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Update #6: hi yall! dlux report #6!
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Posted on August 15, 2010
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Update #5: aaalmooost theeeere
halOO!
hey we hope yall are well and everyone's having a good summer!
ok so we're hard at work preparing everything for our imminent house guests / visiting artists / interns / weekly influx of local produce! we now have a rocking donated full view refrigerator, a healthy serving of new water service, and have started getting in touch with many of our inspiring neighbors, friends or other local heroes about coming over for dinner when the session is in full swing so that our visitors can broaden their scope a little and spread their new (detroit red-) wings a bit. go team! anyway lots of work now = better experience for our residents!
on another positive note, someone (trumpets please) just led the charge in tearing down the crooked rotting garage to make space for (BIGGER TRUMPETS) a newly donated trailer! it's a kind of contemporary covered wagon made by a current cranbrook architecture student named Aaron Jones. and you may ask just who will be the lucky occupants of this mobile treasure? we will all have to wait and see! we love the attached photo, but maybe you've already seen it on Sarah's fb
and Sarah Cox, our only student resident (MFA candidate SVA, NYC), is now officially in the D and already interviewing people towards her thesis - go Sarah! and only a few days in but she's already helped out around the studio too, in preparations for some re-plumbing of the bathroom, opening up the stairwell to upstairs to brighten the downstairs and of course helping cram what was left of the garage into a dumpster - wow! what can we say writers are powerful people
one thing worth mentioning - anyone have troubles with amazon payments? did it work smoothly? we got word of someone having trouble, but since word came through amazon, we're not sure what happened at all. please let us know if we need to resolve anything, make some calls on your behalf or whatever.
oh yeah - and our 'new' countertops ...see photo ... we were super inspired by this kitchen built in the 1600s in the south of france (fully cantilevered wraparound stone countertops) during our travels way back when and decided since we're about to start cooking for about 12-16 people average per night ... maybe we need more workspace in the kitchen! so the lumber left over from last years' attic remodel (think gordon matta clark) was put back into service downstairs. fun!
well ... less than a week to go! more pictures and such forthcoming after we meet a few more of our house / studio preparation deadlines = we are up to our eyes ... with progress ... and well-sanded and sealed burn marks in what used to be the living room!
AND of course none of the kickstarter funding has even been touched yet, so you can anticipate many more updates once we're actually in full swing and actively researching and documenting this whole process.
more soon, and thanks again!
dfluuuux
Update #4: YOU DID IT!! WE DID IT!!
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Posted on May 17, 2010
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Update #3: wow!! yay!!
hi everyone!!
again ... THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Sarah and i are COMPLETELY ELATED to have your support!
we are officially past 100% and thriiiilled!
wow!
yay!
ok and secondly - our humble apology: we haven't written many of you individually with a hearty THAAAANK YOOOUU! yet (as we love to do) ... but now that we're done with our super crazy huge (awesome!) Chicago art fair installation ... we will be!
and we have several more residents to announce too - yay again!
stay tuned - much to look forward to!
thanks again and talk soon,
jon & sarah
Update #2: our visiting artist roster is shaping up!
hello and how do!
hope you're all well and we REALLY REALLY appreciate your support! we couldn't
- or maybe shouldn't - do this without you! we're now at 56% towards our goal
and fingers crossed! and if you have some friends with too much tax return for
their own good - QUICK, GO DO AN INTERVENTION ON THEM! - we still have 44% to
go towards our visiting artist fund! any and all help is greatly appreciated.
anyway everything seems to be ramping up for the summer and our visiting artist
roster is shaping up very nicely. here are just a few of the names of some of
our distinguished visiting artists coming to work with us this summer. more
names and info as they materialize!
+++++
FINISHING SCHOOL,
public practitioners, new media collective
ok so maybe they are from LA, and maybe they do wear matching tracksuits, and
maybe they are smart, prone to activism and use computers from time to time
- but give them a fighting chance already! FS is just plain fun and they're
smart folks, thoughtful, armed with computers, elastic social strategies and
a good heaping helping of well-socialized man-vibe! their projects are really
too far-reaching for me to try to write a witty synopsis, but let's just say
that we're thrilled they're coming to join us and expect great things to emerge
from their collective head, however confounded it may feel during their stay
with us. we'll just have to make sure to introduce them to the other solid dudes!
