coney island museum

oriana on 10 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.]

neighborhood: coney island | space type: museum & performance venue | active since: 1985 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Dick Zigun, the unofficial Mayor of Coney Island since 1984, has built an incredible legacy of promotion and preservation for his beloved neighborhood. In addition to founding the annual Mermaid Parade in 1983—which has grown to be the largest art parade in the country, with close to 800k people attending in 2014—he cofounded the nonprofit multi-arts organization Coney Island USA, which is responsible for running a vast array of programming, including the Coney Island Museum, the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Burlesque at the Beach and the School of Burlesque, the Coney Island Film Society, the annual Congress of Curious Peoples, the Coney Island Tattoo and Motorcycles Convention, the interactive Halloween play Creepshow at the Freakshow, and on and on.

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 2.34.39 PM

pix by Remi Pann

Housed in the historic 1917 building that once held the first of Coney’s two Childs Restaurants, the museum is as historically rich and valuable as its home. Dick fought successfully for the building to receive National Landmark status in 2010, and the museum features a wonderful array of Coney history, including funhouse mirrors (great for selfies!), old bumper cars, and a scale model of the original 1903 Luna Park.

14775941958_a3c405a5a5_o

Want to learn more about the Coney Island Museum, and 49 other incredible Brooklyn Spaces? Buy the book!

waterfront museum

oriana on 7 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.]

neighborhood: coney island | space type: nonprofit museum | active since: 1985 | links: website, facebook, twitter

In 1985, David Sharps—a self-taught and then Paris-trained juggler and clown—bought the Lehigh Valley Railroad Barge No. 79 for $1. At the time, the 1914 cargo ship was sunk eight feet deep in the mudflats of Edgewater, NJ, and it took David two years to remove 300 tons of mud from the hull, restore the barge, and get her floating again.

pix by Alix Piorun

pix by Alix Piorun

By the mid-1980s, the barge had become a floating nonprofit museum. In addition to displays about maritime history and the story of this ship in particular, the Waterfront Museum is filled with artifacts—signboards, tools, lanterns, fittings, barrels, foghorns, bells—the majority of which has been donated by fans and enthusiasts.

The museum, which has been docked in Red Hook since 1994, also acts as a floating classroom and cultural programming venue. In twenty years it has brought hundreds of thousands of people to the waterfront, from school groups to tourists, for everything from circuses to lectures to weddings. The Red Hook community board has pointed to the Waterfront Museum as possibly the single most significant factor in bringing people to the neighborhood for the first time.

WaterfrontMuseum_034LOWRES

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

 

pioneer works

oriana on 15 May ’14

space type: nonprofit, skillshare, gallery | neighborhood: red hook | active since: 2012 | links: website, facebook, twitter, wikipedia

Pioneer Works is huge. It’s around 27,000 square feet with 40-foot ceilings, which is just truly, absolutely enormous. The building dates back all the way to 1866, and for more than a century was home to Pioneer Iron Works, one of the largest machine manufacturers in the country.

Prominent Brooklyn artist Dustin Yellin bough the building in 2010. As he told the New York Times, “My crazy dream is to create a kind of utopian art center.” And Pioneer Works is something pretty close to that dream. The nonprofit has several elements, including a massive exhibition gallery and event space (one of the biggest in the city), classes and workshops, a science lab with a powerful photographic microscope, artist residencies, institutional residencies (currently the Clocktower Gallery), a radio show, and a modern art periodical called Intercourse Magazine.

all photos by Maximus Comissar

The events range from open studios to lectures (“How to Fake Your Own Death” is popular and recurring), from Hackathons to concerts, with musical acts like Spiritualized, Ariel Pink, and Omar Souleyman. And the classes are equally varied—some recent examples include “Physical Storytelling,” “The Alchemy of Light,” “From Tesla to the Transistor,” “Homebrew Kimchi,” “NY Theremin Society Workshop,” and “Lock-Picking and Open-Source Security.”

So get out to Red Hook and learn something! But first read the Q&A with David, Pioneer Works’ Director of Education.

brooklyn spaces: Tell me a bit about the history of this building.
David: Okay! I know this because we had a Red Hook history class here recently. It was built in 1866, then in 1871 it burned down, and it was rebuilt in 1872. It was originally Pioneer Iron Works, one of the biggest iron works in the country. After that it was a tobacco-drying warehouse. Then they were doing something manufacturing until the 1950s; whatever they were making was super heavy, so they had this system to move it all around in here, and rollers set into the floor to roll it out the door. And then since the 1960s it was used to store financial records. When Dustin bought it, there was no heat, no running water, minimal electricity. The windows were all bricked up, the floors were wrecked, the staircases were terrifying. It took about a year of heavy work to get it into shape.

brooklyn spaces: I love that uniquely artist vision of walking into a completely decrepit space and saying, “I can see what this is going to be.” It’s like that quote about sculptors, how they look for the piece within the marble and then let it out.
David: Exactly. Dustin was like, “All right, this building is my next piece of art.”

