3rd annual Fashion District Arts Festival – Loading Bays (2007)

 

"Culture Shift"

presenting at 209 West 35th Street

   "In light of the shifting economy of the garment industry, the nature of the fashion district itself, becomes a very interesting site of contradictions. The loading bays in particular, still functional but repurposed, are rich with history. In Culture Shift, I want to evoke the work that happens in the fashion district while reflecting on the effects of our shifting labor economies. With a continuous sheet of latex cast from brick wall, I will cover the aperture with a surface that appears to be flush and continuous with the surrounding walls. Its steel-blue color, matching the Manhattan Bridge, will emphasize the presence of what has been effectively concealed, while locating the garment industry in the area under and around the Bridge, and now across it to Brooklyn. Positioned in the interior of the loading bay, fans set to switch on and off throughout the day will force the sheet to billow out into a rounded protuberance. The appendage will continuously inflate, then fall back into flush with the building."

 

Eve Biddle

"Do you want to be here?"

presenting at 242 West 36th Street

  "Do you want to be here?" envelopes the loading bay at 242 West 36th street with a surreal, idyllic grass scape. Inside the cramped confines of the bay, the installation creates a different world: bright, green and painfully impossible to reach. Come attempt to escape New York in the expansive space of paint and paper.

 

Ixa Faolan (Eesha Faylin)

"Secret Garden: Self Portraits in Unlikely Places"

presenting at 307 West 36th Street

  This project consists of a series of self portraits by performance artist and photographer Ixa Faolan. The images, displayed in a raw industrial space, depict the artist in a variety of unlikely places and situations, and represent a range of experience and emotion from thoughtfulness and curiosity to ambition, gratitude, joy, and freedom. The artist, working alone for this project, took all photographs with a tripod and a timer, in order to present an exercise in adequacy: beauty is wherever - and whoever - you are.

 

Dream Gathering

by The Relationship (Fiona Templeton)

presenting at 212 and 139 West 35th Streets

   The Relationship, a performance group, is looking for the dreams of the people of New York. We will gather these dreams and recreate them next year, in the sites people have dreamt of.

   During the Fashion District Arts Festival, two Dream Gathering Booths will be set up, at 212 and 139 West 35th Street, from 12-6 on October 20 and 21, 2007. New Yorkers may make an appointment to tell us one or several dreams. Later you may also become involved by performing in your dream (only if you wish) or helping us to find the right location.

 

Odonata Dance Project

"Tethered"

presenting at 208 West 35th Street

   "Tethered" is a performance and visual/video art installation that evolved out of a dance theatre work for the stage. The installation draws from imagery and themes found in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (one of T.S. Eliot's most notable poems).

   Odonata Dance Project has worked in close collaboration with costume and set designer Susanna Conaway to attach two dancers to a tea table and to connect two more to each other via the trains of their dresses. Using text from the poem, and allowing the physical restrictions of the set, space and costumes to inform the movement vocabulary, Odonata has created an isolated world where stasis plays the constant friend and enemy. Against a video seascape, Prufrock's conflicting fears of death and of living infiltrate a world filled with social rituals and skew its proper Victorian era aesthetic.

 

RETTOCAMME

"Window Looming"

presenting at 247 West 37th Street

   RETTOCAMME performs the latest incarnation of Emma Cotter's "Window Looming". Loosely based on the story of Penelope's Web from Homer's "Odyssey", a woman is in denial about her probable widowhood. She obsessively weaves (and secretly unweaves) a funeral canopy every day hoping for her husband's return from battle. This installation consists of reconstructed found objects and fabric discarded by the Fashion District, a figure who incessantly sews fabric and a rotation of three dancers.

   The accompanying aural element is provided by Kristian Borysevicz and Jordan McLean. Performances of structured dance improvisations occur intermittently.

 

Victoria Farr

"Break Room"

presenting at 306-308 West 36th Street

   "I work in the fashion district for an apparel company, and consequently spend a great deal of time in the area. 'Break Room' is a project about escaping the difficulties and complications of daily life, if even for a couple seconds, by entering a space which is beautiful and uses the element of light to create a kinesthetic experience that is an experiential 'break' from stress. I pine for this type of experience in my daily life, and I know other people do as well. The location and parameters of the project provide the perfect opportunity to give someone, anyone, that completely unexpected experience, which would be relaxing, exhilarating, calming and inspiring."

"The Fashion Center Business Improvement District is proud to host the 3rd annual Fashion District Arts Festival, showcasing the artists, crafters, galleries and theaters now making their homes alongside celebrated designers in the heart of America's fashion capital."