there are about twenty spread over three floors) consider themselves the third wave of the collective. They run the gamut of creative pursuits, including photography and visual arts, musicians and DJs, fashion design, jewelry making, screenprinting, and even mobile art. One of the benefits of the space is of course how freaking huge it is, and though many of the bedrooms are kind of tiny, the vast common areas make up for it. I sat down with Justin, Chris, Willy, and Dave to talk about their experiences living and making art in this incredible space.

brooklyn spaces: Were you guys drawn to this space specifically, or to Bushwick in general?
Willy: The space. I’d never lived in Bushwick before, I didn’t really know much about it. I’d been to a few different spaces that were built out and thought they were cool, but I’d never seen anything like this before. You walk in here and you just feel the creative energy. And now I get to come home to it.

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like being here has affected the way you do your art, the choices that you make thematically or physically?
Dave: Absolutely. A big thing about this space is having people bounce off each other, and inspiring each other to be greater and to dream bigger. How could you not be affected by other creative people? You’d have to be an alien.
Justin: We all have our more and less productive periods, but for the most part, most of us are always working on something. So you go into Chris’s room and you get inspired by what he’s doing, or you go downstairs and see the screenprinting and get inspired by that. And then the building itself, having artists living here for so long, it has this energy that just resonates. It’s a give and take; the more you put into the place and the more you’re doing, the more it really gets energized. But there’s definitely always something going on that you could tap into.

brooklyn spaces: I know in the space’s early years there were some robberies and trouble with community integration. Do you feel like you guys have overcome that?
Dave: Yeah, when we started throwing the block party. Block parties are incredible, every community should do it.
Chris: The block parties are a lot of fun. We do that every summer.
Justin: Everyone in the neighborhood comes out and contributes. This year they roasted a pig.
Willy: There was a giant inflatable water slide. We had the ball-throwing machine where you get dunked.
Dave: We put speakers on the roof, there was a live mariachi band, and then we played old funk records, hip-hop, salsa, Brazilian music, for the block, you know? To show the love and appreciation we have for all art and music. It really makes it safer for the artists who live here.
Willy: Now we know everyone, everyone looks out for each other.
Dave: You have to be a part of the community. You can’t just narrow-mindedly walk past the people who live right next to you. During the block party we open up our home and show people that we’re cool, that we’re in the same struggle. Artists ain’t making a lot of money, you know what I mean? So now everybody sees each other as human beings, and that’s beautiful.

brooklyn spaces: How did you get it started? Did you just go knocking on people’s doors?
Chris: We actually did have to go door-to-door to get the petition.
Dave: Yeah, but it started before that, once we made friends with Sonny. There’s always a hawk on the block who watches, a grandfather spirit, and that’s the person you have to meet and be friends with. It was actually his idea to do the block party. And then we took our strength and went and got the permits to show that we were serious, that we were taking an initiative in the community.

brooklyn spaces: Are you involved with the greater Bushwick art community?
Dave: Yeah. Jason Andrews, who does Norte Maar and Storefront, he stumbled in on one of the music shows here and he scooped me up, and then he showed Justin’s artwork at one of his galleries, so it just all started being interconnected. I performed for the first BOS show at the Collision Machine three or four years ago. I think Arts in Bushwick really started to connect the different spaces, because everybody could come and see everybody’s space and meet each other. We do shows at the McKibben Lofts now, and they come do shows over here. It’s an ongoing artistic explosion.

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any thoughts about being an artist in Bushwick these days?
Dave: I don’t think anybody can take credit for what’s happening; I think it’s universal, I think it’s a sign of the times. This area is just part of that shift. Hopefully it’s the beginning of a greater world, a new belief that we want to get together and be creative again, to be dreamers again. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not everybody’s cut out to be on Wall Street, not everybody’s cut out to be a doctor. Some people just like to fucking paint, some people want to beat on a drum. And we should let that live, not stifle it with overpriced rent and over-gentrification.
Chris: As far as art in Bushwick, I think it’s awesome. I think things like Bushwick Open Studios are brilliant. We need to get more recognition out here. Manhattan’s boring, nothing’s really going on in Manhattan. People still sometimes look at Bushwick and think dangerous, like Bed-Stuy, dangerous, and I think it’s just ridiculous. People hear about us and go, “Oh, a bunch of white kids in the ghetto making art.” Not really, we’re hanging out with our neighbors, we’re doing our thing, everybody’s doing their thing, and we’ve got this beautiful space to show for it.

