Drift Relay

Glowlab is an artist-run production and publishing lab engaging urban public space as the medium for contemporary art and technology projects. We track emerging approaches to psychogeography, the exploration of the physical and psychological landscape of cities. Our annual Conflux festival, exhibitions, events and our bi-monthly web-based magazine support a network of artists, researchers and technologists around the world.

Psychogeography is an open and highly experimental discipline concerned with the ways in which the geographic environment affects emotions and behavior. The Situationists first coined the term psychogeography in the 1950s. They explored the city by engaging in “dérives” or observational drifts with the intention of discovering new perspectives on urban life. Current approaches to psychogeography vary, and include artistic, political, philosophical and scientific work in fields ranging from architecture to street art. Glowlab is particularly interested in the psychogeographic elements of contemporary public-space art, including performance, documentary work, film/video and urban research. We aim to bring together diverse perspectives on emerging methods and practice of psychogeography.

Glowlab was founded in 2002 by Brooklyn-based artist and curator Christina Ray, and in the first year hosted a group exhibition, an audio/video performance event and several walking experiments in New York and Germany. In 2003 we produced the first annual Conflux, a festival and conference in New York dedicated to current artistic and social investigations in psychogeography, held at community art and activist center ABC No Rio. The second annual Conflux took place in 2004 at PARTICIPANT INC on the Lower East Side. The event grew to include over 50 artists from around the world who engaged in a wide variety of public-space projects, lectures, performances and audio events over the course of four days.

In May of 2005 we collaborated with Providence-based collective PIPS to produce a Conflux-inspired event dubbed Provflux. In October we presented a nine-week site-specific Glowlab installation titled Glowlab: Open Lab at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA.

In addition to hosting events, we publish a bi-monthly web-based magazine for psychogeography at glowlab.com, with projects developed by the Glowlab team and guest artists every two months.

Glowlab has worked with organizations including Creative Time, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Intel’s Berkeley Research Lab, Eyebeam, Parsons School of Design, Hunter College, University of Pennsylvania Design School and others. Projects have been featured extensively online and in publications including the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Village Voice, Time Out, New York Press, Adbusters, Flash Art magazine and many others.

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