Artists Meeting/ Conflux Festival

Media Advisory: Sept.11th - 14th
From: Artists Meeting - http://artistsmeeting.org
Title: Public Exhibition Space

Artists Meeting, a light hearted group of artists who have been working together for two and a half years, is presenting a series of performance / interventions in the POPS Plazas of the Financial District in Lower Manhattan. POPS plazas (privately owned public space) are plazas which real estate developers have created over the years to receive special favors from the city such as a tax abatement or the approval to build a much higher building than zoning allows. The POPS spaces have recently come under scrutiny in the press because many of the owners have reneged on their agreements and privatized the spaces making them inaccessible to the public. (see: New York Times, Real Estate Section, BIG DEAL; Home Sweet Home on the Plaza, By JOSH BARBANEL, Published: December 17, 2006)

The Plazas are often pocket parks or simply a series of benches that office workers use to sit and eat their lunch or take a break from their cubicles. Artists Meeting will offer interesting and challenging performances that will entertain, provoke thought and activate the public nature of these spaces. For instance, the group will make the uncomfortable POPS benches more amenable by adding custom fabricated cushions, that would be at home in any high-end Soho Designers’ Loft. The pillows will be distributed by a performance artist (pillow man) bedecked by pillows that he will detach from his costume as part of the performance.
Pillows for (POPS), Date: Sept. 11th to 14th, Time:continuous, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Artist Meeting

Artists Meeting has enlisted the help of an upstart firm, Frowners Global that will set up information / sympathy tables to help relieve the job stress of local office workers.
Frowners' Global, Date: Sept.12 & Sept.13, Various times, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Artist Meeting

If you are downtown and on your way to the South Street Seaport Museum you can stop at 200 Water Street, and experience an interactive sound artwork by Leesa & Nicole Abahuni. This gentle audio feedback occurs when passerby sit in the brightly colored metal chair at the base of the non-functioning (and perhaps first) digital clock of the former New York Cocoa Exchange building. Public Experiment #2 - sound piece using metal benches, Date: Sept.13, Time: 12 noon (continuous), Financial District, 200 Water Street, Artists - Leesa & Nicole Abahuni

The street layout of Lower Manhattan grew from the original chaotic footprint of a unplanned village that was the original 17th Century Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam. The absurdity of skyscrapers on an old town layout of narrow streets and micro-plazas creates a darkness and oppressiveness on its' inhabitants that inspired Maria Joao Salema to create a series of “Pleasant Places” postcards based on Dutch fantasy landscape prints from the same period. She will copy a series of Dutch fantasy landscapes from the 17th century onto postcards and give them out to people. Maria Joao Salema remarks that the Netherlands of that period was the beginning of the sort of free market trading capitalism that Lower Manhattan stands for now. Pleasant Places - free postcards, Date: Sept.11 to Sept.14, Time: noon to 5pm, Location: 55 Broad St., Financial District, Artist - Maria João Salema


On a more thoughtful note, Daniel Blochwitz wishes to point out the ambiguous nature of the privately owned public spaces. He questions whether the real estate developers and corporations really intend for the POPS spaces to be truly public. To highlight this the group will use barricade tape with the words, NOT PUBLIC, printed on it to symbolically block off several of the POPS spaces.
Not Public!, Date: Sept. 11-14, Time continuous, Financial District, various locations, Artist - Daniel Blochwitz

The Financial District is the end destination for countless commuters from New Jersey. Driving your car into work every day is something that almost every person does. There are many stresses that people don’t account for that range from the entirely person distress of being snarled in traffic to the global stress of global warming brought on by automobile exhaust fumes. To point these out, Eliza Fernbach has created a billboard on route 1 & 9 in New Jersey with the words, Rushing to Your Death? printed on it, she will also be handing out rushing to your death bumper stickers. Rushing To Your Death? - Billboard and stickers, Date: Sept. 11th to 14th, Time: continuous, Billboard on NJ Routes 1&9 Eastbound towards Manhattan. Visible on the left hand side of the road before the Pulaski Skyway. http://www.rushingtoyourdeath.com
Artist - Eliza Fernbach

After 9/11 Lower Manhattan became an armed camp. Many of the federal buildings and the streets of the financial district have steel and concrete barricade that protect the buildings and stop pontential truck bombers from coming close to their targets. The re-building of the WTC site has been slow with many changes that effect the feelings of those who yearn for a memorial to the developers concern for maximum square footage and the city’s real fear that the WTC and the Financial District are prime terrorist targets. Two pieces highlight these aspects and also question the public spaces that are being limited by the fear of terrorists.

Emoticon Job-There are few symbols which so fully represent the spirit of friendship, happiness and peace as the smiley face. Originally created by Harvey Ball in 1963 as a means to ease worker tensions caused by the aftermath of a corporate merger. Today the icon has integrated itself into all aspects of our networked world and is a fitting reminder to the workers downtown as Wall Street copes with the current financial crisis. The project calls attention, through the use of posters and stickers, to the sense of fear
that shrouds downtowns’ public spaces and the insecurity workers feel
today. Emoticon Job, Sept. 11th to 14th (continuous), Financial District,
Artist - Lee Wells

G.H. Hovagimyan & Thomas Hutchison will do an intervention on September 11th with specially printed barricade tape. The tape has the words Unknown Unmade Unseen Undone on it. These words evoke all the emotions surrounding the WTC site and function as a temporary silent memorial.
Barrier Tape Piece - UnknownUnmadeUnseenUndone
Sept. 11th (noon) - Millennium Hotel & WTC site, Sept. 12th, (noon-7pm)
Artist - G.H. Hovagimyan & Thomas Hutchison

The Artists Meeting group has spent several long days walking and researching the POPS plazas of downtown. G.H. Hovagimyan says that the plazas reminded him of the 1965 movie Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard. James Andrews then remarked Plazaville which inspired G.H. to shoot a series of videos inspired by the Godard film in the POPS plazas.
Plazaville - video remake, Sept.13 & 14. (noon-7pm), Artist - G.H. Hovagimyan & Artists Meeting

Finally Raphaele Shirley will do a temporary sculpture installation that will also be a closing party called, “Melted City.” The event is inspired by the architecture and the vision of what New York might look like if it melted like ice cream in the sun. The work involves, lasers, sounds and the audience who show up for the event. Melted City - Site specific installation, Date Sept.14th, Time:7pm-10pm, Location: 60 Wall St., Plaza.Raphaele Shirley