***

Like this? Read about more art collectives: Flux Factory, Swimming Cities, Monster Island, Hive NYC, Arch P&D, Bushwick Project for the Arts, Silent Barn

hive nyc

oriana on 15 Jun ’11

neighborhood: bushwick | space type: art collective | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter

During this year’s Bushwick Open Studios, I had an ambitious roster of spaces to hit, and by a fortuitous chance, one of those was Hive NYC, a nonprofit multidisciplinary art space that is home to a collective of musicians, visual artists, writers, actors, photographers, and aerialists. There was fantastic art on display, by Jewel Lim, Tamar Meir, Our Guy, Sigal Arad Inbar, and Fumie Eshii. And the artists who were there—Yula, Isaac, Kate, and Melanie—were just amazingly warm and welcoming.

Yula, Isaac, Kate, and Melanie, photo by Maximus Comissar

They showed us all around the space, then brought out a lovely little impromptu lunch: salad and couscous, hummus and boiled eggs, avocados and cheese and coffee. They were bubbling over with excitement about their space, their projects, their bands, and the life they’re making for themselves. In addition to art and music, they have plas to green their home with a rooftop garden, compost, a water accumulation system, and doing more buiding with salvaged and reused materials. They even have their own living metaphor: an actual beehive on the roof.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: How did the space get started?
Kate: There was a group of us all playing music together, and we were all into different forms of art as well, like I write, Isaac does theatre productions, we have a saw-player who paints, our trombone player is working on a rooftop garden, stuff like that. So the idea was just to bring in as many people as possible and give them a place to create whatever they wanted to create.

photo by Alix Piorun

brooklyn spaces: How did you find the space?
Yula: It was so amazing, it happened really fast. About a year ago, I told a friend, “What I want is to have a little sanctuary for the people I know and love, so they could do whatever they want to do.” And in no more than a year, the Hive started coming together. All these people started being drawn in, our friends brought more friends, and each one of them were geniuses in their little ways. So we were like, “Okay, we need a home.” And a month later, I found this place on Craigslist. Isaac came here, and he was like, “It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s amazing!” The landlords are awesome, they’re artists, they said, “As long as you don’t burn the place down, you can do anything you want.” And so we moved in and started doing things. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s also really rewarding and fun.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What was the last show you had?
Yula: We had a show last night, and our band The eXtended Family played with Dolchnakov Brigade. There were so many people here, it was ridiculous.
Kate: It was so overwhelmingly positive too, everyone was just having a great time. I think there’s a mutual understanding that this isn’t a club, this is a place where people live. We had so many people dancing, and all this artwork all around, and nothing got disturbed, there were no problems at all, there was just a really beautiful, positive energy.

Yula and the eXtended Family, photo from streetcredmusic

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the other projects people here do?
Yula: The eXtended Family is the heart, it’s all of us. The music is very eclectic. We call it ro-punk, romantic punk, but you can’t really define it, it’s a mix of a lot of shit thrown together with a kind of punchy attitude, but in a positive way. And then Dolchnakov Brigade is just like a megalomaniac onion, an underdog-ish, fascist kick in the face. There are several other bands who work with us too, there’s Crooks & Perverts, Gato Loco, This Way to the Egress, Torcher Chamber Ensemble.

photo by Maximus Comissar

Kate: We have a website that features writers, artists, music, sustainability projects, and humor, as well as allowing members to barter for goods and services.
Yula: There’s also a Philly Hive. They’re doing events in a place called BookSpace, with aerialists and circus-ish type stuff and book readings and poetry.
Kate: One of our members is the editor of Helo: The Crisis Story Magazine. We’re also in the middle of a Kickstarter to try to raise money to get our roof garden off the ground, ha ha.
Yula: We have bees on our roof now. Thirty thousand little sweet bees! I never thought I would be so comfortable around so many bees. But you can be one foot away from this huge swarm, and they don’t bother you, they just mind their own business.
Kate: Didn’t you name them all Deborah?
Yula: Yes, Deborah the Hive. It’s one organism made of many little things, which is a perfect metaphor for us.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like Brooklyn has influenced the way you conceive the space, or do you think spaces like this are having an impact on the way that Brooklyn is right now?
Yula: I think the second. For us at least. You can do pretty much anything you want here if you respect everything else. And if you set that tone, people respond to it wonderfully. Little by little, if you just spread it slowly, you might be able to make a difference in a larger way. As soon as Bushwick Open Studios started and I started walking around the neighborhood, I was like, “We’re not the only people doing this!” It’s wonderful. We just need to make some connections and make this trust circle bigger, broader, and stronger, and then who knows what can happen? I’m hoping that this is just the beginning, that everybody’s going to pick up from this and just do more and more.
Kate: There’s been a pretty big snowball effect since we’ve started. We’ve been picking up more and more people and having a great time. This space has definitely come together very quickly.
Yula: If we can just continue to do what we do and enjoy it, that’s all we really want. Just don’t bother us doing it. World, don’t interfere. If you have any bad intentions, just stay out.