Dustin Yellin sculpture

brooklyn space: How did you become involved?
David: I was teaching high school and really wanted to quit, so when Dustin presented me the opportunity to start a teaching program here, I thought I’d give it a shot. So we started, and it went really well in the summer, and then it went really well in the fall, and then Hurricane Sandy happened, and it just totally knocked us out. This whole building was like shoulder-deep in water. We tried to keep doing classes even though we had very little power and no heat—I bubbled in the classroom, like in ET, just encased it in plastic curtains, and we put in as many heaters as we could without blowing the circuits, but it was still so, so cold. We didn’t get heat until March, so that’s when we finally started doing classes again. Since then, we’ve just been growing and growing and growing.

brooklyn spaces: How would you classify the different kinds of classes offered here?
David: They’re pretty different, but it’s basically stuff that’s either really new or really old. We do cutting-edge stuff like microcontrollers and 3D printing and upgrading the firmware in your camera; those are for artists, designers, software developers, to demystify the process of new technologies that everyone wants to know how to use. And then we do old stuff, like paper marbling, or wet-plate or tintype photography, which is Civil War era. It’s to a similar aim as the newer stuff: giving artists a new vocabulary and a specialized practice.

brooklyn spaces: Do you come up with an idea for a class and then go out and find a teacher? Or do people bring you ideas?
David: Both. The lock-picking class, which is super popular, came about because I saw a lock-picking tent at Maker Faire—although tracking down someone who picks locks for a living was really hard. Then on the other hand, a woman came by the other day who wants to do a bread-baking class. We were like, “But we have no ovens, we have no flat surfaces, we don’t have anything.” And she was like, “It’s okay, we can make it work. How about we cook the bread on sticks over a fire?” We’ll try basically anything if it seems cool and the teacher seems competent.

brooklyn spaces: There seems to be a strong movement in Brooklyn for these kinds of classes and skillshares, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of places like 3rd Ward and Brooklyn Brainery. Why do you think that is? Do people just want to have more hobbies?
David: I think it’s deeper than that. Demystifying processes is so enabling. There’s a huge movement of open-source hardware and software in the tech world, and I think part of that is because we’re so controlled by the companies that make the technology we use. The fact that you can’t just open an iPhone and replace the battery is a conscious choice on their part. It’s not because oh you might do it wrong; it’s to keep you under their control. The open-source movement puts the power back in the hands of the individuals, and I think people are used to that idea now, so by applying that model to education, we’re unlocking it a bit. And I think it’s going to continue to grow.

brooklyn spaces: With so many choices, do you think they’re beginning to overlap? What makes Pioneer Works’ offerings unique?
David: I mean, maybe there’s some overlap with what 3rd Ward was doing, but we have something that they didn’t have.
brooklyn spaces: Integrity?
David: Oh yeah, well there’s that. But also we’re a nonprofit and they were a for-profit, which makes a huge difference. We’re an arts institution; it’s just a very different kind of space. Plus we have the nicest building. Once people come here once, it’s not hard to get them to come back.

brooklyn spaces: Do you think being in Red Hook has had an influence on how the space has developed?
David: Sure. There’s such a strong community here, and a real neighborhood feel, like I’ve never experienced anywhere else in New York. We’re trying to find ways to use this space as more of a community center. At the end of April we did a twenty-four-hour hackathon that was Red Hook themed. Business owners from the neighborhood gave us challenges, and all the tech people competed to make apps to address those issues. Pizza Moto catered the event. I love those guys—after the flood they came down to Van Brunt Street when nobody had any power and just started cooking pizzas for free, out on the street under the police lights.

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your future goals for the space?
David: We’re building a lot of relationships with terrific groups like Invisible Dog and Generally Assembly and Fractured Atlas. We don’t know what we’re going to do with them yet, but we’re kicking around ideas. We’re also starting to collaborate in a bunch of ways with Brooklyn Museum, which is perfect because they want to be linked to a gallery and we want to be linked to an institution. Obviously we don’t want to be a museum, but the way they’re organized and the integrity they have, I think it’s a really great model for us.

***

Like this? Read about more skillshares: Brooklyn Brainery, Exapno, Time’s Up, Ger-Nis Culinary Center, Lifelabs, UrbanGlass, 3rd Ward

uniondocs

oriana on 27 Feb ’14

space type: movies, event space, nonprofit | neighborhood: williamsburg | active since: 2005 | links: website, facebook, twitter

UnionDocs is a center focused on documentary art in all its facets. They put on about 100 events a year—primarily screenings, but also workshops, panels, radio-listening events, photography lectures, discussions, and more. These events have an “intensive” model, bringing together a gathering of people around a certain film, genre, topic, or theme, and are intended to encourage lively dialogue and critique. Some are collaborations; UnionDocs has worked with a wide variety of partners, from Harvard’s metaLab to the Northside Film Festival. And for those who can’t make the presentations, UnionDocs also engages critical writers to do essays and articles about the work they show.

all photos from UnionDocs

Another big part of UnionDocs is the CoLAB, a collaborative studio fellowship program that brings together twelve artists per year, six from the United States and six international, to produce short documentary works around a specific theme. These films often go on to the festival circuit, and have been shown at the Tribeca Film Fest, BAM Cinemafest, Doc NYC, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, and many more. At this point more than 70 media artists have come through the CoLAB program.

CoLAB fellows, 2013

Finally there are longer-term productions, which come in different forms. The latest is a multi-year project called Living Los Sures, a “collaborative web documentary” about South Williamsburg. UnionDocs describes the project as “part omnibus film, part media archaeology, part deep-map and city symphony.” That project will be finished later in 2014, and there will be screenings, activities, and many other events to celebrate it.

Living Los Sures screening

Be sure to keep an eye out for that and all the other incredible work UnionDocs has to share—but first read my Q&A with Christopher Allen, UnionDocs founder.

brooklyn spaces: Give me a quick history of how this all got started.
Christopher: I actually moved into this building in 2002, and in 2003 a few close collaborators and I took it over and started turning it into an art collective. In 2005 we became a nonprofit, focusing primarily on the intersection of politics and art, which led us into documentary work. In 2007, most of the original people involved were heading in different directions, including myself, so we all moved out of the building and set up a sort of residency model. And then, a bit later, in 2009 I came back and make this my full-time venture with a proper staff.

