Call to participate- Sunday August 30- autonomous zone in LIC
* You are autonomous *
In today's unstable political climate, can we conjure up a more just, peaceful, and expansive future for all?
The Autonomous Zone of the Itinerant Signal Institute will organize the closing party for the exhibitions at Flux IV, and will expand to encompass Flux IV and its surroundings.
The exhibitions by the Institute, 502 Bad Gateway, and the incoming parade workshop by Piper Amphora are now united.
Bring your artwork, proposal, or project that needs to exist in the autonomous zone. We invite participation from noon to 7pm: we will have an open projector, there is a PA, some floor space, micro-nation karaoke, and some outdoor space.
At Flux IV in Hunter's Point:
56-21 2nd St, Long Island City, NY 11101
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Noon-7pm (Come for one hour or seven!)
Questions / plans / schemes: ameliamarzec@gmail.com
Below are further descriptions of the projects in the zone- join us with yours!
Costume-Making Workshop: Underground and Underwater, by Piper Amphora
(Sally Beauty Twin and Heather Rose Piper)
Make something glamorously fitting of the city’s underwater universe with Piper Amphora, the artist duo behind Flux IV’s upcoming theatrical performance, Underground and Underwater. Drawing on techniques from puppetry, costume, and theater fabrication, participants will transform everyday, found materials into fantastical wearables inspired by New York City’s buried waterways. Costumes created in this workshop will become part of Underground and Underwater‘s spectacular last act: a 100+ person Orphic night parade along the Hunter’s Point waterfront. Underground and Underwater will take place on September 12 and 13, 2026 at Flux IV.
Solo Exhibition: Error is Shadow, by 502 Bad Gateway
(Alexander Baumann and Robert Ruth)
Error is Shadow explores the legacy of structural and cultural decay, monuments of shame, trans-civilizational communication, and post-human adaptivity. Mankind’s desire to justify its narrative purpose leaves it with only self-referential answers to impossible questions, building elaborate protocols that favor controllable results over truth. Through a network of paintings, sculptures, a narrative film, and a roguelike deckbuilder game, the work plays upon the human tendency to create needlessly complex systems when faced with the perilous unknown in an attempt to govern the ungovernable. Error is Shadow adds another forking branch to the wired network of conceptual storytelling that has been the cornerstone of 502 Bad Gateway’s artistic practice.
Solo Exhibition: Itinerant Signal Institute (Rite of Spring), by Amelia Marzec
Itinerant Signal Institute (Rite of Spring) is a fictional institute and installation, grounded in techno-ecological art. The story of the Institute is told through sculpture, digital images, internet art, microcontrollers, and scientific displays. In it, creatures have emerged from the melting permafrost to join the Institute and return to modern-day cities to examine their climates. The creatures wear headdresses of bones and fossils, inspired by Eastern European carnival costumes that denote the changing of seasons. They acknowledge the effect of human activity on the Arctic Circle, and anticipate increasing climate migration due to military fuel consumption. The Institute tests for environmental toxins to identify places of relative safety, through small hand-built quasi-scientific devices that test the air and soil. The work also addresses queer migration, and re-defining the idea of home in the current political climate. It incorporates plant knowledge to influence the endocrine system, reducing human desire for late-stage capitalism and war at a biological level. Sites tested by the Institute include former military bases, including WWII sites in Europe, and Newtown Creek, the location of one of the United State’s largest oil spills, where the artist’s family lived when they emigrated to New York City. The work evolves as the Institute installs servers in partner organizations as the project moves from place to place.