After the London success of the explosive and creative Deluxx Fluxx video arcade installation (covered here ) Brooklyn-based duo Faile and collaborator Bast take over a disused storefront on the Lower East Side.
Originally conceived as a one-off project in London, Deluxx Fluxx allowed Faile and Bast to indulge nostalgia for the classic video arcade while exploring the tactile possibilities of the wooden cabinet as sculptural medium.
Deluxx Fluxx aims to make art less sterile, more fun, and accessible to a broad audience. This sensibility harkens back to the golden age of arcade games; a time when the Lower East Side itself was still a redoubt for punk rock and graffiti culture. Deluxx Fluxx is entirely interactive, and invites viewers to play a round of psychedelic foosball and take part in the art itself. It is the artists’ intention that viewers will forget they are looking at art, and be captivated by the carnivalesque. The video arcade may be a lost form, but in Faile and Bast’s re-imagining, it gets a temporary and much needed revival.
In its New York incarnation, a new set of the retrofitted machines run games by Adapted based on Faile and Bast’s omnivorous visual language, with sounds produced by Seth Jabour of the noted band Les Savy Fav.
Photos by Butterfly
The show is now on view until the 27th May 2010.
Check out this video from the NY Times
[video:http://vimeo.com/11625152 350×307]
Deluxx Fluxx NYC
158 Allen St. New York, NY 10002
Tuesday-Sunday 3-11pm
More information available at www.DeluxxFluxx.com
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