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Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on April 7, 2010.
Pledge $25 or more
Get a hand-printed Flux Factory canvas tote bag with specially designed logo by artist Douglas Paulson.
Pledge $75 or more
we'll fill your hand-printed Flux Factory canvas bag with limited-edition artwork by Paula Castro, Georgia Muenster, and Parfyme. We'll also throw in the collector's edition catalogue to our latest exhibition, "Arctic Book Club."
Pledge $350 or more
pick one or a combination of the works for sale on our website! One of a kind, bona fide Art, hanging on your wall, giving you the air of sophistication and making you the envy of your friends. (www.fluxfactory.org/art-for-sale/)
Pledge $1,500 or more
and we'll give you our coveted box sets. Each box has prints, sculptures, drawings, and paintings by world-renowned wonderful artists. Our boxes are handmade and contain works by Brandstifter, Bread & Butter Collective, Andrea Dezso, Kerry Downey, Heather Jones, Aya Kakeda, Miwa Koizumi, Simone Meltesen, Nick Normal, Ward Shelley, and Swoon. Some of these artists have work in places like the Whitney Museum, MoMA, and loads of amazing places. The collection is curated by Flux Factory’s artistic director, Jean Barberis. Priced at $1500 per box, it’s probably the best deal ever. (www.fluxfactory.org/flux-factorys-box-set/)
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Flux Factory is a 501C3 registered non-profit arts organization. We support innovative and collaborative art works. The goal of the Flux is to create a forum in which Flux artists can collaborate with each other as well as others in an experimental lab that produces new works, especially ones that reflect upon and alters public space in dynamic ways. We are also a public and community space in itself. We provide artists and the larger community with an open computer center, performance space, silk-screen printshop, a public woodshop, and loads of educational programming. Once a month we open our space for a well-known salon evening where artists and intellectuals present both finished pieces and, more importantly, works-in-progress.
Our community has grown dramatically since 1994. We have given work and exhibition opportunities to over 500 artists, most of whom produce art that is not commercially lucrative. Beyond that, we offer 14 studio spaces for dramatically below market value, so that artists can not only work in the most important art nexus in North America, but also take part in an extremely welcoming community that supports each other. This unique artist-run residency program is the fruit of artists organizing and working for themselves, completely on a volunteer basis. Most of our employees are volunteers.
Since taking up shop in our new building we have partnered with several other artists collectives and non-profits, offering them office space in our building free of charge. We've also let almost a dozen theatre, dance, music, and other visual artists use our gallery to put on events, exhibitions, or fundraisers of their own. We have acted as fiscal sponsors on behalf of other organizations just starting out, and our staff have mentored several aspiring curators and arts administrators learn the ropes and put on exhibitions.
Congratulations! Any idea when you'll be sending out the totes, etc.?
Crack open the champagne!!! Thank you all so much!!!!! We're all celebrating here at Flux headquarters!
Wow! Fantastic!! We did it! Keep it going and maybe we can cover some of those heating bills too!
Wo-hoo! A heating system for Flux Factory--just in time for the summer!!
C'mon everyone, come across! This is a fine thing to donate to!
Good luck! It seems like if we got every one whose ever slept a night in Flux to kick down $20, this thing would be funded within minutes.
I like Norman's comment about how he's not sure why I'm in this video! loL!
A REVIEW OF THE FILM "COLD & IN THE WAY"
BY NORMAN COSTA
The short film, “Cold & In The Way,” was produced by Flux Freezing Factory, in cooperation with Flux Factory. It was based on the novel of the same name by Jaime Iglehart. Iglehart wrote the screen play and directed this film. The novel, itself, was inspired by a true life medical expedition that ended in disaster. Nine bio-medical researchers set up a base camp on a glacier in northern Greenland. None survived.... See More
The filming was done by renowned cinematographer Gregg Conde, who did his own editing. The film is divided into five chapters.
CHAPTER 1: SCARY THINGS ARE HAPPENING
Jack London's short story, “To Build a Fire,” comes to mind, immediately. London wrote about a man's spittle freezing before it hit the snow. When that happened, it meant that the temperature was -75F. It had to be colder than that, in this story. Urine, normally at body temperature, was freezing into cubes before it could splash against a urinal. Considering the distance from urethra to porcelain was shorter than from mouth to ground snow, one could only guess how damned cold it really was. Nasal discharge was freezing into snow-like flakes, and water would solidify from the tea pot spout en route to tea cup. We're talking frakin' cold.
