Spellcasting Ceremony
I created a Remembering/Forgetting Spellcasting Ceremony that ultilizes intention, Ashwaganda root, and a Green Day singalong. About 30 participants took part on July 13, 2024. Poetry as Spellcasting (Beyer, Hemphill, White) offered some grounding. As part of its fourth seasonal residency on Governors Island, Flux Factory presents group exhibition, The Golden Colonel, a speculative retirement home for artists, open from July 12 - August 11, 2024.
Curated by artists Heather Kapplow and Itala Aguilera, with assistance from Shinobu Akimoto, co-director of Residency for Artists on Hiatus, The Golden Colonel features works in all the mediums by John Allen, Sydni Ann Baker, Margaret Bellafiore, Noémie Jennifer Bonnet, Ben Galaday, Carrie Hawks, Li-Ming Hu, Shushanik Karapetyan, Alix Lambert (in collaboration with Itala Aguilera), Marcel Marcel, Nancy Nowacek, Moses Ros, Mark Shaw, Walker Tufts, Yolanda He Yang, Silvana Zuanetti, and an anonymous submitter using the moniker “Older Artist.”
There is an unspoken understanding that because being an artist is not a “real” job, but something more like a calling, and because artists often don’t earn enough money to save for old age, they can’t retire. They just make art until they die. From July 12 through August 11, 2024, The Golden Colonel explores some of the complexities of artists considering the same choice to retire from their practices as everyone else.
