Public Trust Events

Below is a listing of events connected to Public Trust. All events are free and open to the public. Please note that event times and locations are subject to change.

In addition to the events listed below, we will also have documentation of completed actions and other artworks as part of the Public Trust exhibition at Flux Factory. [EXPAND In the Flux gallery]

Center for Tactical Magic in collaboration with the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center: Love is a Souvenir is an intervention interrogating the ways in which public policy imprints itself upon the social and cultural fabric – both literally and figuratively. Center for Tactical Magic and the Street Vendor Project have designed a t-shirt commenting on NYC’s shifting public image in relation to the NYPD’s aggressive racial profiling tactic, “Stop & Frisk.” In this ongoing project, dozens of souvenir vendors on the perimeter of Battery Park and beyond have hung these shirts alongside their wares, expanding the debate into broader territory by recognizing the role of street vendors as NYC’s frontline cultural ambassadors. Photographic documentation of the interventions will be on display and the t-shirts will be for sale at the Flux Factory gallery. Read about the project in the New York Times here.

Daniel Bejar: Rec-elections is a campaign of site-specific performances and interventions, in which Bejar appropriates the advertising strategies of Conservative political parties. The artist re-inserts past Romney, Reagan, and Nixon campaign posters and signs into the dialogue of the 2012 Presidential Election by wheat pasting them at multiple sites in NYC and at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL. Photographic documentation of his performances and interventions will be on display in the Flux Factory gallery.

Douglas Paulson: In his work-in-progress, Favorites & Forwards (let’s talk about the works we love), Paulson asks: “what books do you love?” and invites incarcerated New Yorkers to curate picks’ shelves of recommended readings to patrons of the New York Public Library. Most importantly, each prisoner will write a new forward for each recommended book, and redesign their covers. Auto-biographical and contact information of the prisoners will accompany each book.

Heidi Neilson: Space Junk Guide to the Hayden Planetarium is a booklet that uses the Hayden Planetarium Sphere at the American Museum of Natural History as a reference point to describe and locate the phenomena of the debris in Earth’s orbit. The guide–available as printed copies inside the Flux Factory gallery and as a downloadable .pdf here–is a tool to help visualize the often overlooked issue of orbital debris.

Jo Q. Nelson: Nelson’s installation playfully tracks the design of a new, more accessible public entrance to the Flux Factory gallery. Front Door makes transparent the process of designing and funding this capital improvement project and examines the difficulties that arise when trying to balance Flux’s mandate to facilitate the creation of new artwork with the realities of the construction process.

Stephanie Diamond: Ideas, Thoughts, Actions, Ramblings for Flux Factory, interpreted by Stephanie Diamond, is a book outlining strategies for community building within and around Long Island City. For Public Trust, Flux Factory staff and residents chose to implement one offering from the book as a means to explore Flux’s role as an institution within their community. The original Book of Ideas was drafted for the city of New Smyrna Beach, Florida by Rick Lowe, Dawn Weleski, Jeff Schmuki, Kennedy Yanko, Lara Kohl, Regina Agu, Sara Daleiden, Wendy DesChene, Xenia Diente and Stephanie Diamond at Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2011.[/EXPAND]

September 8th, 12-1pm
Physical Audit, Cassandra Thornton
TD BANK at the corner of Broadway & 50th Street, NYC
[EXPAND Physical Audit description]

In Physical Audit, groups of performers touch everything in a bank with their hands, in search of dirt. The performers move their bodies in non-utilitarian ways, stretch and touch as much as they can, and accumulate dirt. At the conclusion of each performance, they rub the dirt from their hands onto paper. The action of touching is that of physical activation and citizen observation, but is neither aggressive nor intrusive–at best it expands what seems possible within a financial institution.[/EXPAND]

September 8, 7:00 pm – 10 pm
Le Grand Slam Guignol, Matt Freedman and Jude Tallichet
Flux Factory: 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City 11101
[EXPAND Le Grand Slam Guignol description]

In Le Grand Slam Guignol, Freedman and Tallichet live stream the Women’s Finals of the US Open while volunteers pantomime an adapted version of the tennis game in the Flux Factory gallery-turned-jeu de paume-court. The artists use the cultural institution of sport to pay tribute to the famous Tennis Court Oath that helped spark the French Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror. Powdered wigs and period music will set the atmosphere, while a mock guillotine on the premises will make the losing players’ papier-mache heads roll in this spectacle of sport and horror, politics and media, privilege and powerlessness.[/EXPAND]

September 10th – 30th
The Pacifist Library, Nathaniel Katz and Valentina Curandi
Various locations throughout Queens
[EXPAND The Pacifist Library description]

September 10th, 2-7pm, Jackson Heights Library, 35-31 81 Street, Jackson Heights, NY
September 14th, 2-7pm, Central Library, 89-11 Merrick Boulevard, Jamaica, NY
September 17th, 2-8pm, Flushing Library, 41-17 Main Street, Flushing, NY
September 24th, 2-7pm, Broadway Library, 40-20 Broadway, LIC, NY
September 27th, 6-9pm, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, LIC
September 28th, 12-7pm, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, LIC
September 29th, 11am-9pm, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, LIC
September 30th, 11am-7pm, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, LIC

Curandi and Katz’s The Pacifist Library is a nomadic library made from recycled and donated materials that will travel to public locations. The artists will donate translated versions of Gene Sharp’s From Dictatorship to Democracy to select libraries throughout Queens. In the streets, libraries, and at Flux Factory, their library of pacifist texts will create spaces for the exchange of radical ideas through a reading area, encounters, performances and actions, thereby REcirculating ideas, by REproducing and REbinding books that REgenerate discussions, and REdefining REvolutionary social change. REUSE = PACIFISM.[/EXPAND]

September 12th – 16th
Staged ‘Action’ Events, Monica Rodriguez
Various locations
[EXPAND Staged ‘Action’ Events description]

September 12th, 2-6pm, Whitney Museum, 945 Madison Avenue, NYC
September 14th, 4-8pm, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, NYC
September 15th, 2-6pm, New Museum, 235 Bowery, NYC
September 16th, 1-5pm, Guggenheim Museum, 1071 5th Avenue, NYC

Staged ‘Actions’ Events is a series of re-enactments of protests performed by artist groups who fought for the reform of large cultural institutions. Beginning with the Artists’ Union up through the present day Occupy Museums, Rodriguez has written scores for each protest and performance site, including the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and New Museum of Contemporary Art. A timeline of artists’ protests in NYC and a poster announcing the live performances will be available and on display at the Flux Factory gallery.[/EXPAND]

Public Trust is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Italian Ministry of Culture.