A quirky, artist-designed miniature golf course — plus the whimsical treehouse in the background — will be featured attractions at the Figment NYC festival this weekend, but will remain open on Governors Island all summer.
BY YANNIC RACK
Picture the fabled, fantastical phenomenon of Burning Man — minus the dust, drugs and desert heat — just a ferry ride from Lower Manhattan.
Figment NYC, the free, family-friendly participatory arts festival held on Governors Island each year, is returning for its tenth anniversary this weekend, and its founder says the three-day event is all about bringing the famed festival’s free-spirited approach to the arts from the Black Rock Desert to the Big Apple.
“We basically want to bring what Burning Man is about to New York City,” said David Koren, the festival’s executive producer and a devoted fan of the annual desert gathering, who came up with the idea for Figment with a few his fellow “burners” in 2005. “It’s about the idea that everyone is part of it, that art is not about going and looking at stuff — it’s about going and creating stuff,” he said.
The festival will transform Governors Island’s sprawling lawns and colonial mansions into an interactive playground for kids and adults alike, since the emphasis of the event is on directly engaging with the art on display.
Whether it’s installations, performance art, dance, theater, social experiments, video projections or music, visitors are encouraged to “touch it, smell it, paint it, talk to it, dance with it and play with it,” as the organizers put it.
“Our primary criteria is that it has to be something you can engage with,” Koren said of how organizers select the projects that participate. “We’re all creating it together and, in the end, it becomes one big art project.”
But he added that the festival, which runs from Friday June 3 to Sunday June 5, is really about making art accessible to everyone, much like its spiritual cousin in Nevada.
“It’s really about breaking down the barriers between art and audience, and artists and audience,” he said.
Figment executive producer David Koren and his wife Sasha Kurtz take a moment to relax at last year’s Figment NYC festival.
Koren, who studied playwriting at NYU and has a background in marketing for cultural institutions, said he immediately realized Governors Island’s potential as a festival space when he visited for the first time in 2005.
“There were very few events there. I was just like, ‘Wow, what is going to happen out here?’ I thought it really needed something,” he said. “Only 5,000 people went out there the first summer, and now it’s 50,000!”
With a few friends — half of whom fellow Burning Man devotees — the idea for an annual Governors Island arts fest was born. But the first year, the event was a victim of its own success. A last-minute preview in The New York Times made the inaugural festival so instantly popular that the island was flooded with more visitors than it could handle.
“It was the most people that had been on the island since it had been a coast guard base,” said Koren. “They were not ready for that number, and they had to turn 2,000 people away.”
As a proof-of-concept exercise, however, it showed the free-spirited arts festival was a winning idea.
“Everybody was crazy about it, and we got lots of great feedback,” he added.
Since then, Figment has expanded considerably: the festival is now held in around a dozen cities spread across three countries, and Koren said each one is unique because the various offshoots are given as much autonomy as possible in order to highlight the local flavor.
“It’s totally different — Jackson, Mississippi is all about the blues, so music is a big part of it there,” he said. “Philadelphia had a lot of psychological projects for some reason, and Boston ends up very techy, because of the robotics industry there.”
In addition to the art and performances this weekend, Figment NYC also includes a range of summer-long installations on the island, including an artist-designed mini-golf course and a whimsical tree house, which will stick around through August 26.
To mark its tenth anniversary, Koren has also been working on a book on the festival, which will be released June 3.
But ironically, it won’t be for sale at the arts fest itself, since that would go against Figment’s ban on any kind of commerce — another aspect of its Burning Man roots.
“At the event, we want to keep an experience that really doesn’t keep any barriers to anyone,” explained Koren. “As soon as you put a price tag on anything, you’re scaring people off.”
The title of the book is “Figment,” but the subtitle sums up a visitor’s experience best: “What is this, why is nothing for sale, and why is everyone smiling?”
“Those are usually the questions people have when they come to Figment,” Koren explained. “It’s not anything like what people expect to see at an art festival.”
Certainly not one in New York, so Downtowners should enjoy it this weekend while it lasts.
FIGMENT NYC will run from June 3-5 from 10am–5pm daily on Governors Island, and the festival is free of charge. Ferries run every full hour from the Battery Maritime Building on South St. Rides cost $2 for adults but are free on weekends before noon.
Aqua Attack is basically a massive water fight, with participants standing in kiddie pools to do battle using super soaked plush toys and inflatable pool toys.
