A Historical and Futurological Society is a collaboration with Leah Beeferman. This multimedia installation combines drawings, animation, carpentry, flying machines, buoyant sound, boats, land, air, past, present and future.
The OPOLIS Regional Historical and Futurological Society was part of the OPOLIS show at Flux Factory, June 24, 2006 - August 25, 2006. OPOLIS is the third manifestation of Flux Factory's annual "Comix Fluxture" exhibit. A street plan of OPOLIS, an imaginary city, will be laid out on the floor of the Flux gallery. Individual city blocks will be assigned to individual cartoonists. These cartoonists will design the buildings and environments that will fill the city blocks (apartment buildings, libraries, factories, zoos, museums, slums, prisons, etc), and will invent characters to populate these environments.
The OPOLIS Regional Historical and Futurological Society functioned as OPOLIS's museum/historical society. It featured three buildings hanging from the ceiling outlining the development of OPOLIS, each building illustrating different stages in the city's existence.
- ANCIENT OVERSEA DEVELOPMENT: depicting "ancient history" when there was not yet any land, and civilization was begun on the sea
- CURRENT STATE LAND METROPOLIS DEVELOPMENT: the present; land and buildings
- PREDICTED AIRBORNE REGENERATIVE CITY DEVELOPMENT: the future; the airborne city when there is again no land and the city is regenerating itself up in the air.
Each of the boxes will depict a narrative following how the city develops -- flying machines creating the architecture / landscapes / cityscapes below which, in turn, create new flying machines and new "data" for those machines. however, what is created by the flying machines will differ based on what "period" we are in.
Check out some R&D shots here. And some FlickR shots from setting up the show here and here.
Exhibition History
ShapeShifting: Reinventing Heritage, Division of Human Works, Brooklyn, NY, Opens March 2009
Fast Forward: Flushing in 2107, Flushing Town Hall, Queens, NY, May 4 - June 17, 2007
OPOLIS, Flux Factory, Queens, NY, June 24, 2006 - August 5, 2006
Press
Farida Hariyanawala, "Flux Factory Breathes Life Into Mini City", Queens Chronicle, July 6, 2006 (link)