Color Series and Veils

brooklyn spaces: What would you say is the theme or mission statement of Uniodocs?
Christopher: We present and produce documentary art, and we’re interested in taking our audience on a journey through a variety of different subjects. We basically use documentary as a starting point to a broader conversation that can engage many different disciplines and areas of expertise, and hopefully get people excited and aware about things happening in the world.

Hybrid Forms of Documentary

brooklyn spaces: Tell me about a couple of your favorite UnionDocs events.
Christopher: Let’s see. Pretty early on we had an event with the artist Christo and the documentary legend Albert Maysles, which was incredible. It was a real surprise that we were able to get Christo here, and I think he liked it a lot. In 2007 we did an event with Laura Poitras; she’s an amazing filmmaker with an incredible vision, and she’s so tough and daring. Laura was the key person to break the Snowden story, so she’s a big inspiration for us. It’s amazing to be able to look back and say that before Laura Poitras was a global name, she was here talking with an audience of like forty people. One really different favorite event of mine was very recent, it was curated by our director of the CoLAB, Toby Lee, all around the idea of the “uncanny valley.” It was a series of films and lectures about things that appear to be real but are not, and what happens as they get closer and closer to being real. In addition to films, there was a performance by a master puppet artist and a talk by a scientist. It was a wide-ranging discussion that took people on a real intellectual journey. Our events are really geared toward a conversation, and often we have an audience that really shares and dives into deep questions with the filmmakers. There aren’t so many spaces where people can articulate their opinions in public in the flesh, so there’s something about that, that ritual, even if it seems anachronistic, that’s kind of a vital thing.

Megapolis Audio Transmission

brooklyn spaces: I’d love to hear some more about the Southside documentary project Living Los Sures. What was the inspiration for that?
Christopher: It started four years ago, when we were given a disintegrating copy of this incredible documentary film that was shot in this neighborhood in 1984 by Diego Echeverria. What we’re doing is making the original film accessible to people in many different ways, like restoring and annotating it, and working with the community to mine it for other stories and populate it with other memories. A lot of the people in it are still in the neighborhood, and it’s great to look back at the work and try to understand it, and also to update it and challenge it and work with it in different ways. Diego has been very generous with us; he’s overjoyed that the film is being restored, that there’s a group of young artists who are re-engaging with the ideas in it. A whole set of short documentaries around the same ideas have come out of the CoLAB as well, like Toñita’s, which investigates one of the last remaining Puerto Rican social clubs in the neighborhood, along with a whole cast of characters there, including the matriarch of the club who’s been keeping it going all these years.

summer backyard party

brooklyn spaces: UnionDocs clearly has a very involved and nuanced relationship with the neighborhood and community. Can you talk a little more about that?
Christopher: We’ve always tried to find ways to connect with the people in our neighborhood, but the Living Los Sures project has been really successful because we’ve been able to meet residents where they’re at; we’ve done screenings in church basements and schools and other community institutions. This project is a way for us to use our interests and talents to help preserve the legacy of this neighborhood, to create new relationships between neighbors, and to try to have a greater sense of place here. Lots of people think of the Southside as just a part of Williamsburg, but it has a very distinct history and population. This project is really devoted to celebrating it.

brooklyn spaces: It seems also like a really crucial cultural history. Are there other records to draw from? If people wanted to learn more about the history of this neighborhood, where would they go?
Christopher: There’s not that much that’s been written. A lot of organizations that are doing great work, they haven’t had a lot of time to document it because they’re out there making things happen. But there’s an effort toward cultural history now. The housing organization Los Sures HDFC is interested in starting a museum, and El Puente has been working on a sort of people’s history of the neighborhood. We’re trying to work with both of those organizations however we can.

Radio Boot Camp

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on working and making art in this part of Brooklyn right now? Do you think the Southside is in danger of being overtaken by gentrification?
Christopher: I’ve always liked the energy here, it’s always felt very vibrant and exciting. The wave of new businesses and new residents is not stopping, but I don’t think the long-standing community will be pushed out in the same way that has happened in other places, largely because the community is organized, and many people own their property. I have a lot of hope for this area; the development is not all good, but it’s inclusive in some ways. If new residents can be open to the people who helped to preserve this neighborhood when it was bombed out and the landlords weren’t paying attention, then I think there’s a lot of positive things in the future for the Southside.

Views from the Water

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of UnionDocs?
Christopher: We’re looking to continue to do exciting events that are cross-disciplinary and bring lots of voices into the conversation, and we’re trying to do more with the community we’ve brought together. I don’t think our vision is to become bigger and bigger and bigger; it’s more about improving the quality of what we’re already doing. But there’s also the possibility of taking the model we’ve established and doing it in other locations. There’s been a lot of interest from folks who have come through our collaborative program, especially the international folks; they go back to Turkey or Peru or Paris or Tijuana and want to do something like this where they’re from, so we’re thinking about how that could operate and what it would look like.

***

Like this? Read about more theatres: Spectacle Theatre, Bushwick Starr, Clockworks Puppet Studio, South Oxford Space, Cave of Archaic Remnants

brooklyn historical society

oriana on 20 Jan ’14

space type: museum, nonprofit | neighborhood: brooklyn heights | active since: 1863 | links: website, facebook, twitter

The Brooklyn Historical Society is definitely a bit more conventional than the spaces I usually cover here. But this is a site about exploring everything our borough has to offer, and that doesn’t only mean watching aerialists in a Bushwick loft or riding flaming bicycles in a Bed-Stuy alleyway. And it should also go without saying that Brooklyn is absolutely steeped in history, and that the particular initiatives, accidents, and cultural tides of the past are in large part responsible for making the present what it is.

Othmer Library archives; all photos by Alix Piorun

BHS is a beautiful way to connect with all that. As Programs Associate Meredith Duncan told me, “Sharing the past is so important because it informs what’s happening in the present, and also what will happen to the future communities and culture of Brooklyn.”

