Flux Factory

Art is moving. Moving off the wall, off the paper, and into the streets. What's your take on collective living? Can you silkscreen a map of imaginary places? Are you and a group of artists working on a collaborative project? I hope so and you should be.

When art gets tired and life gets boring-take it to the street. The cure for your ills is not in the google image search. You should wrap a building in prints, or write a proposal for Flux Factory. Get beyond your own head and into the future!

Call for Proposals

Flux Factory, an artist collective and artist-run center in NYC, is currently accepting proposals for collaborative art projects for our 2009 programming. Projects must commission new work that is collaborative in nature. We create projects in which artists can interact and experiment in ways that produce new works, either as thematic group shows or as giant collaborative works within themselves. Projects must be structured to accommodate an open call to local and international artists.

click for more info…


About Flux Factory
History
Flux Factory began as a collective living space in 1994, in an old spice factory in Williamsburg, New York City. Its original members were undergraduates at the New School For Social Research (now New
School University). About four years later, with a new stage built and twice as many members, the Flux Factory living room evolved into a site for art events and performances of all kinds. Flux became an official 501 (c)(3) nonprofit in 1999 and moved to 43rd Street in Long Island City, Queens in 2002.
After six wonderful years, we’re looking for a new home. Our projects will be taking place all over our fair city and beyond. Please check back for project-specific details.

Mission
The mission of Flux Factory is to support innovative and collaborative art works. It is thus primarily an incubation and laboratory space for works that are in dialogue with the physical, social, and cultural
space of New York City (though collaborations may start in New York and stretch far beyond). The goal of the Flux art collective is to create a forum where Flux artists can collaborate with each other as well as others in an experimental lab that produces new works. These new works force participants to work with people they’ve never worked with before, or with unfamiliar media, or formal constraints. Flux Factory supports work that reflects upon and alters public space in dynamic ways. Flux Factory is also a public and community space in itself. It provides a computer center, darkroom, performance space, musical recording space, publishing equipment, and a weekly Thursday night dinner and salon that has become a well-known venue for artists and intellectuals to present both finished pieces and, more importantly, works-in-progress.

Whammo Gift Exchange

Lets all sign up for the "Whammo Secret Gift Exchange". The sign up sheet is outside of the critique room, this is open to anyone. We will be drawing names at the Whammo meeting on Monday November 24th. The more the merrier. Lets all walk away from this semester with something fun made by a friend.

Gift Economies

What do you think about this concept? Given the possibilities for the multiple in printmaking, how does that tie in to this theory?

The Gift Economy

In the potlatches of the Chinook, Nootka, and other Pacific Northwest peoples, chiefs vied to give the most blankets and other valuables. More generally, in hunter-gatherer societies the hunter's status was not determined by how much of the kill he ate, but rather by what he brought back for others.
In his brilliant book The Gift: The Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde points to two types of economies. In a commodity (or exchange) economy, status is accorded to those who have the most. In a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others.
Lest we think that the principles of a gift economy will only work for simple, primitive or small enterprises, Hyde points out that the community of scientists follows the rules of a gift economy. The scientists with highest status are not those who possesses the most knowledge; they are the ones who have contributed the most to their fields. A scientist of great knowledge, but only minor contributions is almost pitied - his or her career is seen as a waste of talent.
At a symposium a scientist gives a paper. Selfish scientists do not hope others give better papers so they can come away with more knowledge than they had to offer in exchange. Quite the reverse. Each scientist hopes his or her paper will provide a large and lasting value. By the rules of an exchange economy, the scientist hopes to come away a "loser," because that is precisely how one wins in science.
Antelope meat called for a gift economy because it was perishable and there was too much for any one person to eat. Information also loses value over time and has the capacity to satisfy more than one. In many cases information gains rather than loses value through sharing. While the exchange economy may have been appropriate for the industrial age, the gift economy is coming back as we enter the information age.

The Artists Space Daily

Would you like a new artist downloaded to your desktop everyday? Click here for a free program provided by the Artists Space  that clues you in to a new artist every 24 hours. Today's artist is Sal Randolph. 

Update on December 6th

For all of you not in the know, Whammo Press is back on for the December 6th event. Right now, the plan is to have a silkscreening demo at Fort Gondo, with multiple images to screen onto paper, t-shirts, cloth, anything!

If you are a member of the press, start planning on possible images to shoot onto screens. Think bold designs. Also, everyone should plan to donate paper, felt, t-shirts, or canvas to print on. Ink would be helpful as well.

I will be making 30 pieces of paper to donate to the cause. I challenge anyone to do better than that! Submissions are due on Friday, December 5th. There will be a sign up sheet for people to help print on Saturday. This will be a great way to get Whammo involved in the community and get lots of exposure for the group!

Boxtastic

The elective students have created a 4' by 4' cube. It will be on view today in the hall outside the print studio. Their assignment focused on collaboration, risk taking-and just plain active printing! Each team created 3 50" by 50" prints using intaglio, relief, monotype and hand drawn elements. A time crunch and lots of blank space to fill really pushed them to the limit-and as a result, there are lots of beautiful moments on the prints. Look for the dragon with braces and Boy George! The sides of the box may be pinned up to view the interior of the box, or take a peek through the cutouts.

The prints centered around the themes of: St. George and the dragon, bleached shell, punch drunk love and layers.

Call for art

www.finartfinals.com

A call for art for undergrads, grads, and more-click on the link for details.

Paste Paper and Marbled

Click here for the description and here for galleries. Paste paper examples are at the bottom.

Buying Paper

Anybody looking to buy in bulk with others, it will be easier for those interested to collaborate here.