- ongoing INSTALLATION & EVENTS -

Book display and related events organized by ARTBOOK @ X. Confirmed events include:

SEPT 10 and 11, 4-6pm – Impact and Resonance: 9/11 by Jecca - VIDEO INSTALLATION AND ARTIST’S PROJECT - [LITERARY DOME] Eight years following the terrorist attacks of September 11, the public is invited to share their stories and create a collectively written book that focuses on the question: What changed in your life on 9/11 that is still part of you today? People are invited to the Literary Dome where they can exchange thoughts and stories with each other. Paper is provided for them to write their responses to the question on site. Participants may also bring text and images with them, or send them by email to Impact And Resonance911@verizon.net. Members of the public visiting Jecca's current exhibition at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in California will also be invited to add their responses to the project. These items will be bound into a book which will be on view in the Dome after the event. During the event, Jecca?s video Towers of Light will be shown.
JECCA is an artist based in New York City who works in photography, video, installation and performance. She has an MFA in photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and a BA magna cum laude in sculpture from Brown University.? She has had residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, the Experimental Television Center (2003), and at Yaddo, NY (2007). She has exhibited at L'Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the Parcours Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (2002), LOOP Video Art Festival, Barcelona (2005), the Venice Biennial (2005), Laguna Art Museum (2007), OCCCA (2007 and 2008), Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio (2008), and Exit Art, NY (2008). She is currently exhibiting at the Orange County Museum of Contemporary Art in California.

SEPT 16 - Nest by Cheap Champagne - INSTALLATION/MUSICAL PERFORMANCE - [LITERARY DOME] Cheap Champagne will inhabit the Literary Dome in order tobuild an oversized nest in which to perform their music. “Using the enclosed properties of the dome as a springboard, Cheap Champagne seeks to create anintimate habitat that visually reflects the attitudes and inspirations we represent musically: crystalline structures, woodland harmonies, an 18thcentury study of a sparrow. By geometrically rearranging objects from art and nature, we will create a new order of things made to suit our unique tastes andsense of fantasy.”
Cheap Champagne is a project made of mystic hearts. Incorporating sensibilities, meanings and values from past cultures, Jordan Robin and Aleksandra McCormack make poems on the legs of musical performance. Formed in the winter of 2008, Cheap Champagne has been found in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. Standout performances were seen at The Journal Gallery and at Monkeytown in Williamsburg.

SEPT 10, 7-9pm – “The Importance of Being Iceland” : Book Release Event by Eileen Myles [LITERARY DOME & CENTER STAGE] - READING & BOOK SIGNING – Author Eileen Myles reads from her new book “The Importance of Being Iceland, Travel Essays In Art.” EILEEN MYLES may be America’s best-known unofficial poet. BUST magazine calls her the "rock star of modern poetry" and Holland Cotter in The New York Times describes her as "a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant garde." Eileen arrived in New York after college, (U. Mass. (Boston)) gaining the friendship of Allen Ginsberg, working for poet James Schuyler, becoming a habitue of the household of Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley and generally being a notable part of the turbulent punk and art scene that animated Manhattan's East Village, giving her first reading at CBGB's in 1974. A virtuoso performer of her work - she's read and performed at colleges, performance spaces, and bookstores across North America as well as in Europe, Iceland, Ireland and Russia. She's published more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, articles, plays and libretti including Hell (an opera with composer Michael Webster, 2004) Skies, (2001), on my way, (2001), Cool for You, (a novel, 2000), School of Fish, (1997), Maxfield Parrish, (1995), Not Me, (1991), and Chelsea Girls, (stories, 1994).

SEPT 19, 12-4pm – “Modern Day Scapegoat Services” by Michelle Wilson - INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE - [LITERARY DOME] This performance and short term installation is based on the concept of a “scapegoat” from the book of Leviticus in the Old Testament. The story tells of how a goat was spiritually imbued with the evils and sins of the community, then sent out into the wilderness to carry the sins away. In her performance, the artist will act as “the Goat” to enable the audience to shed some of the overwhelming worries, guilt, pressures and tensions of present-day life. Participants will be given a folio (a piece of paper folded in half) upon which to anonymously scribe their sins, evils and guilt. The folio will be returned to the Goat, who will bind the folios into a “Codex of Inequity”, which will be carried into an undisclosed location in the wilderness. General services will be provided free of charge, with the option of upgrading to the Scapegoat Services Deluxe Indulgence Package for a small fee (recommended for Wall Street economists). MICHELLE WILSON is a Philadelphia based artist with upcoming shows at Chashama in New York, Kunst Vault Space in Sliver Spring, Maryland, and The Moore Art Shop in Philadelphia. Wilson graduated with a MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts, Philidelphia, PA in 2007. She has recently been awarded the Artist Book News Grant (2009), the Puffin Foundation Grant(2008), and the Lenore Adelman Award for Book Arts(2007). She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, public art projects, and residencies in the United States and abroad.

