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Nightlight is a co-production offered by the Flux Factory and the LIC Community Garden which is described as “an interactive light-based outdoor installation that investigates public and private land use after dark.”

Nightlight’s details –

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 7 – 7-10 pm
Open every evening in June
, in collaboration with the Long Island City Community Garden
49th Avenue bet Vernon Blvd & 5th Street, Long Island City, Queens
Flux Thursday @ LIC Garden: Thursday, June 12th – 8pm (Tonight!)
Closing Performance: Saturday, June 28th – 8 pm

Me and the Mrs. decided to head over on opening night and here’s some of what we saw.

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LIC Community Garden is a great little spot, found on 49th Avenue in Hunters Point. There’s a “Little Free Library” in there, and it’s a nice green spot in an otherwise quite urban setting.

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The fronticepiece facing the street was Julius Schmiedel’s “Dancing Tree,” which senses and responds to movement.

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All over the garden, there are installations of various works, some are quite subtle, while others demand attention.

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Flux Factory, located on 29th street in the Dutch Kills neighborhood, describes themselves as:

Flux Factory is a non-profit art organization that supports and promotes emerging artists through exhibitions, commissions, residencies, and collaborative opportunities. Flux Factory is guided by its passion to nurture the creative process, and knows that this process does not happen in a vacuum but rather through a network of peers and through resource-sharing. Flux Factory functions as an incubation and laboratory space for the creation of artworks that are in dialogue with the physical, social, and cultural spheres of New York City (though collaborations may start in New York and stretch far beyond).

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There was quite a crowd for such a relatively small space. The LIC Community garden is housed in a smallish residential sized lot, an increasingly rare commodity in the frenetic atmospherics of the rapidly developing LIC.

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That very well might be artist Jung In Jung sitting there, pictured amongst the work she produced with Will Owen.

She was in quite the demand by the crowd and I couldn’t get close enough to confirm her identity. The installation involved some sort of sensor system which registered when someone sat by the Little Free Library, which triggered gizmos that dropped lit up sculptural items from the tree canopy. Neat.

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Tonight, the group will be hosting their “Flux Thursday” artist talks and potluck at the LIC Community Garden. If you’re in the neighborhood, why not stop by after dinner and check it out?

Newtown Creek Alliance Historian Mitch Waxman lives in Astoria and blogs at Newtown Pentacle.


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