Founded in 1863 as the Long Island Historical Society, BHS’s mission is to “make the vibrant history of Brooklyn tangible, relevant, and meaningful for today’s diverse communities, and for generations to come.” The gorgeous building, which turns 150 this year, is best known for its stunning two-floor research library. But after finishing a $5.5 million renovation, the space now features a lot more: four art galleries, an event space for public programming, a classroom for student workshops, and a gift shop filled with crafts from a wide variety of Brooklyn makers.

The four galleries cover a lot of different ground: currently on exhibit upstairs is “Documenting Sandy,” a collection of mostly cellphone pix from the harrowing superstorm and its aftermath; whereas the just-opened exhibit on the main level, “In Pursuit of Freedom,” is a public history project exploring the heroes of Brooklyn’s anti-slavery movement.

"Documenting Sandy" exhibit

The public programming offered at BHS is extremely diverse as well. Some of this year’s fascinating events include: Pat Kiernan in conversation with Gothamist publisher Jake Dobkin, an original musical by the Irondale Ensemble called Color Between the Lines, a lecture on the history of the Gowanus Canal by popular Brooklyn Brainery speaker Joseph Alexiou, a walking tour of the Wallabout Historic District, and the Brooklyn Zine Fest—just to name a few.

And then, of course, there’s the nationally recognized Othmer Library. Its various collections include municipal and administrative records from the villages that eventually became Brooklyn, personal and family papers dating back to the 1600s, genealogies, war histories, several thousand prints and drawings from the 17th century on, and more than 300 oral history narratives. There’s also a photography collection that starts in the 1870s, which includes amateur and professional photographs of buildings, people, and major cultural events, from the building of the Brooklyn Bridge to the 1977 Bushwick blackout. And there’s a large collection of cultural ephemera relating to Brooklyn icons, from the Wonderwheel to the Dodgers.

Othmer Library archives

There’s even a whole room dedicated to maps, as well as a person whose entire job is to catalogue and classify them. The amount of history contained in these maps alone is staggering; in addition to extensive street and lot maps, there are centuries-old Fire Department maps, municipal maps, sewage system maps, transit maps, and on and on. It’s exhilarating to look through them and feel the power of history’s force under your fingertips.

The majority of the collections are available for public use, although you need to make an appointment to view some of it. There are also various online-accessible catalogues—but don’t skip a visit to the marvelous building if you can help it.

"Landmarks of New York" exhibit

You should definitely visit to see for yourself the incredible resources available throughout BHS. In the meantime, sign up for the newsletter, where you’ll get to see Photo of the Week and a Map of the Month taken from the archives. BHS also publishes books, curriculum kits, and neighborhood guides, from Greenpoint to Bay Ridge, some with accompanying walking tours and podcasts.

BHS gift shop

According to Meredith, some of BHS’s future goals are “to encourage more interaction with the greater Brooklyn community, and to become a cultural hub, both for Brooklynites and for tourists.” In addition, they’re hoping increase educational initiatives; through donations and grants, schoolchildren can visit for free, so they’re working on expanding outreach to teachers who could take advantage. BHS also works with university professors to help them use original artifacts in their classes. And of course, BHS will continue to be a resource for anyone who, for any reason at all, wants to learn more about amazing Brooklyn.

***

Like this? Read about more historic spaces: South Oxford Space, Brooklyn Lyceum, The Schoolhouse, Broken Angel

exapno (metropolitan exchange building)

oriana on 14 Oct ’13

neighborhood: downtown brooklyn | space type: music coworking | open since: 2010 | links: website, facebook, twitter

Founded by husband-and-wife composers Lainie and Jascha, Exapno is a coworking space for the musically minded. For a very low monthly fee, musicians (primarily “new music” composers) can rent desk space, giving them a quiet place to work on their music, network with other musicians, and give and attend performances. It’s built on the concept of a writers’ space, inspired by Paragraph in Manhattan, where Jascha was once a member.

Qubit performing; photo by Lainie

Interestingly, Exapno is just one of myriad small businesses currently residing in the fascinating Metropolitan Exchange building. The massive MEx—a 45k-square-foot, seven-floor former bank—is owned by designer Al Attara, who is striving to make it a creative startup hive. Attara has owned the building for more than three decades, but for years it was on the city’s “urban renewal” chopping block, meaning that it could be reclaimed and torn down at any time. About six years ago the building came off the list, and since then Attara has invited in a wide universe of creatives, from avant-garde furniture designers RockPaperRobot to bio research lab Genspace. The sixth floor is all architects; the fifth floor has several food importers, from chocolate to tea to fish; and the fourth floor is media-oriented, with groups like Seed Magazine and Good News Planet, a website that only prints good news. (To read more about MEx, check out this New York Times piece from back in 2011.)

MEx fifth floor, photo by Maximus Comissar

Working within this amazingly diverse community of creative entrepreneurs, Exapno is thriving—as much as it can. With a cap of around 20 musicians monthly, and restrictions such as the inability to leave instruments overnight or to put up walls or soundproofing, Exapno may have reached its growth capacity. Ultimately they may relocate to a space where they can have more control and freedom, but in the meantime they’re happily staying put. Exapno, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is always seeking donations, and the group is open to new members—find out more on their site. But first, read my Q&A with cofounder Jascha and musician member James.