SEPT 23, 7-9pm – “Faster Than Birds Can Fly” : Book Release Event by John Ashbery and Trevor Winkfield - READING [LITERARY DOME & CENTER STAGE] – Trevor Winkfield says about the book: "Though it may have ended up looking like a child's coloring book (albeit one that's already been colored using Technicolor crayons), my original intention was to produce an updated illuminated manuscript, much like the Codex Amiatinus painted by Northumberland monks in the seventh century, not far from where I grew up in the North of England. So much for intentions ... though Ashbery's poem has long struck me as liturgical. Is that bowler-hatted bird actually Thomas Traherne? And can that pretty butterfly really be the soul escaping from the body? I've tried to leave my images open to as many interpretations as every single one of Ashbery's words." JOHN ASHBERY is an American poet and artist. He has won nearly every major American award for poetry and is recognized as one of America's most important, though still controversial, poets. In an article on Elizabeth Bishop in his Selected Prose, he characterizes himself as having been described as "a harebrained, homegrown surrealist whose poetry defies even the rules and logic of Surrealism." TREVOR WIKENFIELD is a New York based visual artist. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with an MA in Fine Art. He shows with Tibor De Nagy Gallery in New York, and has had many solo and group shows over the past 20 years. He most recently won the 2008 American Academy f Arts and Letters Purchase Prize.

SEPT 26, 4-6pm – “Cover” : Book Release Event by Frantiska + Tim Gilman - TALK & BOOK SIGNING – [LITERARY DOME] Join us to celebrate the release of Frantiska and Tim Gilman’s new monograph, “Cover”. “Cover” includes 62 full color pages of the collaborative artist’s works from 1980 to 2006. Tim Gilman will speak about the book and sign copies. FRANTISKA AND TIM GILMAN live and work in Prague and New York. “We arrive at the final form of our work through collaboration — there is almost a third persona, one that is simultaneously neither of us, but also both of us. This dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity, proximity and distance, is reflected in other facets of the work: tension, duality, and distance (often imposed by media) that we feel from the real — be it nature, one another, society, images, or our surroundings. We work in a broad variety of media, whatever seems to best suit the particular problem.” They have had solo exhibitions in New York, Dublin, Montreal, Norway, Berlin, Milan, and Prague, as well as numerous group exhibitions.

OCT 2, 11-3pm When is a font not a font? by Purgatory Pie Press - DISCUSSION/INTERACTIVE EVENT [LITERARY DOME] When is a font not a font? Where is the lead in leading? Purgatory Pie Press's founder Dikko Faust will answer questions about typography, the origin of letter forms and letterpress from real wood and metal type. Moveable type ended the Dark Ages and ushered in the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, and literacy for The People. Letterpress is versatile and adaptable, and mixes easily with other printmaking processes. The quality of image can range from hard edge to feathered and painterly, and the relief impression adds a third dimension. Esther K Smith will be hand making books with visitors. Purgatory Pie Press artist books will be on display. PURGATORY PIE PRESS is located in Lower Manhattan. Their collaborative limited editions and artist books have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum and are in international collections including MoMA, the Whitney, the Tate, and the National Gallery of Art. Directors Dikko Faust and Esther K Smith travel as visiting artists; lecturing, demonstrating, and making collaborative projects in art centers and universities. Faust teaches letterpress at SVA. Smith is the author/co-designer of How to Make Books and Magic Books & Paper Toys--Faust hand set real type for their covers and display pages.

OCT 3, 12-6pm –“Overness” by Spank Zine and Events - PERFORMANCE/INTERACTIVE EVENT – [LITERARY DOME] Spank will decontextualize and multiply the elements of their monthlydance/club/performance events into the confines of the Dome. Members of the Spank collective will serve as hosts, creating asilent party which will incorporate discoballs, lasers, moving beamed lights,projections, smoke machines, stobe lights, and a bubble machine. Once insidethe tent, viewers will be able to put on a pair of headphones to share the samemusic that the hosts are hearing in their own headphones and join thedecontextualized party. SPANK is an NYC basedart and music collective that manifests in the form of a magazine, a rovingparty, and exhibits. Their magazine is distributed worldwide, and Spank hasheld music, performance, and art based events in New York, San Francisco, LA,Seattle, and Montreal. All of Spank’s activities operate with the goal ofproviding a stage for queer artists and performers.

