Kledia Spiro in Leaves Some Kind of Residue

Friday August 9 and Saturday August 10, 2024, 7:30 pm (doors at 7 pm)

Kledia Spiro, “Te dua aq shumë: I love you so much”

Spiro will present excerpts from her dad’s own poetry notebooks through her performance. Her ultimate goal is to translate all of his work, including his dissertation, starting with this performance. Collaborating with her mom, she designed an outfit: a silver bodysuit with a skirt made of zippers. Spiro will perform while translating some of her father’s poetry, which has deeply influenced her family and promises to resonate with the audience.

To give and receive.

Te dua aq shumë.

During her performance, Spiro will invite members of the audience to trace her body and each other’s bodies on top of hers. Participants will then extract words from her outfit to collectively create new poetry within this new communal body. After the performance, Spiro plans to send everyone the collaborative piece they co-created.

Other participating artists: NiFe Lucey-Brzoza, “Leaves Some Kind of Residue”; Laila J. Franklin, “Loose”; Nora Stephens, “No Need To Argue Anymore”

Mobius Member Heather Kapplow produces Programming Featuring Works by Two Other Mobius Members, Margaret Bellafiore & Marcel Marcel

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, 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.

Most people wait until they retire to explore their creativity. The Golden Colonel is a place for people who have already done that. So what comes next? We’ve gathered work by artists ranging in age from their early 20s to their early 80s to reflect on what might lie beyond artmaking, or whether it’s even possible to stop making art.


Happenings:

You Only Get One Body! (Elder Sunbathing–But Everyone is Welcome!)**
July 7, 12-5pm, weather permitting
404A Colonels Row, Governors Island NYC
A very (literally!) laid back sunbathing event about elder-visibility and allyship.
Bring your grandparents, parents or yourself; a blanket; some sunscreen; and water, and come celebrate the anniversary of the 1992 court ruling that allows chests and breasts equal access to the light of day in the state of New York, while also celebrating bodies of all ages, shapes, sizes and genders. This is a preview event for The Golden Colonel, a speculative retirement home for artists on Governors Island that will open on July 13, 2024. The Golden Colonel will still be under construction, so not yet open to the public, but July 7 is an official holiday for the organization, celebrated annually with elder- (and ally-) optionally topless sunbathing. We invite you to join us to help kick off the first annual You Only Get One Body!
**Accessible Event.

Opening Reception with Ribbon Cutting by Martha Wilson
July 13, 12-6pm
404A Colonels Row, Governors Island NYC
Please attend the grand opening of The Golden Colonel, featuring a ribbon cutting by pioneering feminist artist and Founding Director Emerita of Franklin Furnace, Martha WIlson. Take a tour of the facility, meet some residents, and try out some of our activities! On this date you’ll have the opportunity to experience Bed Piece by Mark Shaw after the ribbon cutting, and at 4pm, a Remembering/Forgetting Spellcasting Ceremony** by Carrie Hawks.
**Accessible Event.

The Third Saturday
July 20, 12-6pm
404A Colonels Row, Governors Island NYC
We no longer remember what it commemorates, but The Third Saturday is a holiday at The Golden Colonel! We’ll celebrate it with a reprise of Bed Piece by Mark Shaw, an opportunity to play Monster Cards by Ben Galady, and will also offer a group therapy session "for dying artists" called The Last Painting** led by artist and psychotherapist Shushanik Karapetyan.
**Accessible Event.

Note that the building has stairs at its entryway and is not wheelchair accessible. Activities that occur outside are fully accessible and are identified here with two asterisks (**)

Photo credit: Salination, durational performance by Marilyn Arsem in the DaDao Live Art Festival, Beijing, China, October 10, 2007. Photo by Tran Luong

Marilyn Arsem will teach a workshop and perform as part of the program "Invocar presencias" (Invoking Presences), directed by performance artist Alejandro Zertuche in collaboration with the Centro Cultural Plaza Fátima.  This five-day workshop for performance artists is entitled Performance as Experiment, and will take place at the Centro Cultural Plaza Fátima, in San Pedro Garza García, Monterrey, Nuevo León, México, from Monday, July 8 to Friday, July 12, 2024.  The workshop participants will also give a public presentation of their work on Saturday, July 13, from 6-10 pm.  This project is supported by the San Pedro Garza García municipality.

Arsem’s performance, El don del agua (The Gift of Water), at the Centro Cultural Plaza Fátima is on Saturday, July 20, 2024 from 4:30 pm to 10:30 pm.  Situated under a young oak tree in the garden outside the cultural center, this performance is an invitation to enjoy a drink of water and share it with the oak tree. It is a gentle action, a gift of water in the heat, a chance to sit in the shade that is offered by the tree, and a moment to reflect on all living beings' need for water.