Jascha & James on left, photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What does Exapno mean?
Jascha: My wife Lainie is a huge Marx Brothers fan, Harpo in particular. In his biography, Harpo talks about how when he toured Russia in the ’30s, he would see posters advertising his show, with his name written in Cyrillic, and it looked like “Exapno Mapcase.” I think we’ve only ever run into one other person who got the reference.

brooklyn spaces: How did the space get started?
Jascha: Since at least the early 2000s, Lainie had been wanting to create a performance space that was cheap to rent out, and that could function as a community nexus, a meeting place for young musicians, a way to get into the scene. Eventually we met Al, the wonderful man who owns this building. He’s incredible; instead of turning this place into condos or office space and making millions of dollars, he has filled this sort of ramshackle building with startups and indie businesses and nonprofits, just because that’s what he believes in. Anyway, Al agreed to rent us the space for whatever we could pay, so it’s sort of by his good graces that we’re here at all.

Wet Ink, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: What’s it like being a member here?
James: It’s an amazing resource and access to a great community. All musicians needs space where they can make noise or quietly write music that will one day become noise, and it’s awesome to be able to get that for such a low monthly fee.

photo by Maximus Comissar

brooklyn spaces: What connects all the members? Does everyone write or make a similar kind of music?
Jascha: We rapidly discovered that with a really cheap rehearsal space, we had to find artful ways to deflect requests from garage bands or that sort of thing. That’s what’s nice about “new music”: occasionally it’s a little loud, but usually it’s like a string quartet, or a vibraphone and singer. It’s much more manageable in terms of neighbors.
James: It’s somewhat self-selecting. You can’t leave equipment here, you can’t make a lot of loud noise, so that disqualifies, say, a punk band that wants someplace to rehearse every night. Plus almost everyone I know in the “new music” community tends to be project-oriented, as opposed to in a definitive group. Which is why a resource like this is so important: we don’t have a whole band where each member can pitch in $20 a month for a space.
Jascha: There are a lot of things about music and musicians that are really quite antisocial—making lots of strange noise, leaving stuff everywhere, taking up lots of space with pianos and drum kits—so we’ve had to modify things. There’s a lot more we could be doing if we had a space we could control, but then we’d have to pay an awful lot of money. And actually, it feels like the people who mainly used the space two or three years ago are starting to move on to other things. Now I feel like the people who need the space are people we don’t know, so we need to work on getting the word out.
James: I’ve noticed a lot of new younger composers here. Suddenly there’s this new generation of really positive, spirited people doing all sorts of weird stuff, and a lot of it’s happening here.

String Noise, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: Do you have any famous alumni?
Jascha: Within the modest world of the New York new music scene, sure. Dither is quite well known; they’ve been around for years and get props from major composers. They do an event every year called the Dither Extravaganza [this year’s is on October 26th, at the Gowanus Loft]. Our artistic advisory board also has some heavy hitters in it, like Morton Subotnick and Paul Lanksy.

brooklyn spaces: What’s your relationship to the neighborhood?
Jascha: The location is awesome, it’s a great hub for music. Brooklyn Academy of Music has been here forever, and recently two major venues moved in around the corner: Roulette and ISSUE Project Room. But we’re proud to say we beat them here.

Sweat Lodge, photo by Lainie

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts on being an artist in Brooklyn these days?
Jascha: Well, when we started this space, Lainie and I were living in Chelsea, but most of our music friends lived in Brooklyn, and increasingly the concerts we were going to were in Brooklyn too. The center of gravity for our scene—and so many other artistic scenes—has been shifting here more and more. Brooklyn is incredible right now; there’s just so much creative activity here.

Exapno rooftop, photo by Maximus Comissar

***

Like this? Read about other coworking and skillshare spaces: Time’s Up, Pioneer Works, Bushwick Print Lab, Arch P&D, Urbanglass, 3rd Ward, Brooklyn Lyceum, No-Space

no-space

oriana on 14 Jan ’13

space type: activism | neighborhood: greenpoint | active since: 2011 | links: website, facebook, twitter

No-Space is the current workshop for Not An Alternative, an art-and-activism collective that works to affect politics and culture through organizing, education, and partnering with community groups. The group is led by Beka, a progressive-nonprofit strategist, and Jason, an artist and video-production specialist. Not An Alternative’s old home, Change You Want to See Gallery, was an activism hub in Williamsburg in the mid 2000s, where the group hosted film screenings, lectures, workshops, and production meetings, as well as a rotating cast of collaborators, including the Yes Men, Reverend Billy, and members of the Barcelona activist collective Yomango.

all photos from Not An Alternative

The new space, in industrial Greenpoint, has coworking desks in the back and a production facility in the front. The group and the space have been very active in Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Sandy, and many other Occupy and activist permutations. A large part of NAA’s disaster-relief contribution has been designing and producing visual symbols for the movement, such as vests, magnets, patches, and “way-finding” signs, to clarify and make physical the incredible work that Occupy Sandy has been doing since the superstorm hit. This work has been done in conjunction with Occupy Town Square, Pratt’s Disaster Resilience Network, and the Wise City.

Not An Alternative is always seeking coconspirators and collaborators, so get in touch to join in with their work. But first check out my interview with Jason!

Jason

brooklyn spaces: How did Not An Alternative come about?
Jason: It was created in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention in 2004. People had realized that reenacting tactics they’d seen in the sixties wasn’t going to work, so we had to think of different ways to affect transformation. Our space became an organizing and production hub. Every week we would hold a production meeting for a different group, and we would connect them with curators or people with space or materials, and just sort of help the whole thing get under way. After the convention and the election, we realized that we’d created an important thing. We were trying to decide how to continue it, and the next thing we realized, our neighborhood was under this massive rezoning. So we jumped into that, because it was really all the same thing. This is politics, this is globalization on a local level.

