BRIC House (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

The “stoop” at the new BRIC House (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

This month, multidisciplinary nonprofit BRIC opened their 40,000-square-foot space in downtown Brooklyn that unites their programs in visual art, performance, and media under one roof.

Armchair Parade (photograph by the author)

Ox watching TV in “Armchair Parade” (photograph by the author)

I stopped by the sleek new BRIC House to catch the last day of the Armchair Parade, a collaborative installation by theater designer and director Julian Crouch, musician and composer Mark Steward, and filmmaker Ragnar Freidank that filled the new BRIC House artist studio with incredibly detailed puppets riveted by televisions. In the center of the room was a 24-foot-long lamellophone instrument played by keys where you could sit down and add some clanging to the disconcertingly lively music that accompanied the videos droning on each television. A stork hunched forward to watch a video of a stork cavorting with a baby on a stage; a skeleton-faced being stared at a dancing skeleton puppet. It was as creepy as it sounds, which was awesome, and as the inaugural event of the space and the Fireworks residency program for large-scale artist team work, holds a lot of promise for future engaging collaborations.

Armchair Parade (photograph by the author)

Masked puppets watching TV in “Armchair Parade” (photograph by the author)

But the artist studio that held the installation is only a small part of the space, which was developed from the 1918 Strand Theater by architect Thomas Leeser with Leeser Architecture. There’s also a performance space with retracting chairs that can hold between 240 and 400 people, and a television studio for BRIC’s Brooklyn Independent Television that is visible from the Hungry Ghost cafe in the main lobby, where currently a vibrant mural by Tasmania-to-Brooklyn transplant Garry Nichols is displayed. The mural is expected to rotate based on the exhibition in the 3,000-square-foot gallery that’s alongside, accessible by stairs that slope down alongside BRIC’s “Stoop” where they are holding free community-oriented events. The first exhibition to try out this expansive gallery space is Housewarming: Notions of Home from the Center of the Universe curated by BRIC’s Director of Contemporary Art Elizabeth Ferrer and showcasing 12 Brooklyn artists, including Nichols which creates a nice link between the focal points in the vast space.

BRIC House gallery (photograph by the author)

“Housewarming” exhibition in the BRIC House gallery (photograph by the author)

BRIC House cafe (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

Mural by Garry Nichols in the Hungry Ghost cafe (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

Before this massive space, BRIC has been most visible with their Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival in Prospect Park, but this hub should allow for much more interaction between their programs in contemporary art, performance, and community media classes in things like video production and digital storytelling. It also links them to UrbanGlass next door, whose space was part of the Leeser Architecture transformation. Yet more than that, it situates them right in the Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District that is blossoming with new construction, such as the Theater for a New Audience that just opened across the street, along with its existing neighbors like the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Mark Morris Dance Center. It will be interesting to see if this new center for collaborative art sustains itself into the future, which will require bringing much more than the immediate community into their programming. But BRIC has a lot to work with at the BRIC House, and more than anything the predominantly white-walled, glass-lined space feels like a blank slate ready for something to happen.

Here are more photographs from the new BRIC House:

BRIC House gallery (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

Street corner in miniature by Drew Hamilton in the BRIC House gallery (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

View of

“Armchair Parade” in the artist studio (photograph by the author)

BRIC House (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

Performing art space (photograph by Kathryn Yu, during Open House New York)

photograph by Jenna Salvagin/BRIC

The performing arts space with the chairs extended (photograph by Jenna Salvagin/BRIC)

Jenna Salvagin/BRIC

View from the broadcast studio to the cafe (photograph by Jenna Salvagin/BRIC)

photograph by Ryan Muir/BRIC

The exterior of BRIC House (photograph by Ryan Muir/BRIC)

BRIC House is now open daily at 647 Fulton Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Housewarming: Notions of Home from the Center of the Universe is at BRIC House through December 15.

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Allison Meier

Allison C. Meier is a former staff writer for Hyperallergic. Originally from Oklahoma, she has been covering visual culture and overlooked history for print...