Performance

A performance-installation on wheels created by artist William Pope.L, The Black Factory is a truck caravan that tours the country, stopping in select cities and towns to produce a day-long event of interactive performances that address class, diversity, and race. Using personal objects brought to the “factory” by audience members as starting points, The Black Factory’s “factory workers” combine rehearsed skits with improvisation to stir up conversations, community action, and social transformation. The Black Factory caravan also contains a library where years of Black Factory history are collected, and a store where transformed Black Factory objects are sold, with their proceeds donated to a local community partner, the Foodbank for New York City.

William Pope.L, The Black Factory CEO, says “The Black Factory does not make blackness, it makes opportunity; the chance to imagine the color of a future we want instead of one imposed on us. The Factory is action art on wheels. It’s a place for folks to get together to make things happen, open their hearts, minds and mouths, laugh, get silly, talk freely, get real and disagree in order to create a brand new fresh ‘us’ of possibility.”

Presented by The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, in collaboration with The Union Square Partnership and in support of The Foodbank for New York City.