SeaWorthy Retrospective
In 2011, we (Dylan, Ben, Kendra, working with Flux Factory’s Georgia Muenster & Jean Barberis and EFA Project Space’s Michelle Levy and Sally Szwed) co-organized SeaWorthy, a city-wide exhibition/programming series/curatorial platform experiment/problem on the water/essay about the NYC waterfront, etc.
Here is a sort of scrappy archive of the project. Though not comprehensive, nor completely intelligible… just a hint of what went on….
Dearest Margaret:
I am delighted to be writing you from aboard the ocean-going exhibition Sea Worthy, chartered by the respectable companies Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Flux Factory and Gowanus Studio Space. We are due to sail on June 10th, and there is a public reception planned from 6-8 pm at the EFA Project Space to see us on our way. It has been raining now for weeks. Hopeful it will clear…
Your beloved—
R
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Dear Margaret:
Weeks at sea now & still no sea legs. In port today: a place called Gowanus. I hear speak of a lavender-shaded canal that flows right through the center. Will send a card. So mch to do! There are fascinating films and lecture “of a scientific and curious nature” and public excursions out on the sea! Yesterday, the captain pointed out an unidentified ship on the horizon that seems to be following us…
Yours—
R
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My Darling:
I had the honor of being invited to the captain’s table last night where I met a group of talented and well-traveled artists, commissioned by the ship’s patrons to enhance the environment on board. I must note down their names so as not to forget:
Michael Arcega, Rachel Bacon, Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw, Matt Bua, George Boorujy, Adriane Colburn, Heather Dewey-Hagborg & Thomas Dexter, Amze Emmons, Jason Gandy, Richard Haley, Haley Hughes, Sarah Julig, Jonathan Kaiser, Marie Lorenz, Orien McNeill, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Anne Percoco, Natalia Porter, Duke Riley, Tod Seelie, Reid Stowe, Swimming Cities, and Swoon.
On the whole they are quite civilized, I am happy to report, though I sense a touch of the corsair from not a few of them.
Yours— R
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The Gowanus Studio Space presents SEA WORTHY Heterotopias: A weekend of water-related video art and documentary; and preview for this Summer’s marine festival: SEA WORTHY. Co-organized by EFA Project Space, Flux Factory and The Gowanus Studio Space, SEA WORTHY is a series of Workshops, Public Voyages and an Exhibition of art and projects around and about New York City’s waterways.
SEA WORTHY Heterotopias, curated by The Gowanus Studio Space, is a contemplative exhibition within School Nite, with water and watercraft-inspired video art and short documentaries looping throughout the evening of May 7th and into May 8th. Each video explores a New York City or nearby waterway, documents its ecological state, or depicts the ways in which it is used or enjoyed by humans.
Also on display are broadsheets, with information and instructions from the design and boatbuilding group Mare Liberum on how to construct your own rowboat in a single afternoon using found and accessible materials, minimal tools and basic building skills.
SEA WORTHY Heterotopias
a part of SCHOOL NITE and The New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City
May 7th 6:00pm-4:00am
May 8th 12:00pm-6:00pm
Films by:
Meryl O’Connor
Duke Riley
Adriane Colburn
Walker Lamond
Kevin T. Allen
Dylan Gauthier
Stephan von Muehlen
Blake McDowell
Adam Katzmann
Angela Conant
“…and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development […], but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.” – M. Foucault
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Sea Worthy: an Exhibition
June 10 – July 29, 2011, Reception: June 10, 2011, 6-8pm
Sea Worthy: an Exhibition is the first of a three-part collaboration between EFA Project Space, Flux Factory and Gowanus Studio Space. It will be followed by Sea Worthy: Excursions and Sea Worthy: Workshops.
Sea Worthy: an Exhibition features artists who approach water navigation as subject, pushing its potential as a mutable open platform for social experimentation as well as metaphor for personal, artistic, and collective freedom. The show includes installations, models, prints, drawings, photos, videos, and various other musings by artist-seafarers who generously impart their experience of the sea in order to refresh our perception of the land.
Curatorial Committee: Jean Barberis, Benjamin Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, Michelle Levy, Georgia Muenster, Kendra Sullivan, and Sally Szwed.