Change You Want To See Gallery

brooklyn spaces: So it evolved into a general gathering spot and workspace for creative activism, which became the Change You Want to See Gallery.
Jason: Yeah. We started hosting events around the same things, activism and technology theory. So it was brainstorming, theory, discussion, presentations, and workshops, and then production—taking all those ideas and putting them into practice with community groups, social movements, different campaigns.

brooklyn spaces: Are there community groups or campaigns that were particularly inspiring to you, or that you felt really worked?
Jason: We did some work with Picture the Homeless that I think was really good, after the crisis of 2008. We partnered with them on an action where they put up a tent city in a vacant lot. We pretended to be a film crew: we drove in with forty people, set up one of those white tents with tables and bagels, and shot a fake music video while our “stagehands” were in the back cutting down the fence and setting up the tent city. By the time the police came, the whole thing was erected. It got great media attention, we even had a story in the New York Times. There was a lot of pressure on Bloomberg at that moment, because he had just announced the results of a five-year plan to end homelessness, which had ended in an abject failure.

brooklyn spaces: What were some great presentations or workshops?
Jason: There were so many. Reverend Billy did the closing of the space, which was great. We had a great series called “Symbols, Branding and Persuasion,” where we had designers, activists, and people involved in branding talk about their practices. We had a friend of Beka’s who basically led the design team for Obama, we had someone who ran focus groups, we had the creative director of Interbrand, which is the largest branding company in the world. Activists are largely very alienated by advertising, it kind of suggests manipulation, but we tried to break those things apart.

brooklyn spaces: And Change You Want to See Gallery ended right before Occupy Wall Street, right?
Jason: Yeah, just a month before. By the time we left we no longer made any sense in Williamsburg anymore. We were across the street from the Knitting Factory, the Commodore, down the block from all those new restaurants; the whole scene was just completely different. We used to be outside on the sidewalk with table saws, and all the neighbors would send their kids over to learn how to make stuff. By the end we had people knocking on the door all the time going, “What kind of store are you?” So we got the new space in September, and then OWS happened, which thoroughly consumed us for a year. We even took over a second space downstairs that we used for production for awhile.

brooklyn spaces: Let’s talk about the work you guys have been doing with Occupy Sandy.
Jason: Our work with Sandy is a continuation of the work we were doing with OWS. We saw Occupy as being fundamentally about the contestation of space, and we tried to focus that idea so it was clear to people. If you can articulate something, you can understand it. And if you can see it, if it has a material form, it can be reproduced. Zuccotti Park had a material form and was able to be reproduced in other cities. So for Sandy, we made construction vests that say “Occupy Sandy” on them, and we also made way-finding signs, which direct people to distribution centers where they can get medicine, lawyers, food, shelter, tools, information, or anything else. And then we went out and put up all the signs as if we had the authority to do so, right in front of the police and the National Guard. They let it happen because they know there’s a need for it, so it turns out that we do have the authority. This stuff is functional in terms of helping people find a location or a person who can help them, but it also affects the symbolic landscape in terms of making the Occupy network more visible. It transforms the relationship to power around the symbol, and around a certain kind of visual language code.

brooklyn spaces: And it certainly has echoes of branding, and of making sure there’s a public acknowledgment of who’s doing this. People outside of New York don’t realize how much of the relief work has been done by Occupy Sandy.
Jason: Although we do so much work with advertising, we’ve made a conscious decision not to describe what we do as branding. I rather think that we’re occupying the vocabulary of the public, the symbolic language that discusses public use of space. We’re not introducing a new “brand”; we’re inhabiting an existing vocabulary. That’s the way we talk about it.

brooklyn spaces: Got it. So having experienced the transformation of Williamsburg, and now the industrial edge of Greenpoint, do you feel that has had any effect on the way you organize or the way you run your space?
Jason: For sure. When we worked on the Williamsburg rezoning, our focus was on organizing the hipster community, because they were the least organized, due to all the things that make hipsters hipsters. The fact that they can’t self-identify as hipsters makes them unaware as a class, so unlike the Dominican or Latino communities who are like, “This is what we are, you can tell because we all have this tattoo,” the hipsters are like, “I have this tattoo and that means that I’m not part of any community.” But the neighborhoods we’ve been working with are also very creative, and we try to see how far we can push them toward becoming a creative political class.

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future?
Jason: We would like to destabilize authority to the point that it becomes a question as to what was done by activists and what was done by a “legitimate” or existing authority. And I think that can actually happen. Our politics are about shifting culture, or shifting politics through transforming culture. I feel like this space is serving a very important role to social movements and community groups in terms of what we provide and what we’re modeling, ways of engaging in politics. So I would like to see it continue to grow.

***

Like this? Read about more activist spaces: The Illuminator, OWS art show, Bushwick City Farm, Books Through Bars, Time’s Up, Trees Not Trash, Brooklyn Free Store

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

south oxford space

oriana on 26 Nov ’11

space type: rehearsal & performance space | neighborhood: ft. greene | active since: 2000 | links: website, facebook

A.R.T. New York (the Alliance of Resident Theatres) has been supporting nonprofit theatre groups for forty years. They provide all kinds of services to their nearly 300 member organizations, like technical assistance, real estate loans, and access to shared office and rehearsal space—which is where South Oxford Space comes in. A lovely old building in Ft. Greene, South Oxford Space rents office space to twenty different theatre organization, as well as larger rooms for classes, workshops, meetings, rehearsals, and small performances.

White Bird Productions' "Creative Theatrics" workshop, photo by Stephanie Bok

Check out their fascinatingly diverse group of tenants, and then read on for my interview with Stephanie Bok, South Oxford’s operations manager!

  • ActNow Foundation Develops, promotes, and produces works by artist of color in theater and film.

ActNow's "New Voices in Theater" reading series, reading of "Secrets of a Black Boy" by Darren Anthony

  • American Opera Projects Produces contemporary operas and commissions new work.
  • The Civilians Creates investigative theatre, developing new works based on contemporary and political topics.
  • Elders Share the Arts Conducts and fosters programs that honor and draw on the life experience of older adults and encourage their creative expression.

