Tag Archives: Psychogeography

The Conflux Festival was held this past weekend, and I volunteered to help out during Friday night’s events at Conflux Café and during the keynote talk by urban-explorer Steve Duncan. Everyone was friendly, and David Darts and Christina Ray really did a great job of making sure the artists had what they needed. It may not seem like much but everyone doesn’t make the extra effort to make sure the artists involved are taken care of.

I had the opportunity to meet Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena, whose Urban Speaker project was one of my precedences during my Thesis presentation earlier that day. Carlos is a really amazing guy, super modest, and had one of my favorite projects from Conflux. I had been looking at other work done in this area, such as Mark Bain’s Action Unit: Instant Riot for Portable People, so it was great to talk to him about why he did it, what he was interested in, and art in general.

I volunteered for this year’s Conflux because last year’s festival made a major impact on my Urban Drifts project. Elizabeth Streb’s talk as well as a number of the projects from last year embodied a number of things I had been thinking about and gave me context for the kind of work I was doing.

On Saturday, I spent most of the day riding around on my bike checking out the different installations that were up in the city. I was interested in seeing how other artists positioned their “un-commissioned” art and how it was received by the public. In general, I was a little disappointed in the visibility of most of the projects that I checked out. The city is a crazy spectacle, and I had difficulty even finding most of the projects despite the maps I had with me with the specific locations of each project.

For instance, here is a photo of Astor Place. It was a little hard to find the tiny QR coded installations when there was a street faire in full effect right in the same area. Instead of QR codes, I found mozzarella corn bread and strawberry/nutella crêpes.

I was able to find a few of the projects, but I also experienced a few technical difficulties. Whether it was AT&T or a faulty link, I wasn’t able to fully explore each piece for all that it had to offer. To me, there were just too many barriers between me and the pieces.

In reflecting on the event, I need to look at my own projects and identify what barriers are in my work between what I am doing and what message I want the participants and collaborators of my work will receive. This weekend had beautiful weather, so if nothing else, it got me outside and experiencing the many things New York has to offer.