For complete information on all Sea Worthy events, including workshops led by Gowanus Studio Space, and excursions led by Flux Factory, visit the Sea Worthy website. www.seaworthynyc.org
Sea Worthy: an Exhibition is on view at
EFA Project Space
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
Gallery Hours: JUNE, Wed-Sat, 12-6pm, & JULY, Wed-Fri, 12-6pm (and by appointment)
projectspace@efanyc.org
212-563-5855 x244
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Princess Ladyboat, sadly, didn’t survive the Boatel….
July 7 – September 4, 2011
Marina 59, 5914 Beach Channel Drive, Far Rockaway
This just in! The Boggsville Boatel, set in Marina 59 in Jamaica Bay, Far Rockaway, has been SOLD OUT all summer long. Friends of Flux, Swimming Cities, is auctioning rooms for a weekend bash September 9-10. All proceeds go toward the Swimming Cities India raft project, which leaves on September 20! Follow the auction here and send an email to swimmingcitiesoceanofblood@gmail.com to bid on your favorite boat and extend your summer one more night!
Boggsville Boatel is a floating hotel and theater fashioned out of abandoned and re-claimed boats, all of which sleep 2-5 people. Five of the vessels are leisure fishing crafts from the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s, ranging from 28 to 40 feet long. Another is a 70’s drifter houseboat remodeled into a rustic penthouse. Rooms include dinner and access to the Swimming Cities GOING AWAY PARTY on Sept 10, from 8pm-late. Kick it on your poop deck four blocks from the beach with cold beer, all of your friends and swim trunks—plus Cocktail Cruises in Jamaica Bay, Jerk Burgers & Pineapple Hot Dogs by Carnival Queen Lamar Iposa and Sea Shanty Karaoke.
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Artist and boat-builder Constance Hockaday has constructed a series of floating hotel rooms and a theater at Marina 59 at Far Rockaway in New York City. Boggsville is a floating hotel and theater built in the Neutrino tradition, that is, fashioned out of abandoned and re-claimed boats from the marina. Five of the vessels are leisure fishing crafts from the 70’s and early 80’s, ranging from 28 to 35 feet long. Another is a 70’s drifter houseboat remodeled into a rustic penthouse. The boats are all moored around a floating platform in the middle of a small bay.
Named for Ms. Nancy Boggs, who would move her floating brothel to either side of the Willamette River of Portland to evade the law – depending on where the authorities were bringing trouble to her business – the Boatel explores the boundaries of the hospitality experience.
Artist TJ Hospodar will man an “office of local tourism” for your perusal at the marina.
Major special thanks go to Alita Edgar, Arthur Poisson, and Chess Venis.
The boatel opens on July 7; Tickets for the night range from a donation of $50 to $100 dollars. Your donation will go towards supporting this not for profit project that brings more people access to the water.
We’ve recently expanded the schedule to Wednesday through Sunday nights. Tickets will be available here at 5 pm on July 18.
For press inquiries, contact georgia(at)fluxfactory.org.
-The Theater-
Each night there will be a movie or lecture themed on the water screened on the floating platform. Hotel-goers and boaters from the area are welcome to pull up alongside the platform and view the entertainment.
You can download a pdf of the schedule here!
If you would like to attend the theater but you don’t want a boat for the night, rsvp to constancehockaday(at)gmail.com. Please bring a chair (and snacks). Donations are welcome.
-The Boats-
Americano is a Guido vessel with a long sloping bow. This boat is very private and sleeps 3-4. The windows are tinted and the inside is very Slick Rick. $50 a night.
CRUMB is a quaint and comfortable boat and was probably previously owned by an elderly couple. There is a private sleeping area; it’s spacious and perfect for rolling around in. She sleeps 4 people. This boat also has a shaded top deck with reclining furniture. $50 a night.
New York, NY is Euro. This boat has been remodeled to be more open than she was originally designed to be. She sleeps 3-4 people, and she has a breakfast nook, a great space for preparing lunches, and a desk for the writer-ly types. $50 a night.
Queen Zenobia is a classy little 30-foot yacht. She can sleep 3-4 people, if they are willing to snuggle up. On this boat there is a comfortable little breakfast nook and plenty of deck space for lounging around. $50 a night.
Ms. Nancy Boggs is a rustic floating cabin. This 1967 Drift-R houseboat has been remodeled into down-home love nest. This boat can sleep 4 or 5 people. There are two beds, one of which can fit 3.5 people and the other just one. It is the perfect place to roll around with more than one or two. It has a spacious breakfast nook and several decks for sun bathing, fishing, or picnicking. $100 a night.
