Opening Reception co-hosted by Artlog: Thursday, Sept 11 8pm at Le Royale: http://artlog.com/member_events/2-conflux-artlog-opening-party
Conflux, the annual New York City festival that draws artists, technologists, psychogeographers, urban explorers and experience designers from around the world, has released the lineup of participants in this year’s festival.
A team of fourteen professionally recognized curators met in June and selected projects that are representative of the most innovative work being produced in the fields of public-space arts and contemporary psychogeography. This year’s curatorial team includes: Jeffrey Barke, Tamir Chen, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Odin Cappello, Winnie Fung, Gilbert Guerrero, Brian House, Tianna Kennedy, Amy Owen, Sal Randolph, Michael Sarff, David Felix Sutcliffe and Radhika Subramaniam. Several hundred submissions were received from artists around the world. Participating artists will come from countries including Belgium, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, UK and the USA.
Throughout the four-day event, the artists will transform New York City streets into a laboratory for exploring the urban environment. Located in Greenwich Village at the Center for Architecture (a.k.a. Conflux HQ), the festival includes art installations, street art interventions, interactive performance, walking tours, bicycle and public-transit expeditions, DIY media workshops, lectures, films and music.
Hosted by Christina Ray (founder of New York art space Glowlab) and a team of New York-based curators, the 5th anniversary of the festival will feature projects including the $1k Giveaway by the Federation of Students and Nominally Unemployed Artists; botanical walking tours of Manhattan “narrated” by plants; an iPod video and cell-phone-instructed scavenger hunt through the East Village; an expedition to discover the underground rivers and streams of New York; an interactive installation of New York City trash; solar-powered Morse Code workshops; and London-based collective CutUp, returning for a second year to create fresh work throughout the city. The festival’s keynote speaker is Chris Carlsson, author of the recently-published book: ‘Nowtopia: How pirate programmers, outlaw bicyclists, and vacant-lot gardeners are inventing the future today.’
Conflux has grown over the past five years to be a respected event that supports artists working across a wide range of media to re-imagine the city by creating a platform and space for creative action. This year, the festival headquarters will be hosted at the spacious Center for Architecture on LaGuardia Place in Manhattan. Christina Ray, the Festival Director, explains: “Our partnership with the Center for Architecture is a big step towards becoming an internationally recognized cultural festival that brings together the best artists in this field for unbridled exploration and collaboration. Working here provides the opportunity to create expanded gallery installations and to produce a top-notch lecture series all in one space.”
As the event continues to expand, Conflux is at a critical moment in its life cycle. According to Ray, “we’ve operated for five years with little outside funding, relying on the enthusiasm and goodwill of our artists and partners. Our primary goal is to maintain the original spirit of Conflux as a gathering of like-minded people working together to define what it means to work creatively within the public space of New York City today. We look forward to engaging with our community of artists to apply new concepts, strategies and technologies in response to the current physical, political and artistic climates.”
