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 current trends in the renovation of former industrial spaces.
The owner and activator of this space had been living in an old industrial space 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 additionally 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.
A number of volumes in red-stained pine plywood, hand-troweled earthen clay plaster, colored MDF, and back-lit smoked polycarbonate with colored wood frames and a host of moving furniture articulate these encounters and choreograph the boundaries that the project negotiates.
Collaborators