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More:
Presented by EFA Project Space, Flux Factory and The Gowanus Studio Space
Summer, 2011
Part I: Exhibition on view at EFA Project Space
Exhibition Dates: June 10 – July 29, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, 6-8 pm
Part II: Workshops at The Gowanus Studio Space
Ongoing: May through July, 2011
Part III: Excursions brought to you by Flux Factory
Ongoing: July through September, 2011
Our events page is now online! Here!
The EFA Project Space, Flux Factory and The Gowanus Studio Space present Sea Worthy, an exhibition and series of public screenings, performances, lectures, workshops and artist-led excursions on the water. With 72 islands and over 700 miles of coastline, New York City is a formidable archipelago. This project invites discussion about water access, activates the largest open space in the city, and engages maritime themes in contemporary art practice. Sea Worthy brings together artists from here and abroad – in consultation with boat builders, world-class mariners, historians, writers, activists, and ecologists – to make new work about, around, and on the waterways of New York City in the summer of 2011.
Sea Worthy presents work by artists who employ the boat as a platform for collective action, private reflection, and liberatory possibility. The sea excursion suggests both an opening and a crisis – the expanse is daunting, uncontrollable, and full of dream potential. To explore this terrain, the artists take to the high and low seas, metaphorically, virtually, and in reality.
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Part I: Sea Worthy, Exhibition
EFA Project Space
June 10 – July 29, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, June 10, 6-8 pm
EFA Project Space presents an exhibition featuring artists who approach water navigation as subject, pushing its potential as a mutable open platform for social experimentation as well as metaphor for personal, artistic, and collective freedom. The show includes installations, models, prints, drawings, photos, videos, and various other musings by artist-seafarers who generously impart their experience of the sea in order to refresh our perception of the land.
Some highlights include:
Documentation of Anne Percoco’s intricate Kilmer Shrines, monuments constructed in honor of sites of some of the under-appreciated drainage systems of New Jersey.
A full-scale print by artist, boat-builder, and Tide and Current Taxi pioneer Marie Lorenz, who commemorates abandoned, washed-up boats combed from the shores of NYC by inking and printing in the style of Japanese fish prints. View her website that tracks NY Harbor tidal data.
Illustrated plans of Amze Emmons’s fantasy purchase of a decommissioned British aircraft carrier which he proposes to convert into a community for climate refugees.
Jonathan Kaiser’s Janet II, a personal, portable vessel crafted from salvaged materials, including disassembled chairs and hundreds of plastic grocery bags. The watercraft has transported the artist along foreign waterways and is an artifact of his travels and a testament to the potential of everyday refuse.EFA Project Space, a program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, is located at 323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10018.
For press inquiries, please contact Michelle Levy, Director, EFA Project Space, at michelle@efanyc.org.
Part II: Sea Worthy, Workshops
The Gowanus Studio Space
Ongoing: May through July, 2011
The Gowanus Studio Space is proud to host a series of workshops on boat-building, maritime ventures, and nautical culture. The motivations, fantasies, and processes before a boat is built and sets sail are specific to this genre of fabrication. While the exhibition’s overarching themes use the boat as a metaphor and platform for freedom, the yearning for these freedoms is bred early on in the planning and building stages of these crafts.
Workshop highlights include:
Artist Natalia Porter leads a Traditional Mexican Trajinera Building Workshop in partnership with architecture students in Xochimilco, Mexico. Once the emblematic watercraft is designed, built, and launched, the artist will host a week of floating dinner discussions on the topic of immigration.
Shrines of the Gowanus Canal, with artist Anne Percoco, will guide participants to convert an old boat into a mobile shrine – constructed primarily from scrap material – that will then embark on a pilgrimage along the unique landscape of the EPA Superfund site, the Gowanus Canal.
Laurie Churchman & Lisa Hutchinson lead a workshop on the History and Design of Boat Names and Boat Lettering,exploring the cultural history behind personal branding choices in design and typography of names lettered on pleasure crafts. Selections taken from Churchman’s book, BOATNAMES, will chronicle Egyptian times to the present, while boat-letterer Hutchinson gives hands-on experience with signage and lettering techniques.
Mare Liberum will lead Shipwrecked, Shanghai’d and Marooned: A Plywood Fleet for New York City. The artist and boat-building collective based in Gowanus finds its roots in centuries-old stories of urban water squatters and haphazard watercraft builders. This workshop aims to construct boats with frames that can be built during a single afternoon using minimal tools and basic building skills.