Like this? Read about more communal art spaces: The Schoolhouse, Swimming Cities, Arch P&D, Silent Barn, Monster Island, Flux Factory, Bushwick Project for the Arts

arch p&d

oriana on 7 Apr ’11

neighborhood: ridgewood | space type: art studios | active since: 2010 | links: website, tumblr

The guys who make up Arch P&D—Evan, Ian, and Zak—are some of the nicest, hardest-working dudes I have ever met. Not only were they willing to give me an interview and walk-through of their amazing new space way late at night, they actually set up a private art opening for me and Maximus, new works by Andriana Santiago in collaboration with Evan, weeks before the show will be open to the public. The Arch artists hung out with us for hours, bubbling over with excitement and energy and passion, chatting about art and life and skateboarding and bedazzling and pleasant anarchy.

photos by Maximus Comissar

You’ve probably heard of the previous incarnation of Arch, from their big, bright gallery space on Troutman Street in Bushwick, where they held group art shows and indie boutiques, and were a fixture in neighborhood art events like Beat Night and Bushwick Open Studios. But they’ve moved on, with a new space (in Ridgewood, technically), new goals, new ideas, and new synergy. As Evan says, “Arch was started to create a space where artists could get together and share art and skills, to do work that everyone could benefit from in a sustainable manner.” There are eight artists sharing space at the new Arch, and they make every kind of art imaginable, from visual art to commercial art to music to skateboarding to metal and woodwork. Even with so many people, the space is incredibly organized and doesn’t feel cramped; every workstation is built on wheels, so they can clear out the space easily for parties and events. They’ve got a crazy diverse roster of high-profile clients—including Lady Gaga, Dos Equis, Andrew WK, Dance New Amsterdam, and Lindsey Lohan—as well as working with many other underground Brooklyn spaces, like Red Lotus Room and House of Yes. They also throw art salons and parties, have open hours as a gallery, and are open to collaboration and skillsharing.

brooklyn spaces: How did you all come together?
Evan: I met Zak doing a job for Dos Equis. We made steampunk party boxes and a steampunk piano for Andrew WK.
Ian: I met Evan through working with Narcissister. He started pulling me onto some jobs, and I pulled him onto some, and it went back and forth for awhile, until we decided that it was silly not to merge into one entity.

brooklyn spaces: So you guys have lots of high-profile clients, individually as well as collectively.
Evan: Everything is collective now. Together we’re doing what one of us could never do alone.
Ian: Everything in the shop is communal, so long as you know what you’re doing and you clean up after yourself. It’s respectfully collective.
Zak: It’s an open exchange of ideas and materials and tools.

brooklyn spaces: How did you pick the name?
Evan: It’s from a project that I did with a massive group of friends for Pier 59’s fifteenth anniversary party. It was for Fashion Week Spring 2010. We designed a massive Roman set, with an arch and columns and blocks, which took every last bit of help from everyone I knew. And it became obvious that the structure of an arch requires every block in the arch to hold it up. Actually, tomorrow we’re going to go and pick up that arch from storage, and we’re going to install it in the House of Yes for the new show, Caligula Maximus. It’s coming full circle.
brooklyn spaces: Where will it go when House of Yes is done with it?
Evan: I don’t know, it might end up at Materials for the Arts.
Zak: Sustainability is a key element for us. Everything we do is going to get reused or given away.

