“Disagreement and dysfunction are essential elements of true collaborative experiments.”—Nat Roe
Nat Roe: Executive Director, Flux Factory / Long Island City NY
fluxfactory.org
“disagreement and dysfunction are essential elements of true collaborative experiments.”—nat roe
What led to your involvement with Silent Barn and Flux Factory?
I moved to New York and straight into Silent Barn five or six years ago, back when Silent Barn was in Ridgewood, Queens. Musicians and artists had been living there for years. It was an archetypical New York space. Some musicians had gone to school together and then got this warehouse. They built the bedrooms. They were using it as a studio where they would practice. Over the years, it gained traction as a public event space. It was four bedrooms, so it was me and three other people, and we really gelled. We had complementary visions. Two years after I moved in, we were broken up by the police because it was a warehouse where people were living. A few days later, someone snuck into the building in broad daylight, snuck in through the back, and got all of our valuables out. We had to leave the place very quickly so there was no time for us to take our PA equipment, our personal belongings, etc. In a period of three days, our whole artistic vision was taken away, as well as our place to live. It was really terrible. There was a large public outcry over it, and we started a Kickstarter a few days later. We were able to raise $40,000 through Kickstarter. We were without a space for over a year, and that year was very difficult. We had all of this money, and we realized we were at this point of a higher accountability, so we couldn’t go back to being an illegal space. We could take this check for $40,000 and get broken up again two weeks later.
courtesy of flux factory
Over the course of that year, we built up our volunteer infrastructure quite a bit. We had a lot more people involved, giving their time and expertise to the project. We then settled at 603 Bushwick Ave. on a ten-year lease with an extension. It is a space that goes beyond what we had envisioned that we could possibly afford. There are three floors and eight living spaces. I lived there for two years. There are about 20 or 30 studios that people share, and there is a public event space. We have nightly events. Silent Barn is fiscally sponsored by Flux Factory. Flux Factory is a not-for-profit and Silent Barn is an LLC. Silent Barn is able to apply for some grants and get some tax deductible things under the umbrella of Flux Factory. We had a previous relationship with Flux Factory as an organization with a similar mission. We have similar styles and philosophies.
courtesy of flux factory
I have felt right at home coming to work now at Flux Factory. The rhythm of how people collaborate and work with each other is not a common thing, but it is something that I am used to because of Silent Barn. We are collectives, meaning that everybody is equally empowered. There is a strong egalitarian ethos at Flux Factory, but there is an administrative staff, a resident body, and a Board of Directors. Silent Barn is completely flat—nobody has anything more than anyone else—but that has its drawbacks and virtues.
courtesy of flux factory
How are the groups similar or different?
They are similar people. Flux Factory is more multidisciplinary, and Silent Barn is more focused on music. The resident group here at Flux Factory is the heart of what we do. The residency program gives studios to artists who share the building. We also do a lot of classes and workshops. The exhibitions program includes four major exhibitions a year. Our residents put on many solo exhibitions and collaborative exhibitions beyond that, including special events. The exhibitions are usually curated by the residents, and the artwork in the exhibition comes primarily from residents. Flux Factory functions because there’s a lot of resource sharing, including meals. If you put work into the collective, and if you are committed to the collective, then you have equal ownership over the curatorial direction of the space. You just get the space for the night to put on a concert or a show or a film.
courtesy of flux factory
Collectives result in different kinds of curatorial output than what you would see otherwise. If you were to look at a gallery with one curator, there is a cohesion of vision; you are there to be a snob when you are working by yourself. To a certain level, you give up your own tastes in a collective. You give up your own point of view. You end up with exhibitions, outputs, and artwork that are rich and diverse. On the other hand, you have to live with a lot of imperfections. It is kind of motley.
One of our recent exhibitions was called The Exquisite Contraption, which was a Rube Goldberg machine in Flux Factory. It was a collectively produced artwork. It’s a great analogy for collectives in general because different artists make works that feed directly into each other, and they are inherently dependent on the structure and cohesion of linked works. The ironic symbolism was that different parts of the Rube Goldberg sometimes didn’t work. It didn’t trigger. It was funny to watch it where it didn’t work perfectly, so you’d secretly help it along. And that’s a fact of life with collectives. They are not smooth. They are inherently dysfunctional. You have varied personalities. You have opposing viewpoints. When you are in a collective, there are different decision-making mechanisms or proposal systems or a manufactured consensus. But consensus is not really a thing that I think you see in genuine collectives. Disagreement and dysfunction are essential elements of true collaborative experiments. Questions are raised in a systematic way that you would never raise as an individual. Artistic collectives are a microcosm of things that you see in society at large.
courtesy of flux factory
How do you maximize the advantages of a collective while minimizing the potential pitfalls?