+++++
WAYNE GRIM, musician, composer, sound artist
we just can't say enough about the sonic magic of Wayne J Grim Jr - pure goodness,
true grit, and creative umph, his diverse works include both very short and very long term projects alike, including scoring silent films for ensembles, creating RUST, a generative new media composition piece (imagine non-looping sonic wallpaper for your desktop) designed as a freestanding player, playing guitar, a shoebox, or a variety of other instruments in a wide array of ensembles and one-night improvisations and spontaneous compositional throw-downs, as well as an ongoing collaborative and permanently unfinished album of duos called BUDDY WEED JR. i do believe he's hoping to find some abandoned buildings while with us to use as temporary collaborators in creating a new composition equating epicity with utopic yearnings, as dystopic as that may sound. we'll just have to wait and listen!
+++++
Shannon Stratton,
writer, critic, co-founder, director of threewalls chicago
we're getting visited by a walking warehouse of brainpower! we're talking conceptually
large here, gargantuan scholarship and enough umph to collaborate, publish,
curate a show or two, lecture on craft theory and then go have breakfast. she's
super busy with threewalls, teaching at SAIC and making her own work in her
'down time' (?) among other things, so we're stoked to have her join us and
try to wrap her head around the city of the future!
+++++
ok!! AMAZING!!
and so we're still waiting to hear back from quite a few folks, a political
science / policy buff from baltimore, an aerospace engineer, a couple of solid
nerds, a photographer, and some other fun people ... but more will be revealed
in time ... and we promise to share ...
thanks again and thanks for all your help in getting us this far!
jon & sarah
Update #1: how DO! and THANKS! and note about our visiting artists to be ...
helOO and hope you're all well, having fun!
wow - we're up to 14% - yay!
we're really stoked to be raising money for our visiting artists, and to have your support!
THANKS SO MUCH!!
ok and sarah and i are still giggling uncontrollably (ok maybe it's just me) about our new $13 pledge reward: recordings of our angry neighbor coming in without invitation repeatedly and endlessly talking sh!+ about our house, and VERY MUCH looking forward to recording her during her frequent and often very uncomfortable impromptu visits!! anyway i just can't stop giggling
and we have a bunch of great possible / tentative visiting artists this summer!! we could not be more pleased and although we can't release or publish the names quite yet, we can report that we're in touch with a new media collective, a man with a doctorate in policy from baltimore, an experimental radio & tv artist, a photographers, an art critic / writer, a grass-farming couple, an aerospace engineer, and about 2 dozen other amazing folks thus far. our final numbers are still in flux as are the actual grouping, but we are assembling as diverse a crew as we can on such short notice and very excited and hopeful to see what transpires in their company.
that's all for now and talk to you soon. thanks again!!
jon / sarah
ps. photo with this post is taken inside the house, using the boarded-up house as a pinhole camera to project the backyard and garage onto the opposite wall of the back bedroom - fun!
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Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on May 15, 2010.
Pledge $3 or more
BETTER THAN FOUND PHOTOS!! oh yeaah!! we send you a random postcard that you'll think you got by mistake, like maybe a photo of the campfire circle in our back alley, or of something inspiring found at the dump, or some other local treasure ... FUN!!
Pledge $7 or more
DFLUX STICKERS -or- NEIGHBORHOOD SPOKE CARDS! your choice: carry around a little residency in your pocket (or on your lunchbox) -OR- spruce up your ride with a hand made laminated spoke card made with found (flat-ish) objects from the neighborhood - rad! (and a thanks! in the dflux 2010 journal)
Pledge $13 or more
DFLUX DIRTY DOZENS!!! no kidding: we send you an mp3 (maybe more than one) of one of our foulest-mouthed neighbors as she regularly drops in - completely uninvited - and starts telling us how our house is (actual quote) ".. no good house, this is sh!+ house, no basement, sh!+ house, no basement .. " despite our walking her to the stairs down to the basement on each occurrence. we can't imagine a cooler reward for a $13 pledge - do it!!!