OCT 10, 11-6pm Instant Artist Books by Purgatory Pie Press - DEMONSTRATION/INTERACTIVE EVENT [Center Stage] Purgatory Pie Press's Esther K Smith and Dikko Faust will show you how to make Instant Artist Books. Make individual and collaborative books, unique books--even simple popups! Discuss how you can publish and distribute your own Artist Books. If technology allows, participants' books can be scanned for instant international publication. Bring paper, collage materials, and your good scissors. PURGATORY PIE PRESS is located in Lower Manhattan. Their collaborative limited editions and artist books have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum and are in international collections including MoMA, the Whitney, the Tate, and the National Gallery of Art. Directors Dikko Faust and Esther K Smith travel as visiting artists; lecturing, demonstrating, and making collaborative projects in art centers and universities. Faust teaches letterpress at SVA. Smith is the author/co-designer of How to Make Books and Magic Books & Paper Toys--Faust hand set real type for their covers and display pages.

OCT 14, 4-6pm - ecopoetics 06/07: a nomadic, “pop-up” launch and open house, 4-6pm. Readings from 5-6pm. [LITERARY DOME] Readings and performances with Rodrigo Toscano, Lee Ann Brown, Thom Donovan, Julie Patton, Emily Abendroth, Jonathan Skinner and others to celebrate the release of the latest issue of ecopoetics (06/07). The editor of the magazine will be present from 4-5pm to discuss the project. / Ecopoetics 06/07 (covering 2006-2009), packed with poetry, prose, criticism, translation, interviews and artwork from nearly eighty contributors. An Australian Eco-Poetics section, guest-edited by Michael Farrell. A Theodore Enslin feature. Interviews with Gary Snyder and mIEKAL aND. New work from Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Benjamin Friedlander, Forrest Gander, Joan Retallack, Andrew Schelling, Gary Snyder, and others. Bilingual pages from Antonio Ochoa and Angélica Tornero. Collapsible poetics by Rodrigo Toscano. Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s “Nanifesto.” Artwork by Christine Boileau, Justin Clemens, Ray Meeks, Isabelle Pelissier and Stephen Vincent. Ten color plates. Bark beetle translations, sound walks, field pages, slow texts, dictionaries of imagined flora, and more . . . Copies of the magazine will be available for purchase, also available through SPD. Some info on the performers: Rodrigo Toscano is the author of To Leveling Swerve, Platform, The Disparities, and Partisans. His newest book, Collapsible Poetics Theater, was a National Poetry Series 2007 winner. His poetry has appeared Best American Poetry 2004, War and Peace (2004 & 2007), and in the Criminal's Cabinet: An anthology of poetry and fiction (2004), and in McSweeny’s “Poets Picking Poets”. He was a 2005 recipient of a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. Toscano is also the artistic director and writer for the Collapsible Poetics Theater (CPT). His polyvocalic pieces, poetics plays, and body-movement poems, have been performed at the Disney Redcat Theater in Los Angeles, Ontological-Hysteric Poet’s Theater Festival, Poet's Theater Jamboree 2007, Links Hall Chicago, and the Yockadot Poetics Theater Festival. His radio pieces have appeared on WPIX FM (New York), KAOS Public Radio Olympia, WFMU, WNYU, and PS.1 Radio. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Catalonian. Toscano is originally from Southern California. He works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute, and lives in Brooklyn. LINKS: cpt.blip.tv / poeticstheater.typepad.com Thom Donovan lives in New York City where he coedits ON Contemporary Practice, edits Wild Horses Of Fire weblog, and curates both Peace Events and SEGUE reading series. He is also an ongoing participant in the Nonsite Collective. His essays, criticism, and poetry have been published variously online and in print. Currently he is at work on a book of poetry entitled The Hole, and a book of essays concerning cross-cultural translation in poetry and visual art. His first collection of critical writings, Critical Objects 2005-2010, is expected in 2011. He currently teaches at Bard College, Baruch College, and School of Visual Arts. LINKS: On Contemporary Practice / Ecopoetics / Non Site Collective / Wild Horses Of Fire / Nonsite Collective. Emily Abendroth is a writer and artist currently residing in Philadelphia, where she co-curates the Moles not Molar Reading & Performance Series. She regularly teaches creative writing, critical thinking, and literature courses to students of all ages, most recently at Bard College, UC Berkeley and Temple University. Recent work of hers can be found in Digital Artifact, Encyclopedia, How2, Pocket Myths, Horseless Review, Eco-poetics, and Cut & Paint. Her chapbook, Toward Eadward Forward, was released by horseless press in 2008 and a chunky excerpt from her book-length work in progress, "Muzzle Blast Dander," is featured in Refuge/Refugee (Volume 3 of the ChainLinks book series). She is currently and ever-so-slowly piecing her way through some writings and thinking on solitary confinement practices in U.S. prisons. Jonathan Skinner edits the journal ecopoetics (vols. 1-7, 2001-2009), which features creative-critical intersections between writing and ecology. Skinner’s poetry collections include With Naked Foot (2009) and Political Cactus Poems (2005). His essays on the poets Ronald Johnson and Lorine Niedecker appeared recently in volumes published by the National Poetry Foundation and by University of Iowa Press. He teaches in the Environmental Studies program at Bates College in Central Maine, where he makes his home.

