Self-guided project: Saturday, September 13, from 1PM to 4PM

The artist will be drifting and working with urban flotsam fiber in the vicinity of the New Museum (235 Bowery) and at various fiber outposts on the Lower East Side.

Project Description:

Please visit the Urban Fiber Flotsam blog/journal for frequent updates.

Urban Fiber Flotsam will take place over the course of several days as an exploration of the way that ‘free floating flotsam’ drifts on the streets and sidewalks of NYC. Gathered materials may include unanchored litter, random street debris, historical documents, loose vegetation, lost personal artifacts, textile relics, and culinary ingredients – all collected and ‘twined’ by the artist into a single fiber that will unify the disparate threads of the urban wanderer experience.

On the final day of the project, the artist will create a fiber piece out of the spun flotsam fiber hand-picked during her psychogeographic mapping of lower Manhattan.

This proposed journey is scheduled to include the following locales: Ellis Island Museum, the ferry from Ellis Island to Battery Park, the NY Stock Exchange, World Trade Center Site Viewing Area, Chinatown (textile garment region), Canal Street, Little Italy, The Sunshine Hotel (241 Bowery), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (cafe/lobby), Washington Square Park, and the Center for Architecture/Conflux HQ.

Bouwerij, the old Dutch word for ‘farm’ (today, ‘bowery’), makes reference to ways that art farming or ‘harvesting’ might occur in urban zones beyond the usual contemporary greening strategies. In the same way that fiber and vegetation is integrally woven into the lives of dwellers in rural regions, Urban Fiber Flotsam will be a means to explore how the path of the ‘agricult wanderer’ gathers strength and reinforcement, and in turn meaning, via the dérive path.

Website: http://urbanfiberflotsam.blogspot.com/