One of the big advantages of collectives is that they can do far more with far less. When people have genuine shared ownership over a project, they are personally invested in it. They care about it. They wanted to succeed. That is different from hiring an employee. People don’t clock out on what they care about. There is such prolific activity at Silent Barn and Flux Factory. You see as much output from a collective as from a museum that has four times our budget. In terms of capital, these organizations are pretty broke. We are running on a shoestring budget. But there is tremendous capital of people. People dedicate their lives, and volunteerism is passionate in these places.
courtesy of flux factory
For the same reason, some people get their feelings hurt, because they may see if there is a need that the organization has, and they will work very hard on it and build the whole system, and maybe they will feel like people don’t give them the recognition that they deserve. It is very difficult to make sure that people’s good work is recognized, because we tend to take success for granted. As soon as something gets accomplished, we are already thinking about the next problem. There is always a genuine feeling of crisis on a lot of different levels. People are so invested in their own part of things that it is sometimes difficult to make sure that everybody has their own field. People take ownership of their things, and then they can be sensitive about what happens with it.
courtesy of flux factory
Are people generally working together or working on their own work?
Individual artists often don’t develop their individual practice as much because they put everything into the collective. There is a genuine need, and people can see that if the artists in residence don’t do it, then it is not going to happen.
People come here to be part of a community. People sideline their own work for work that is Flux Factory. Additionally, people happen to work in similar ways, so they team up. Then other artists from the collective end up getting in on it. You do see people that have similar practices piggybacking onto each other’s work on an ad hoc basis, exhibiting or playing together.
courtesy of flux factory
At Silent Barn, there were a few people that were spearheading the promotions, so they built our social stuff and handled press inquiries. At first, it was just one volunteer, and then they formed a working group for Silent Barn promotion, and then they ended up actually starting up their own promotion company. They started taking on different bands and artists and made arrangements with them to promote their music beyond Silent Barn. These were musicians who lived at Silent Barn or had a studio at Silent Barn, or maybe performed at Silent Barn occasionally.
courtesy of flux factory
Have you noticed particular collaborative processes that work well?
Shared direction over the project is necessary. If it is truly theirs, then you see a completely different kind of result. It is a totally different kind of attitude and a totally different kind of ambitiousness and scale of work. Accountability becomes a huge issue with volunteer collectives. At Flux, I am the only full-time person. There are a few part-time people. People who are part-time work way more hours than they are supposed to because they care. I do as well. People volunteer and they really do care. They really do want to give their project their all. But because it is so expensive in New York City, and everybody has their own life, they end up not being able to fulfill the things that they want to be able to do. It is not as crucial to them personally as it is to make the money that they need to pay rent. One of the things that helps solve it, is structurally making it okay for people to not do something. When you frame things in terms of roles, it hides the work to a certain extent, because the role doesn’t explicitly say how things are divided up by hour. I think an action-centric method of participation in collectives goes a long way toward cracking the problem of volunteer accountability.
courtesy of flux factory
How does Flux Factory play within the community?
Flux Factory is unique in Long Island City. We are an example of a long-standing New York tradition. Flux Factory definitely does have in its DNA the punk warehouse vibe. Our peers are also galleries and museums. But the true collaborative aspect of what we do comes from this tradition of artists living and working in warehouses, and that goes back decades. Fluxus artists in the ’60s, like George Maciunas, had all of these artists take over a whole building on Canal Street. What we are doing is very similar to what Fluxus did.
courtesy of flux factory
New York City used to be more of an outlaw city. You used to be able to get away with living in a warehouse. It was something that people in the Lower East Side were just doing. Silent Barn of course got broken up because we were living there, and I think that there is a genuine new direction in New York City for a paradigm of artist collectives learning the lexicon of real estate and aiming for compliance and long-term stability. Whereas in the past, a lot of people were fine just being completely illegal and they didn’t feel like it was that big of a risk. But that is just not the New York City of now. I like to think of Flux Factory and Silent Barn as organizations that lead that shift for artist-run collectives in the city.
courtesy of flux factory
Is Flux Factory taking on the role of a school?
Screw getting an MFA. Come here and work with a bunch of talented artists. Literally, students are just a bunch of people working and thinking carefully together. There are people here who are further along in their career, who are helping direct the space in a more long-term way. There are younger people who are bringing in fresh, new ideas. Flux Factory is a place where people can exhibit their first work in New York City. It is very important to simultaneously be a place where established people can show their work, and also include new and young people. It is an all-ages movement, which is very closely aligned with DIY. Being exposed to this much artistic activity can replace your MFA. Sure. I would absolutely say that.