  • Elevator Repair Service Creates original performance pieces based on and around found texts, found objects, literature, and history.

Elevator Repair Service rehearsing "The Select," photo by John Collins

Jessica Cruz in Modern-Day Griot's "Lyrics in Motion"

  • Modern-Day Griot Theatre Company An interdisciplinary theatre company committed to moving the story of the African Diaspora forward via storytelling.
  • New York City Players Creates original work about people, relationships, and, above all, feeling.
  • New York Deaf Theatre Creates opportunities for the production of plays in American Sign Language.
  • Nia Theatrical Production Company Produces new works by emerging artists and provides arts-in-education programs to the educational community.
  • Page 73 Productions Develops and produces works of early-career playwrights who have shown commitment to the theatre but received neither wide public recognition nor substantial production opportunities.
  • Ripe Time Develops and produces ensemble-based performances that navigate the terrain between dance and theatre, word and image.
  • Shadow Box Theatre A children’s company that uses traditional Chinese shadow puppets to tell folk tales from many cultures.
  • Target Margin Theater Experimental theatre company that reinterprets the classics.
  • Trilok Fusion Arts A multi-disciplined company providing a forum for artists around the world to collaborate and create new and unique art with a focus on culture and tradition.

Urban Bush Women in their office

  • Urban Bush Women An ensemble dedicated to exploring cultural expression as a catalyst for social change, synthesizing contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of African-Americans and the African diaspora.
  • White Bird Productions Works with playwrights, composers and performers to develop and produce theatre that embraces issues of the environment and community.

 

brooklyn spaces: Do you come from a theatre background?
Stephanie: Yes, I’ve been in theatre all my life. I write and produce my own shows, and I work with several of the groups here. I’m a staff writer for American Candy, I work with White Bird Productions as a teaching artist, and my one-act plays have been produced by American Theatre of Harlem and ActNow.

Trilok Fusion Arts' FGA House Tour, photo by Stephanie Bok

brooklyn spaces: So you really understand the struggles theatre groups go through. Is there a lot of interaction between the different organizations in the building?
Stephanie: The tenants have certainly done collaborations, and there’s also sharing of resources—they’ll hire the same lighting designer or use the same actors. It definitely feels like a community, because these are really active go-getters who are at the heart of what’s happening in New York City theatre right now.

Music Together's "Babies Only" class, photo by Havalah Collins

brooklyn spaces: So when new tenants are coming in, do you look for groups that will fit the fabric of the community that’s already here?
Stephanie: They don’t have to necessarily “fit in,” but they do have to be a theatre-producing nonprofit organization that is a member of our network. We really value the diversity we have here with the different types of companies. We want everyone to feel welcome, and A.R.T. New York definitely doesn’t judge anyone’s work.

Rainmaker and Jessica Isa Burns in Modern-Day Griot's "Lyrics in Motion"

brooklyn spaces: What are some of your favorite groups that have been through here?
Stephanie: I can’t really pick favorites, but I can say that I’ve been very privileged to see some amazing theatre come from the groups that rehearse and have offices here. It’s really exciting to see snippets of the rehearsals, to get to know the actors as they’re coming through in their sweatpants, and then go see the show all put together, with great sets and everyone in their costumes and makeup. I just saw Ripe Time’s show last night, which was amazing, they do really beautiful work. I’m looking forward to The Tale of Frankenstein’s Daughter that Rabbit Hole Ensemble has been rehearsing here. I also really love when Christopher Bayes’ Funny School of Good Acting has clown classes here, it’s great to hear all the yelling and carrying on.

City Kids Dance! class with Dina Gray, photo by Andrea Ryder

brooklyn spaces: Do you feel like this neighborhood or Brooklyn in general has an effect on art and performance today?
Stephanie: This building has definitely seen a wider variety of uses than the other A.R.T. New York building, which is in Midtown Manhattan. We have someone who sells Mary Kay cosmetics, we have a woman who has a prom dress giveaway every spring, we’ve got a group that’s been doing a church service in the Great Room every Sunday for nine or ten years. The Greene Hill Food Co-op and Community Board 2 have used the Great Room for meetings. We have kids’ music classes here six days a week, Music Together of Ft. Greene and Music for Aardvarks; we’ve got a group called City Kids Dance! that does ballet and superhero classes. There’s such a variety of things that happen here, it’s kind of became a neighborhood institution.

American Opera Productions in their office

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Stephanie: My mission over the past few years has been to try to get more and more theatre-type things in here, and to really focus on A.R.T. New York’s mission of promoting theatre in New York City. And just moving onward and upward, making sure that the rooms are in use all the time, promoting the space as somewhere to come and rehearse, to do a staged reading, a performance, that kind of thing. Just really having this identified as a space where theatre is made in New York.

***

Like this? Read about other theatre & performance spaces: Bushwick Starr, Brooklyn Lyceum, Cave, Chez Bushwick, Clockworks Puppet Studio, UnionDocs

chez bushwick

oriana on 1 Nov ’11

space type: dance studio | neighborhood: bushwick | active since: 2002 | links: website, facebook, myspace

Chez Bushwick, an artist-run dance studio and performance space, is one of the vanguards of the modern incarnation of Bushwick as an artist haven. Founded by choreographer Jonah Bokaer and cellist Loren Dempster, Chez Bushwick started out as a practice studio in an industrial loft, a place to give experimental dancers and choreographers room to gather, collaborate, practice, and create. Almost immediately they started hosting performances in the space, and it became a general gathering place for artists and creatives. I’ve seen at least a half-dozen shows there over the years—I used to live around the corner from Chez Bushwick, and it was one of the spaces that made the neighborhood magical.