 

OCT 17, 12-4pm – “Open Book” Artist’s Book Submission Event by Regency Arts Press Ltd. - EVENT - [LITERARY DOME] In January 2010 Regency Arts Press Ltd. will launch “Open Book”, an online archive of artists’ books made by artists with no access to a book distribution network.  The archive will be targeted towards a wide variety of book professionals, including museum librarians and book curators, publishers, vendors, and book collectors, as well as the general interested audience.  Regency is holding an open call for artists to submit their books for inclusion in the “Open Book” archive: this will take place at Artbook @ X Initiative on Saturday, October 17th from noon to 4pm.  All artists should bring with them one copy of their book proposed for inclusion (limit of three books per artist). REGENCY ARTS PRESS LTD. is a non-profit organization dedicated to publishing artists' books with American contemporary artists. As a service for artists, we are primarily committed to fostering experimentation and innovation by giving them opportunities to work outside of the concerns and constraints of the commercial art marketplace. We publish major artist's book projects with mid-career under-recognized artists and more experimental books with younger artists.

OCT 20-24 12-6pm – “The Writing Workshop” by ThisIsNotAShop - COMMUNITY WORKSHOP – [LITERARY DOME] Thisisnotashop presents The Writing Workshop, in which ThisIsNotAShop will inhabit the Literary Dome for four days. In that time, four artists Jessamyn Fiore, Jessica Foley, Aine Ivers, and Susan Thomson will give readings, performances, lead discussions, screen films, create installations, and hold a public Writing Workshop. THISISNOTASHOP is an alternative, not for profit gallery founded in January 2006 in Dublin, Ireland, dedicated to supporting the work of emerging artists from both Ireland and abroad. They recently participated in X-Initiative’s No Soul For Sale Festival.

- two day MEETINGS & GATHERINGS

Former NYC resident, and current resident of Los Angeles, Hana van der Kolk will stop through on her way to Amsterdam to set up shop at DOME COLONY on September 2 and 3 12-6pm for rehearsals, sound design sessions, yoga practices, toe-nail clipping, massages, picnics, make outs, discussions, and arguments. Her dear old friends Rafe Cohen, Jesse Johnson, Alexx Shilling, and others, and her brother Nick will come by to play. You can come too.

- DISPLAY -

Stacks of free copies of the latest issue of Bidoun Magazine will be presented in the dome. The stack(s) will be laser cut into a number of slices, like a cake, or a sandwich. So we will be giving away free issues, but with one small change...
Bidoun Magazine is an international art and culture quarterly with a focus on the Middle East. Its editors live in Cairo, Beirut, Dubai, and New York.

- ongoing ACTIVITIES -

Audio Draw is a real-time combination of drawing and audio open to public participation of all ages.  The project proposes a site for the use and collection of raw material in both media as a means to the development of a spontaneous creative community.  Relying on contributions in the forms of pencils, thoughts, pens, cassette tapes, cds, vinyl, playlists, paper, markers, time, and other raw material Audio Draw is based on the process of donation and shared sharing experience as a way to encourage exploration and experimentation within both drawing and sound.
FieldWork is a revolving group of artists and friends based out of New York City interested in organizing/participating in communal situations involving the creative use of raw materials. 
DOWNLOAD NOTES & PHOTOS OF 08.25.09 EVENT [PDF]

