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.

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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

idiotarod

oriana on 4 Jun ’11

neighborhood: all over | active since: 2003 | space type: silliness | links: website, wikipedia

This post is a cheat, I know. The Idiotarod is not a space, and it’s not even always (or only) in Brooklyn. But it is so ludicrous, so fantastically silly, that I don’t care. There’s so many things like this—Lost Horizon Night Market, Improv Everywhere, Newmindspace, Fluff’s Stuff—silliness and spectacle just for the sake of it, which is what makes this the best, funnest place to be. It’s part of the essence of Brooklyn for me.

image via nileguide.com

So what’s the Idiotarod? Well, as their website explains: “The Iditarod is the famous long-distance race in which yelping dogs tow a sled across Alaska. The Idiotarod is pretty much the same thing, except that instead of dogs, it’s people, instead of sleds, it’s shopping carts, and instead of Alaska, it’s New York City.” How this works is that teams of five people pick a theme, steal acquire a shopping cart, dress themselves and their cart up accordingly, and race from checkpoint to checkpoint, usually for about five miles and over at least one bridge. Sabotage is encouraged, as is throwing food or snow, and, of course, drinking. No one knows where the race will begin or end, or where the checkpoints will be, until the last possible minute. Prizes are awarded at a secret afterparty for things like fastest team, best costumes, best sabotage, etc.

photo by Colin Colfer

Want to hear more from people who have done it? Check out my interview with Alix and Leila! (That’s them in the top photo on this page, Alix on the right and Leila on the left, part of team Andrew W.K.art in Idiotarod 2012.)

picture by pixietart, via Gothamist

brooklyn spaces: When was your first race?
Leila: I did it for the first time in 2007, and our theme was the Cold War Kids. Half of us were dressed as Americans and half as Russians, and we divided the cart in half, and in one half we had a vodka bottle and the Communist Manifesto, and in the other we had an old McDonald’s carton that we found on the street, and then I took a dish towel and covered it with duct tape and wrote “The Iron Curtain” on it and hung it on the front. In 2008 I was Jem, and 2009 we were the Oregon Trail of Death. In 2010 I took off, which I’m glad I did, because Alix says that was the coldest day of her life. This year we did it together, and we were Clam Rock.
Alix: I first did it in 2008, and we were the Boston Tea Party. We had wet teabags to throw at people—there was a lot of food throwing then. Our cart had a Sam Adams picture on it, and we decorated it as a boat. In 2009 we were The Price Is Wrong, Bitch! In 2010 we were Gilligan’s Island. I got my boyfriend to do it, and two other friends. I was like, “It’s going to be really fun!” And then it was just the coldest day ever. I only had fingerless gloves on and I could not feel my fingers once we started running. We’re running, my eyes are tearing and I can’t see, snot is flying. My friends were like “Why the fuck would you do this? This is not fun at all.”

photo by Tod Seelie, vie Brooklyn Vegan

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about the actual mechanics of the race.
Leila: Okay, the mechanics of the race are stupid, it’s incredibly disorganized. It takes a lot of effort to even figure out when the race is happening.
Alix: They don’t really have much information on the website. It used to be run by COBRA, Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association, and then I guess they “sold” it to Corporation X. Or no, COBRA gave it to Team Danger Zone, and then they gave it to Corporation X.
Leila: Once you’ve figured out when it is, you have to figure out how the sign-up works, because the fact that you’ve done it in the past doesn’t mean they’ll assume you might be interested again and tell you about it. And they make it really hard for you to sign up. This year we had to complete an eight-page form filled with stupid questions, which we had to get notarized—we faked the notary. Then they text or email to say where it’s going to leave from, and everybody knows it’s a lie. That used to be to mislead the police, but now it’s just tradition. You have to wait until like 8:00 on the morning of the race to find out where to go. One year we started in Chinatown, one year we started in Queens, one year we started at fucking like 63rd and York or something.
Alix: Every race goes over at least one bridge, so it’s cross-borough. But this year there was a lot of snow still on the ground, and I think that they changed it around at the last minute, because we just stayed in Brooklyn. Anyway, you have to go to four or five checkpoints, and you have to complete stupid tasks before they tell you where to go next. Sometimes you can leave early if you bribe the people there, so a lot of people bring mini bottles of booze for that.

photo from Kotaku

brooklyn spaces: What are some of the tasks?
Alix: This year, one was you had to blow a feather and keep it in the air longer than the other team, or there’s races around the bar, or you have to find someone and have them give you something.
Leila: Sabotage used to be a big part of it. One time we were going across the bridge into Queens, and people were pouring dishwashing soap down the bridge, and everybody started doing the thing like you see in cartoons, where people are like “Whooooaaaa!” with their legs.
Alix: There was another sabotage where someone had a bowling ball they would put it in people’s carts. They put it in ours and we didn’t notice. We were running, going, “Why is this thing so heavy?” And with the sabotage, you never know if you’re going to the right place. The first year I did it there was a fake checkpoint, they just said, “You have to stand here for twenty minutes, this is the first checkpoint.” Some people were like, “This is fake, we’re leaving!” and then you’re like, “Well, is that a sabotage?” You can’t trust anyone.

photo by Colin Colfer

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your favorite carts that you’ve seen?
Leila: The Roman Chariot was really good. They had like forty people, including Remus and Romulus, and there were all these people in matching costumes, and this triumphant Roman Empire–style music
Alix: My first year there was a team that I think was called Two Girls One Cart. They had two blowup dolls and this huge tub of poop-looking stuff, and they were throwing the pudding-poop at people. When we were running over the Manhattan Bridge, there was this huge goop of pudding just dripping down the railing of the bridge.

photo by Matthew Bradley via geekoutnewyork

brooklyn spaces: Does anyone get in trouble?
Leila: One time when we were outside of a checkpoint, a cop drove by very slowly, and shouted over his bullhorn, “Please at least try to not let me see that you are drinking in public!” And everyone was like “Okay, we’ll try.”

photo by Aaron Short, via Brooklyn Paper

brooklyn spaces: And so is it the funnest thing you do all year?
Alix: I love it. If you have a really good cart design, and other people have really good cart designs, it’s great. Just looking at the carts is really cool. When you line up at the starting point, everyone’s checking out all the other carts and taking pictures.
Leila: It’s also a cool way to see neighborhoods you don’t usually get to see.
Alix: It’s the only time I ever run, too. It’s like a five-mile run every year. So yeah, it’s fun. And it’s a tradition. It’s this thing we do every year that we get to amaze our friends with.

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Like this? Read about more public art spectacle: Lost Horizon Night Market, Dumpster Pools, Broken Angel, Bring to Light, Cathedral of Junk