Chez Bushwick rehearsal studio, photo from New York Social Diary

By 2008, Chez Bushwick had become a nonprofit, and since the craziness of Bushwick was already on the wane, they shifted their focus and began a partnership with the new LEED-certified dance space Center for Performance Research, which was cofounded by Bokaer and John Jasperse of Thin Man Dance. Now most of the performances happen at CPR, and Chez Bushwick is primarily used as a studio for dance rehearsals, artist workshops, and classes in yoga and capoeira. They have an annual program called Chez Bushwick Presents—an artist-run performance series highlighting work by emerging artists—and host some performances during festivals like Arts in Bushwick’s Beta Spaces, Bushwick Open Studios, and SITE Fest. Chez Bushwick also does community youth outreach in conjunction with the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, among others.

photo by Michael Hart, from BushwickBK

According to Bushwick BK, “Chez Bushwick is a neighborhood arts anchor, an ambassador… for Bushwick’s creative community, and above all, a great place to hang out with your neighbors and watch some cutting-edge performance. It’s location is fitting: Chez Bushwick manufactures culture.” I couldn’t agree more.

Folk Feet, photo by Michael Hart from Brooklyn Arts Council

Q&A with Christina, program manager, and Lindsay, studio manager

brooklyn spaces: What are some favorite shows you’ve done or seen here?
Christina: About a year ago we produced David Wampach’s Bascule. He’s a French choreographer, and he came and rehearsed at Chez Bushwick with three New York–based dancers—Michelle Boulé, Liz Santoro, and Brian Campbell—and then the show was presented at CPR. It was a massive amount of work, but it was phenomenally well received, and it was really exciting to see. I also love Konic Thtr, whose show we co-produced at the CPR. They’re from Spain, they work with technology as much as with choreographers, and it’s very visual, they have a lot of projections, they’ve got a live-feed video mixed in with the movement. Otherwise I’m always delighted to work with a range of different artists who are all very inspiring and exciting. In the past year, just to name a few, we’ve worked with Anya Liftig, Tatyana Tenenbaum, and Ivanova Silva, who put together a show featuring choreographers and performers from Latin America, Japan, and Europe. I was so thrilled to see our small organization represent such a spectrum of perspectives.
Lindsay: For the last Bushwick Open Studios I was given the opportunity to bring together some performing artists, and that was wonderful. There’s something really free about that event, and the casualness of presenting really personal, important art that can and does exist without a lot of production.

Anya Liftig performing during Bushwick Open Studios 2011, photo by Christina deRoos

brooklyn spaces: What unites all the different work you present and support?
Christina: We’re definitely focused on contemporary choreography and performance, and on experimentation. We try to give artists full creative freedom, to support artists at all career stages, and to really look at what’s pushing the field forward, in terms of different approaches, different types of collaboration, uses of technology, or anything else.
Lindsay: The artists I’ve seen come through here have all been asking questions with their work. They’re not conserving or memorializing any kind of past ideology about art making; it’s all of the present.

Konic Thtr performing at CPR, photo by Christina deRoos

brooklyn spaces: What are your thoughts about being an arts organization in Bushwick these days?
Christina: I’m incredibly thankful overall to Bushwick. This is by far my favorite community I’ve ever been a part of. I came here a few years ago, along with many many many other artists who were leaving Dumbo, and it was incredible, there was an energy you could feel, creativity and freedom and openness and a real lack of rules. Now we’re all very aware that things are shifting. It feels like a loss of youth, even though I’m well aware that this neighborhood was here for a long long time before we came in, and it’s fraught with all the things that come with gentrification. But I can hold many truths at once, and among them is a sense that this is a very special time and place, and I remain, depending on the day, more or less hopeful about what the next phase might be. But there’s no doubt the dynamic has changed, and that changes not only the individual experience, it changes the creative output of this neighborhood, which impacts the city as a whole. What makes an organization like Chez Bushwick and the many other small nonprofits incredibly important is that this is where things begin. If you don’t have a very supported, open atmosphere at this level, then what you end up with at BAM is not going to be very interesting.

Andrew J. Nemr tapdancing, photo from Greenpoint Gazette

brooklyn spaces: What are your goals for the future of the space?
Lindsay: Dancers often have residencies out of town; you generally need to leave in order to truly dedicate time to what you’re doing. So we’ve been talking about ways to provide something like a staycation, but a stay-residency, to give people the opportunity to be at home, in their home space, and have their art in the same locality. There’s such an extraordinary need for that, especially for those who are just starting out. You can work in the dance field for a long time and still have very little support.
Christina: We’re also looking at improving the studio itself. We redid the floors this summer, we got a grant to put in soundproofing from the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, who are just phenomenal. Also we’re looking at new ways to give support to people for whom maybe this is the first support they’ve ever gotten. I really want Chez Bushwick to help artists realize that if you get out of bed and feel good about the work you’re making, or even if you feel crappy but know that’s part of your process, that’s success. I want us to acknowledge people and the work they’re doing, to be a voice for everyone who says, “I’m not staking my entire life on ending up in MoMA; I make art because it’s a way of life.” I think that’s probably the biggest cultural driver we have. I just want to tell everybody: “You’re good! You’re doing amazing stuff! You’re driving this city! Nobody’s patting you on the back for it, but you are.”

student preparing for Nation of Nations peformance during CHFS’ Arts & Literacy Street Festival in Maria Hernandez Park, photo by Christina deRoos

***

Like this? Read about other performance spaces: Vaudeville Park, Cave, Bushwick Starr, Clockworks Puppet Studio, Cave of Archaic Remnants, South Oxford Space, The Muse