- sound INSTALLATION -

Four Seasons is a sound installation that has its roots in a trekking adventure that heightened an awareness of the competition between nature and man. The project was recorded over a two year period exploring the sounds in designated “nature playgrounds”, forest preserves and parks set aside for people to enjoy nature. In these settings, nature’s voice changes from the solitude of winter to a cacophony of spring and summer activity, and final retreat of autumn. Human activity is ever present, cars go by, planes fly overhead, and lawn mowers and snowmobiles fly by. Birds compete with soccer coaches and cheering parents. The sounds of nature seem to hold steady while man’s exhausting presence encircles the preserved environment.
Catherine Forster is a filmmaker, artist, curator and educator based in the Chicago area. She has upcoming solo exhibitions at the Peggy Notebeart Museum in Chicago, LAL in Lexington, KY, and the Rymer Gallery in Nashville, TN, In addition, as Art Director for No Exit an Opera soon to open in Chicago, Forster is developing a multi-channel video set. Other recent exhibitions were at the Flint Institute of Art (2009); the Carnegie Art Museum (2008); Hyde Park Art Center Chicago (2008); and the South Bend Regional Art Museum (2007). Forster has participated in numerous festivals around the globe, most recently the Echotrope New Media Arts Festival, Omaha , (2009); Simultan Media Arts Festival, Romania, (2009); Directors Lounge (Berlin), (2009); Sao Paul International Short Film Festival (2008), and the San Diego International Women Film Festival (2008). Her artwork explores themes of identity, social development, and the impact of mediation on relationships and the environment. Forster is also the founder and director of a non-profit nomadic new media art space, the LiveBox Gallery.

 

- ongoing DISPLAY & EVENTS -

Tree Museum HQ will function as the Manhattan head-quarters for the Tree Museum, a public art project in the Bronx, NY (June 21 - October 12, 2009). Tree Museum was commissioned by The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wave Hill and the NYC Parks Department to celebrate the centennial of the Grand Concourse, a historic boulevard in the Bronx. Visitors to the Tree Museum HQ at The Dome Colony will be able to take a virtual tour of the Tree Museum - they can listen in on local stories and the intimate lives of trees offered by current and former residents: from beekeepers to rappers, historians to gardeners, school kids to scientists. Tree Museum images, maps, banners, information, and brochures will be on display.
Katie Holten lives in New York City. She represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2003. She currently has solo exhibitions at The Bronx Museum of the Arts and Wave Hill. Other recent solo exhibitions were at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno (2008); Villa Merkel, Esslingen (2008); Gasser & Grunert, New York (2008); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2007). Katie's work has been included in many international group exhibitions including Subversive Spaces, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK (2009); Green Platform, Palazzo Strozzina, Florence, Italy (2009); Compilation IV, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany (2009); IMPLANT, UBS Art Gallery, New York (2008).

- ongoing INSTALLATION & EVENTS -

All activities in the Bio-Dome of Curiosities will pivot around a centrally located "5 Boroughs Terrarium".  Salvaged material seating will be available around the pentagonal terrarium inviting interaction with the terrarium or to provide a tranquil space to sit.  Along four of the walls will be cabinets housing various curiosities including natural artifacts, photos and sculpture.  The organization of the artifacts in the Dome is inspired by primitive taxonomy.
Leviathan Biological Installations (LBI) is a division of Anchor Aquarium Service, Inc.
LBI is specifically interested in the creation of systems that are aesthetically pleasing with a scientific bent. LBI promotes a concept it calls science lite, a form of pseudo science that strives to maintain a balance between art and science. LBI takes the liberty of discarding the dogma and convention of science when it gets in the way.
Noel Rose is the owner of Anchor Aquarium Services, Inc.
KD Derr is an Electron Microscopist by day and Sculptress by night. KD is preoccupied with exploring the frontiers where science and art intersect. Her mission: to make the curiosity and wonder of science available to the masses.
Brian Bald is a collections photographer at the Museum of Natural History.

- ongoing INSTALLATION & EVENTS -

Project: In Cyborg Nation, one person wearing a Self-Contained Performance Environment (SCoPE for short) creates an intimate place for conversation and communication with people on site and in remote locations, one body acting as an opinionated conduit for the thoughts and productions of many.  The SCoPE includes a projector, speakers, screens and other miniature technologies for input and broadcast, and the Cyborg would be ensconced in a one-day installation. In Cyborg Nation, one-to-one conversation becomes a public display--intimacy becomes spectacle and strangers connect fleetingly and find depth in momentary contact. In discussing the nature of our current marriage to technology, Cyborg Nation seeks to be a 21st century version of a Socratic dialogue.
Events: A quasi-weekly event where the Cyborg occupies one of the larger dome tents and the public is invited to interact with the Cyborg, either in person, or by calling or sending in material from elsewhere.  The event would be broadcast over the web in real time. Before the announced events, it would be good to have one or two more low-key "rehearsal" events, to get used to the space. When the Cyborg is not in the space, the detritus from the installation environment can be left as traces, as well as possibly a monitor that continuously plays the Cyborg photo gallery and any texts sent in during the events.
Events: A quasi-weekly event where the Cyborg occupies one of the larger dome tents and the public is invited to interact, either in person or by calling or sending in material from elsewhere.  The event will be broadcast over the web in real time. Before the announced events, there will two low-key "rehearsal" events. When the Cyborg is not in the space, the detritus from the installation environment and a monitor that continuously plays the Cyborg photo gallery and any texts sent in during the events will be there as traces of the Cyborg presence.
Culture Push is a New York-based non-profit arts organization, where diverse professionals meet through artist-led projects and cross-disciplinary symposia. Culture Push projects and programs appear in many different locations and take many different forms, mimicking the fluid nature of cultural production. Co-Directors = Clarinda Mac Low, Arturo Vidich, Aki Sasamoto.
Cyborg Nation is directed by Clarinda Mac Low  and Walter Polkosnik.  Clarinda Mac Low works as a catalyst, using art to connect people across communities, within communities and to  each other individually.  Current projects: TRYST, performance and art interventions in everyday life and Cyborg Nation, public conversation on the technological body and the nature of intimacy. Walter Polkosnik is a scientist and hacker who has studied the physics of random media and string theory.  He has worked in virtual reality, internet media streaming, simulations of large biomolecules, designing electronic circuits, making holograms, fabricating high-temperature superconductors, among other projects.