brooklyn spaces: Has Bushwick influenced the space, or Brooklyn in general?
Zak: Bushwick is the pulsating center of art in Brooklyn right now. It’s where everything is happening.
Ian: I think even the way we’ve set up the space, it has a Brooklyn feel. It’s open, there’s no walls between our spaces, everything is there for everyone to see.
Evan: It’s all DIY and scavenged, the windows leak, it’s freezing cold, you’re working in the shop in all your clothes. That’s Brooklyn.
Zak: Survival skills.
Evan: Also it’s really bleak, it’s this post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland.
Zak: In the wintertime you walk out there and it’s like snowfields and dilapidated train tracks and broken-down warehouses, but what’s coming out of here is what people deem some of the most beautiful artistic work in the world. On the outside this building looks like nothing, but inside we’re creating stuff that’s on Fifth Avenue. The juxtaposition is fantastic, it embodies the whole situation.
Andriana: And we’re remaking the neighborhood. It’s just about taking what you have, whatever it is, even if it’s old or dirty, and making it your own and creating your own life. Whatever you want it to be.
Ian: That’s what’s so beautiful about this space, it’s all of our dreams put together, making it into a collective dream.
Evan: I’m gonna cry.

brooklyn spaces: What else is even in this immediate neighborhood? Are there other artists creeping out?
Evan: Oh yeah. There’s a lot of lofts out here that are filled with artists.
Andriana: We’re like roaches.
Zak: Yeah, we come out at night and we’re impossible to get rid of.

brooklyn spaces: Will this space be open to the public like the last one?
Evan: We just recently did a gallery show; obviously this will be an ideal place to have art hanging on a regular basis. We’ve been open to the public for about five events. We’re trying to find where our public presence as a space exists.
Ian: A lot of it comes from opening up the space to other artists. We’re open to helping people who don’t have the space to do larger projects.
Zak: We’ve all been there, having a concept but not the space to realize it. So we’re more than willing to help out other artists with space and materials.

brooklyn spaces: Do any of you want to talk about recent favorite projects that you’ve done?
Evan: We just made a mannequin for Melody Sweets, a burlesque performer. And we did a really nice set at Lincoln Center for Fashion Week for Odd Molly, a Swedish fashion company. And we did a set for Black Nativity Now, an Off-Broadway production by Alfred Preisser. Zak just headed up a project doing two suites for the Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden.
Zak: I also make surfboard fin key necklaces, in a range of metals and finishes, and Lindsey Lohan has taken a liking to them, so I’m getting some calls from her. That speaks to the diversity in the whole situation, we have high-end sets, high-end furniture, high-end jewelry, it’s such a range.

brooklyn spaces: Anything else you want to tell the world?
Zak: Tell them to come by! They’re more than welcome, our doors are always open. Just be friendly. Have a smile on your face and want to be a little bit creative and get your ideas out.
Ian: There’s always a way to make your project happen.
Zak: Yeah, whenever someone says “Is that possible?”, we never say no. It’s always possible. It just takes a little bit of creativity, a little bit of blood, sweat, and tears.

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Like this? Read about more art coworking spaces: Exapno, Time’s Up, Bushwick Print Lab, Urbanglass, 3rd Ward, Brooklyn Lyceum, No-Space

bushwick project for the arts

oriana on 3 Jan ’11

photos in this post by Rachel Lefkowitz

neighborhood: east williamsburg | space type: art & event space | active: 2009–2011 | link: website

Update May 2011. As many know, Bushwick Project for the Arts was also an experiment in radical living environments: all the artists were housed in reclaimed trailers. Though the trailers were meant to be kept under wraps, it became something of an open secret within the artistic community—and the legal one. As was perhaps inevitable, BPA became a target of local law enforcement, and was shut down this spring (in a pretty shitty way) by the city.

Don’t worry about the artists, though; they’re still at it, elsewhere in Brooklyn, coming up with plenty more crazy ideas for repurposing their space, and throwing great shows and parties while they’re at it.

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The Bushwick Project for the Arts—affectionately (and often pejoratively) known as the Bushwick Trailer Park—is a collective of mostly visual artists, housed in a former nut-roasting factory in an industrial corner of East Williamsburg. The cavernous interior space—an ever-changing work in progress—is used for all different kinds of events, including parties, plays, film screenings, classes, art exhibits, and more. Tucked into corners are a silkscreening studio, a metal and wood shop, a ceramic studio, and even a couple of kilns.

Bushwick Project for the Arts is around the corner from Shea Stadium, Werdink / Ninja Pyrate, 3rd Ward, The Archeron (which used to be Bushwick Music Studios), and House of Yes, among other great spaces.

Like this? Read about more art collectives: Swimming Cities, The Schoolhouse, Monster Island, Hive NYC, Silent Barn