CONFLUX: Brooklyn’s Urban Festival For Change
by Abigail Doan
The weekend of September 13 - 16 marked the annual Conflux Festival in Brooklyn, NY. Touted as a geeky, harmonic convergence of sorts for psychogeography enthusiasts, the international gathering includes people from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures who come together to re-imagine the city as a playground, a space for positive change, and as an opportunity for environmental and civic engagement. Invited artists, designers, writers, technologists, builders, urban adventurers, and the general public gather for four days to explore and redefine the urban and social landscape as they know it and navigate it.
Founded in 2003 with approximately 30 local artists catering to a small but intrigued local audience, the Conflux Festival has grown to include over 100 artists from across the US, as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, and Europe. A team of nine professionally recognized curators made selections for this year’s line up of events and diverse projects.
The Village Voice describes Conflux as a “network of maverick artists and unorthodox urban investigators…making fresh, if underground, contributions to pedestrian life in New York City, and upping the ante on today’s fight for the soul of high-density metropolises.” This year’s projects ranged from conceptual dérive investigations to postal Freewear clothing to pushcart CO2 monitoring vehicles to local urban restoration projects.
For a listing of all projects and write ups, check out the 2007 program online. Eyebeam, one of the event’s sponsors, also hosted an Ecovisualization Design Challenge panel discussion on Saturday, September 15th. Eve Mosher, whose High Water Line Project we recently covered here at Inhabitat, was an invited speaker and presenter.
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