- ongoing DISPLAY & EVENTS -

Meet Feral Childe at the Dome Colony for scheduled and spontaneous mayhem. Activities may include an acoustic performance, espresso bar, miniature trunk show and portrait studio. We will also be braiding; materials will be provided and you are all invited. Braiding will be ongoing; if we are not here, please let yourselves in and make yourselves at home! 
Feral Childe is the bi-coastal collaboration of Moriah Carlson (Brooklyn, NY) and Alice Wu (Oakland, CA). As Feral Childe, the two fuse experimental creative processes, thoughtful choice of materials, and attention to quality construction to make a sought after fashion collection of highly wearable silhouettes. Each Feral Childe collection incorporates organic and sustainable knits and wovens, and is proudly produced in New York. This season, Feral Childe's collaborative drawings of school play props and stock characters become the Fall 2009 Collection: SCHOOL PLAY. The Feral Childe team drew in tandem to develop toile-like textile prints with hidden images. Look for the mysterious man in the tall black hat, wigwams, exploding stars, desktop cactus, god’s eyes, stovetop, wooden chair and swinging chandelier. The clues are in the clothes.

- ongoing OCCUPATION / ACTIVITIES -

A 14’ dome serves as headquarters, with 2 workstations (2 computers essentially), wi-fi, and 2 drum-kits, power, and some amplifiers. The space will be used as both the regular office space for the running the magazine and a place for spontaneous performance by female percussionists. Drum set and drum machine lessons will be held in the dome from 12-3 pm every Weds & Fri.

- ongoing INSTALLATION & EVENTS -

Suggesting a traditional Navajo tent, as a ceremonial structure and meeting place, a place away from home to keep in balance and to learn from others. A Gradient net covering brings light of different colors into the tent. The ceiling gives reference to the night sky. Some events we will present as part of Community Hogan:

Saturday, September 26th from 4 - 6 pm / Life Drawing Workshop with Friends of the Fine Arts (FFArts) - Join us with pens in hand, and since you all are familiar with Travis and Donnie and their extraordinary aesthetic abilities, this will be a really NICE setting for us to do our thing. And you might want to look at shows in Chelsea anyway, being that the fall season is on. Also, this is Ulrike’s fave new art space and so she is literally beside herself. I mean the cool factor is glaring and we can all be very proud that real estate moguls are finally picking up on the value of non-marketable collaborative art practices. So it’s critical that you be there and take up space on the floor. The life drawing circle Friends of the Fine Arts plays off the renewed interest in painting and aesthetic experience by both pointing to a traditional approach and transcending it in its format. All fifteen or so members of Friends of the Fine Arts are practicing artists coming from a wide variety of artistic backgrounds and working with media as diverse as sculpture, dance, writing, music, video, and painting. When it comes to rendering the figure, skill levels vary widely, from a high level of accomplishment to absolute beginners. We aspire to skill-sharing, however learning is transmitted equally between all members of the group—the vast difference in experience does not dictate who learns from whom. In this collective experience, the products are more than just the drawings we make. Celeste Dupuy-Spencer and Ulrike Mueller initiated the life drawing sessions in the fall of 2008. Since then, Friends of the Fine Arts has been meeting in members’ studios and homes. In the beginning, modeling for our peers seemed merely a means to the end of drawing. Before long, it became apparent that the experience of posing was as important and exciting as the activity of drawing. We had always lightly referred to the academic tradition, but while mining its tools and methods, we have been developing an entirely different approach and goal. As Friends of the Fine Arts, we aim for performance and (self-)representation; we foster exchange; we are interested in the physicality of the experience, bodies touching in multi-person poses, the sexuality of being looked at, and the intimacy of looking.

