


Performance Art Loft
This project is a new node in the cultural fabric of New York City. Resulting from the renovation of a space in a former hat factory in Williamsburg, the project facilitates different forms of hospitality through artistic performances and other public events that the owner organizes–countering the tendency towards normative domesticities that characterize current trends in the renovation of former industrial spaces.
The owner of this space had been renting in an old industrial loft in Bushwick where he started to organize parties, performances, and other events. These happenings not only probed the boundaries between intimate spaces and public occupations but also provided the ground for the formation of social and cultural networks.
He imagined a space in which he could live, work, and host artist friends to develop their work. Neither just a private studio nor an art gallery, the space is equipped to welcome gatherings that operate between a dinner party and a public performance. Artists appropriate the space and become hosts themselves, expanding the communities which the project brings together.
The space will not advertise its performances. Some neighbors might not know of its existence. Others will hear about it through friends. Some might find themselves there often and will develop networks of neighborliness within it. A number of volumes in red-stained plywood, hand-troweled clay plaster, colored MDF, and back-lit smoked polycarbonate articulate these encounters and choreograph the boundaries that the project negotiates.
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