The Gowanus Studio Space, a workshop for designers, artists, and entrepreneurs, is located at 166 7th Street, Ground Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11215.
For more information, please contact Benjamin Cohen, Director, The Gowanus Studio Space at ben@gowanusstudio.org.
Part III: Sea Worthy, Excursions
Flux Factory
Ongoing: July through August, 2011
Flux Factory invites the public to sail off on expeditions exploring the waterways of New York on a fleet of seaworthy boats built specially for this project. Ranging from short expeditions to weekend extravaganzas, our voyages aim to educate New Yorkers about the city’s waterways: a formative but easily overlooked part of our experience as city-dwellers.
A Few of Our Events:
The Boggsville Boatel is a floating hotel built by Constance Hockaday in the Neutrino tradition, with reclaimed and scrap materials. Moored in the Rockaways, the raft will be open for weekend getaways, complete with fresh flowers and vacancy sign, along with a composting outhouse raft. The artist will also present a site-specific performative lecture.
Alalba Eco Tours – led by Gabriela Basterra, Andy Bichlbaum, and Jeff Day – will explore and document the coast of New York City aboard the Alalba, a lovingly restored 50-foot ketch.
Artist and boat-builder Jessica Segall will conduct the Procession for Immediate Certainty, carrying her handmade Norwegian faering in a parade across Manhattan to launch in the East River and sail to Queens – accompanied by the release of sky lanterns over the river, in the style of a Viking funeral.
Flux Factory, an arts collective, residency, and non-profit organization, is located at 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City, NY 11101.
For more information please contact Georgia Muenster, Flux Factory Exhibitions Manager and Communications Coordinator, at georgia@fluxfactory.org.
Image: Natalia Porter envisions the Trajineras
Participating Artists Include: Michael Arcega; Rachel Bacon; Gabriela Basterra, Andy Bichlbaum & Jeff Day; Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw; George Boorujy; Matt Bua; The Brooklyn Pirates; Laurie Churchman; Adriane Colburn; Heather Dewey-Hagborg & Thomas Dexter; Meredith Drum & Rachel Stevens; Amze Emmons; Andrew Eutsler, Shane Heinemeier & Alison Ward; Drew Feuer & Eleanor Lovinsky; Jason Gandy; Richard Haley; Crystal Heiden; Constance Hockaday; TJ Hospodar; Haley Hughes; Sarah Julig; Jonathan Kaiser; Adam Katzman; Marie Lorenz; Hans Maharawal & Thomas Robinson; Mary Mattingly; Orien McNeill; Nick Normal; Ciaran O’Dochartaigh; Anne Percoco; Natalia Porter; Duke Riley; Tod Seelie; Jessica Segall; Gina Siepel; Reid Stowe, Swimming Cities; Swoon; A’yen Tran; Emmett Walsh; Ian Warren; Brindalyn Webster; and Charles Westfall.
Curatorial Committee: Jean Barberis, Benjamin Cohen, Dylan Gauthier, Michelle Levy, Georgia Muenster, Kendra Sullivan, and Sally Szwed.
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EFA Project Space is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Private funding for the program has been received from the Lily Auchincloss Foundation.
Flux Factory is supported, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State’s 62 counties.
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Images:
http://www.efanyc.org/project-space-gallery/sea-worthy-an-exhibition/
Events:
http://www.fluxfactory.org/events/sea-worthy-events/
June 10, 6:00pm: Opening Reception for Sea Worthy: An Exhibition
June 16, 6:30pm: Take to the Water! A Discussion with Artist-Nomads on the Aquatic Open Field
July 21, 6:30pm: Kon-Tiki (1950): A Special Screening
For the full series of workshops and excursions at Flux Factory and Gowanus Studio Space, refer to the Sea Worthy website
Press:
Seaworthy Exhibit Allows New Yorkers to Channel Their Inner Pirate by Bonny Hulkower for Treehugger.com
Seaworthy: An Exhibition by Mindy Bond for Flavorpill
Art Goes Aquatic in NYC on Artnet
Sea Worthy by Charles Schultz for The Brooklyn Rail
Far Rockaway’s Far-Out Art Scene by Pia Catton for The Wall Street Journal
Check In, Swim Out: A Floating Hotel as Art by Melena Ryzik for the New York Times