Saturday, October 10th from 2 - 6 pm / Photo Pants - This is an open call to models and actors. If you are interested in documenting your own experience in Photo Pants please bring a pair of white jeans. The implicit idea is that your pants can take pictures. Photo Pants™ may work best when worn in a film, or in a photo. Here, the interior space of the image is the subject of the pants.

Saturday, October 10th from 2 - 6pm / Nail Artz by Abby Walton

Saturday, October 17th from 2 - 4pm / Life coaching by K8 Hardy

 

- ongoing INSTALLATION & EVENTS -

a series of workshops and events...
"BAD" ART REPAIR SHOP - guests are invited to bring their self proclaimed "failed artworks" (or failed musical compositions) to be mended and "fixed" by a team of art experts and "professionals" who will be on site to diagnose and help treat these cringe worthy objects.
GLITTER NATION (FA$HIONASTY) - members of GLITTER NATION, a Mariah Carey tribute band, will pay a visit to the dome and share their FA$HIONASTY(NESS).

ETERNAL TELETHON - Please join us for the east coast debut of the ETERNAL TELETHON. We will be streaming LIVE from DOME COLONY X IN THE SAN GABRIELS on Saturday October 17, 2009 from 4-6pm EST. Please come to X-Initiative and be part of our LIVE studio audience!!! The ETERNAL TELETHON is a series of webcasts dedicated to raising money for the Eternal Convalescent Home for Retired Artists (E.C.H.R.A.), a sanctuary for fatigued creatives that will be located on the Salton Sea.

RECLAMATION - Members of RECLAMATION will present a talk and then some!... It's a relaxed, all-day thing, so come if/when you can unfettered by the guilt of having to be on time. Drew Denny, Kyoung Kim, and Edwina Portocarrero presenting. Morgan Gee, John Matthew Heard, and Claudia Slanar presenting in spirit.

Also being screened is the video installation Vogel Flats by Niko Solorio (through Saturday October 17, 2009)

 

 

- ongoing DISPLAY & EVENTS -

The Activity/Event: Through the creation of a lending library at the Dome Colony, The Obituary Project will encourage New Yorkers to extend the longevity of their forebears by re-enacting old family recipes. The lending library will provide bakers the pans and the opportunity to animate a palpable history that evolves each time someone bakes another cake.  Visitors to the Dome Colony may borrow a pan and take it home if they agree to bring the pan, their cake, and their recipe back the following day, where friends, family, and Dome Colony visitors will eat the cake.  The lending library will include 30+ pans.  The holdings will be available to observe on site, cataloged in a physical card catalog drawer, and electronically indexed and available online. Descriptions about each pan will include photographs, a detailed provenance, history of the origins of its design, and suggestions for care and use. Information about cakes baked using lending library pans, the recipes and details about the bakers will be added to and become part of the online catalog.
The Bundt Pan: When H. David Dalquist died in Minnesota in 2005, newspapers reported that the inventor of the Bundt pan was dead.  But, in fact, neither the form nor the word were his invention.  The Bundt is a trademarked name and version of a much older pan with a distinctive shape known to produce an evenly baked cake. In 1950, Dalquist was approached by a member of Haddasah who asked if he could manufacture an aluminum replica of the cast iron pan her mother brought to the US when she immigrated from Germany.  This pan, sometimes
called a bund or kugelhopf or gugelhupf, with variants found across Europe, was used to make a sweet bread sometimes called bundkuchen. Dalquist called his replica a Bundt, adopting and trademarking the already anglicized form of the German word for union, or a gathering of people. Though its point of origin is a cast iron pan from Germany used to bake a staple of a Jewish table, by the 1960s the Bundt could be found in kitchens of many backgrounds across North America, as the cultural history of one place became absorbed in another.  
Hope Tucker: As director of The Obituary Project, a growing compendium of contemporary salvage ethnography, Hope Tucker has animated old instructions for making fishing nets by hand, shot footage of the remaining phone booths of Finland, and written the entire text of a video out of paper clips, a symbol of Nordic nationalism.  Screenings include Ann Arbor; Athens; Director’s Lounge, Berlin; Film Center, Chicago; Images Toronto; Leeds International Film Festival; National Museum of Women in the Arts, DC; PDX; Ukranian Museum of Art, Chicago; Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia; Wexner Center for the Arts; WTTW Chicago Public Television.  