Pledge $23 or more
$100 HOUSE COASTER SETS! it was just plain weird to buy such a photogenic house for so cheap, so we decided to celebrate the snow drift in the attic and the abundant scorch marks into a lovely coaster set for you! so we'll send you a set of 4 beautiful cork coasters made with photos of the $100 house at the time of purchase! (and a thanks! in the dflux 2010 journal)
Pledge $41 or more
RENOVATION ARTIFACTS -or- BONUS AUDIO CD! we'll send you an exotic and rare artifact (some dating back to 1923) unearthed during renovations to the $100 house / DFLUX studios -OR- the bonus audio CD featuring stories, interviews and field recordings (all from walks and bike rides around the neighborhood and city). and if we have enough found CDs from vacants we'll send one along just for kicks. (and a thanks! in the dflux 2010 journal)
Pledge $71 or more
DFLUX 2010 JOURNAL & AUDIO CD ... yes! confound your house mates and dinner guests with a signed and numbered copy of the 2010 DFLUX journal, from a limited ALTERNATE edition (including audio CD), signed by sarah, jon, resident artists and everyone they (we) can wrangle within 100 feet at the time of signing. probably for this amount we will even call you up sometime and talk about what's going on with the residents, the house and neighborhood stuff too, maybe try to hug you over the phone. sounds uncomfortable but it will probably be fun. (and a thanks! in the dflux 2010 journal)
Pledge $101 or more
NATURALLY DYED TEE SHIRT & DFLUX 2010 JOURNAL & AUDIO CD ... truly the mother lode of stuff. the journal & cd are signed and numbered like before but now includes a hand-dyed tee shirt too, dyed with locally-harvested indigenous flora cooked up on a donated stove in our kitchen!! seriously - get your look good on! and there is no doubt that this level of support will include at least a couple of phone calls thanking you a lot and probably trying to introduce you to some of our residents or neighbors while they're around. the phone calls will probably be weird and kind of uncomfortable but you will definitely like it ... afterward!
Pledge $211 or more
BIKE TOUR & DINNER!! join us for a biking tour of the neighborhood and city (or as far as your legs will go!) and then retire to the $100 house / dflux studio with us for a vegetarian meal made from local Detroit-grown produce. you'll also get the bonus audio cd and as it stops playing as dessert arrives, conversation will likely pause as we all marvel at how surreal and normal it all seems, then probably slowly and uncomfortably turn to prostitution and drug activity in the neighborhood just to keep us all in check, at which point we probably show you our scrap of plywood with license plate numbers on it and try to explain it's the newest thing, better than photographic surveillance, then we will likely try to lift our own spirits by talking about how many different kinds of birds we saw and bugs we heard on the bike ride through the greenest city you may have yet encountered, and then if all else fails we can always just talk about our kid and how awesome he is, losing track of time and space. we will probably even have photos of you in the book too by this point and make use of your phone number randomly afterwards. (and a thanks! in the dflux 2010 journal)
Pledge $503 or more
TOTAL REWARD MELTDOWN!! you get pretty much any of the above as a box set of Detroit love including: stickers, found object spoke card, journal & audio cd, naturally-dyed tee, and whatever else we can cram in the box for you. at this level you should probably expect phone calls, digital hugs and your logo on our website and in the book .. whoa!! told you it was too much but worth considering right?
Project By
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Sarah Wagner and Jon Brumit are an accomplished artist team and couple of over 17 years. They have collaborated successfully on countless projects ranging from remodeling jobs to teaching at the Boys & Girls Club of San Francisco or the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to such creative works such as 'Life Laws', an evolving collection of humiliating life-lessons and absurdist cautionary tales and 'Bridge Music', a public sound piece in which they conducted traffic using speed limit signs over one of their favorite singing bridges, wherein a faint and abstracted rendition of 'Chattanooga Choo Choo' could be heard emanating from the chorus of car tires on metal grating over the course of 30 minutes.
Their passion for design-build efforts, coupled with storytelling, problem-solving, rigorous research and good old-fashioned bike-riding, has led them to their newest collaborative endeavor, utilizing their $100 house in Detroit as the studio hub for a seasonal residency program: DFLUX.ORG, the Detroit Research Studio, in efforts to explore, celebrate and publish or broadcast reports from the complex and vibrant surrounding neighborhood.
They have exhibited their solo and collaborative works extensively in exhibitions ranging from museum shows to alternative spaces and from apartment galleries to formerly-vacant public-access storefronts. Their work has been in the Whitney Biennial, SF Museum of Craft & Folk Art, Novi Sad Serbia Contemporary Museum, Artists Television Access, Homie (Berlin), In-F (Tokyo) and has been included in several corporate collections such as Microsoft, PG&E and the San Francisco Recycling & Disposal. Furthermore, reviews and images of their work have been published in Art Papers, Penthouse, ArtForum, the New York Times and Punk Planet. They've been awarded numerous residencies including Headlands Center for the Arts and Skowhegan and consider themselves very fortunate to have received awards and commissions from the Creative Work Fund, CEC ArtsLink, Pollack-Krasner and the San Jose Public Arts Commission, among others.