CHAPTER 2: JEAN TO THE RESCUE
We are introduced to Jean (French pronunciation.) Jean, the protagonist and optimistic leader tries to keep up the spirits of the members of his medical research team. They were investigating properties of the common cold. It was widely believed that iif cold weather causes colds, then very cold weather causes very bad colds. They wanted to find out if this assumption was correct. The stage is set for disaster when Jean enters the shelter and sneezes. A very bad cold will bade ominously for the crew.
Desperation infects the team as they point to a countdown calendar showing 135 days to spring. They don't believe they can survive till spring. Jean is in denial and sees it as ONLY 135 days to go, and tries to project a sense of optimism for his researchers. They huddle in their lone shelter in layers of clothing. It is a futile gesture against a deadly force that knows no impenetrable barrier. The story line is reminiscent of Scott's disastrous, but heroic, assault on the South Pole only to die on the return after being bested by Raoul Amudsen.
Their only hope is to find a way to heat their shelter to a temperature that will reduce the severity of the life threatening very bad cold, to an acceptable non-life threatening cold. Group cohesion is disintegrating. The heavy bearded man plans to grow his own beard until it is long enough to wrap around himself. He only wants to save himself, and has no desire to share his facial-genic insulation with the other members of the research team.
There is a moment of hope, though short lived, when they huddle around a fresh baked loaf of bread, fresh from the oven. Before consuming their meager ration, they hold the bread slices to their face to stave off, for a short time, the frost bite that is slowly destroying their exposed faces.
CHAPTER 3: THE DEPTHS OF MISERY
Group consciousness continues to erode, to disintegrate, inexorably toward fracturing and splintering. Members hog the blankets and others pull the blankets away. They hurl accusations at each other. But the most gut wrenching moment of the entire film is when one of these blanket fights results in the destruction of a work of art-in-progress. Lives will be lost in this tragedy, but death, itself, is not the tragedy. It is the killing of art that is the real tragedy. The highest expression of the human soul, beauty, does not survive the terrible ordeal. For a moment, the spirit of our race rose above the moment and the experience of suffering, only to be destroyed in the coveting of another's patch of blanket. Decay and disintegration of flesh, as well as spirit, have begun. The dying process is underway.
CHAPTER 4: PROBLEM SOLVED
There is an expression among engineers, “The end of life kicker.” When steam powered ships were overtaking the technology of sailing vessels, nautical engineers produced the greatest improvement in sailing technology in 1,000 years. It was the Yankee Clipper class of ships. The productive life of sailing ships was extended for another two decades. Yet, in the end, they succumbed to the grim reaper steam technology that would be their death knell.
That is what happened to our doomed crew. A desperate last minute engineering feat brought relief and life extension that was to be short lived and fatal. The chief engineer created a duct system to transfer warmth from the stove to their tightly sealed sleeping quarters. The transfer of heat was successful, as far as the technology goes, but it transferred the heat in the form of deadly carbon monoxide gas, and not life giving oxygen. The operation was a success, but all the patients died. The message (this is a message movie) was clear. Technology is not our savior.
One of the team goes mad at the end. He takes off layers of socks from his feat, and fumigates the sleeping quarters with his sour and foul smelling feet, and laughing while the others are choking on the disgust of it all. One by one they succumb to the journey from wakefulness and life, to sleep and the departure of their souls.
CHAPTER 5: OUT OF IDEAS
The leader, Jean, does not yield his spirit easily, but tries to rally the few remaining survivors. An idea to plug in their space heaters – such a great idea, and near genius – raises expectations, but only momentarily. The circuit box had 10 amp fuses, but the first space heater required 15 amps. Predictably, the fuse blew. Unexpectedly, they realized they had no replacement fuses. The screen goes to black, and leaves to our imaginations how the remaining brave research crew faced their own deaths. I'd like to think they did it bravely.
THE ACTORS
Brandstifter, Olive Mckeon, and Katherine Hamilton gave excellent performances. You shiver and long for a warm place just watching them act. They are relatively unknowns in Hollywood, but I'd like to see more of them in future roles. Jean Barberis, Elizabeth Larison, Adrian Owen, and Paula Castro did yeoman's work supporting the production. I'm not sure why Nick Normal and Georgia Muenster were in this film. They gave it their best, but it just wasn't up to the seriousness and drama of this tragic story. All I can say is that they might be better suited for light romantic comedy.
FINAL THOUGHT
On the whole this is an able film that hits the mark in telling an heroic, dramatic, and tragic story. I give it four ice cubes. Go see it!
Sounds like a great space. We run a hackerspace in Detroit with similar goals. Feel free to back our kickstarter project too.