- ongoing INSTALLATION & EVENTS -

Beans and information on how to cook beans are given and in exchange, stories are told and collected. The project aims to encourage exchange around the topic of beans. Dash will be at Dome Colony X on Saturdays from 2- 4, beginning September 12th. She will be serving local cranberry beans and giving out a "Basic Bean" recipe. She will also be there to listen and collect stories about beans.   
Dash N was born in Miami in 1980.  She is an artist living and working in New York City. She is currently in her final year in the Columbia University MFA program.

- DISPLAY & EVENT -

Proposed Menu of Tent Actions:
Part 1 - Wake Up, 10am - 12pm, Open tent hours with coffee + cookies + consultancy
Using our stock of detritus-repurposed props, urban planning games and experiences from previous research, interventions and actions, we offer ourselves as think tent lab technicians for members of the public interested in crafting their own interventions to seek our consulting services. The think tent promotes the advancement of knowledge of guerilla, ad-hoc and mobile installation technologies that temporarily shift realities for the greater good of cities and their
residents. We will serve espresso and butter biscuits.
Part 2 - Instant Picnic, 12-3pm, Picnic + spontaneous-lecture series with special guests
Using props from our urban picnic kit, we will set up a lovely fall feast inside the tent and invite visitors to give presentations of their own projects on an iPhone mini projector (a good, cozy scale for a tent picnic). We will also prepare a line-up of special guests sharing urban intervention projects.
Part 3 - Happy Hour, 3-6pm, Idea + Tentini Give-Away
We will mix a special think-tent themed cocktail (a tentini!) and give away a selection of project ideas, tools and intervention kits to visitors who want to make their ideas, organizations, abodes, or daily walks more participatory, mobile, and community based. And we will toast to temporary portals for instant community!
No Standing Anytime is Christina Kral & Adriana Young. We are Professional Pop Up Public Interventionistas [PPUPI] making temporary environments for people not to stand anytime (that is, to interact, relax and/or do something fabulous!). We mass produce spaces and experiences to:
- Transform public space;
- Build instant community;
- Conduct non-monetary exchange/trade;
- Perform constant community research;
- Enact reality shifts;
- Intervene in under-utilized spaces;
- Recycle the city’s detritus into productive public art.
To do this, we make all different kinds of portable platforms and mobile stations for people to give, take and make. We also firmly believe in wearing matching outfits.

- PERFORMANCE -

Be the first kid on the block to not-see this. Open rehearsal and informal showing of Unseen Dances. Blindfolded audiences experience dance through senses other than sight. Sensory resources that sighted people rarely consider are called up. Touch, hearing, smell, and balance bypass language and are close-to-the-bone, personal. They place movement inside the body. Performers reveal themselves and define speed, space, location, distance, architecture and bodily effort through air currents, touch, and sound (their own, other objects’, and the room’s acoustic dimensions). Audiences are blindfolded and seated in the performance area. They are re-positioned several times, guided to sit, stand, walk or support the weight of the performers. Scored improvisations, deeply situated in the present moment, the work evokes un-socialized instincts that jostle with context, memory, metaphor and imagery. They explore the dislocations of unseen space and difficult to parse social/spatial relationships. Dana Salisbury with Amy Baumgarten, Hallie Gerstel, CJ Holm, Meagan Woods, and Andrew Nemr.

- ongoing MEETINGS -

Three groups of 10-11 Sotheby's Institute students will have their regular meetings in three tents at a time. Schedule tba.

- PERFORMANCES -

Sounds for the Soundless is a live sound piece comprised of a series of random, barely audible sounds intended to either merge with the collective sound of voices, the hum of air conditioners, passing street sound fragments or to imitate sounds from nature ie. wind, birds, fire, water.
Kol Solthon was born in Vancouver in 1971.  He is an artist living and working in New York.

- ONE DAY EVENT & INSTALLATION -
For one day only get them FREE! Come one, Come all and take a bold gold brick! You may also watch a somewhat instructional video about the many uses of our gold bricks, everyone needs a twinkle of significance in their life!

FREE GOLD is a collaborative video/installation between Josef Kraska and Zena Verda Pesta exploring the transformational aspects of these mundane yet magical objects. From potato masher to a door stop, the video defines the spray painted gold brick as multi-use false luxurious object. The illusion within the gold brick presents questions about the function and value in our contemporary society. These bricks embody highbrow, lowbrow, and now brow while falling somewhere between a pet rock and disco.

 

- ONE DAY PRACTICE & PERFORMANCE -
Too Big To Fail is a rock band with osmosing membership and no clear future. Practices are generally held at the Manhattan Saddlery on 24th St.

 

- PERFORMANCE -

With his "conceptual partner in crime", a DG- 20 Casio Digital Guitar, POCKET NIKO creates a visualist collage of sound in the shape of analog digital beats and harmonies that has been described as "Neo Medieval-Minimalist Electro Pop".