By Kristopher Monroe

Though much of the art world gentry—ensconced as they are in their ivory towers and crystalline galleries—are loath to admit it, New York has lost a lot of the exciting, innovative energy that made it a mecca for aspiring artists and maintained it as the birthplace of new, creative movements. There are plenty of pockets of creativity, and a heap of artists and musician types that still move here every year (it is New York after all). But skyrocketing real estate and an increasingly entrenched music and art scene are causing plenty of grumbling from those who came here looking for the vibrant creative atmosphere they always heard and read about.

“I’ve always seen how the different scenes in NY are really fractured and isolated,” says RJ Valeo, who, along with Ruth Garon, acts as Executive Director of the Bushwick Art Project (BAP), a non-profit organization of artists, musicians and other like-minded types that are getting together to breathe life into a latent creative landscape. “Whatever any scene has going on, they hold onto tightly and don’t let many new people in, which creates a situation where, even if great things are going on, it’s a very closed community and new things can’t happen.”

“I came to New York, and I had such high expectations. But I felt like something was missing,” echoes Israeli-born Garon. “I think that the art market is so commercial and so connected to money, there’s no place for artists to experiment. Everyone is so focused and always talks about their ‘career.’ Who cares about career?”

Valeo, a native New Yorker and musician of 15 years, maintained a nine-to-five job for much of his life, following his own musical pursuits on his off hours, but eventually he reached a breaking point where he could no longer go on pouring his creative energy into someone else’s bottom line. 

“I got to the point where I couldn’t do it anymore,” he explains. “I couldn’t live my life like that. I needed to dedicate myself to something I absolutely believe in and am passionate about.”

A little over a year ago he hooked up with Garon, who had recently re-located to NY from Israel where she’d grown up living on a kibbutz, one of the socialist communes scattered throughout the country. At the time, Garon was dismayed at what she saw as the growing frustration of her friends and fellow artists. “Everyone I knew was moving to Berlin,” she says. “I said to myself, ‘What are you doing? Move to Berlin!’” 

But then she and Valeo began talking about how they could cultivate an environment that would encourage and promote working artists, given the absence of any cohesive network of support, specifically with artists in the electronic, digital and new media realm, which is what BAP is fundamentally all about. “There is a really big potential for an arts community,” maintains Garon. “And that’s our challenge.”

On July 22, BAP will take over the newly opened multi-use space, 3rd Ward, in Bushwick, Brooklyn for BAPLab, a laboratory of experimentation that will focus on digital and electronic culture, which both Valeo and Garon consider the most democratic and egalitarian medium available. This will be the third large-scale event BAP has organized in less than a year from its inception. And while it’s true that there’s a sad dearth of support and community among many of the starving artists working in many mediums, it’s especially true of artists working in the worlds of electronic and digital media. Traditionally, Europe has always provided a more inviting environment for these fields, but Garon and Valeo believe BAP can begin to change that.  

“A lot of people get caught up in the system and get brainwashed into thinking that you can’t make a living doing what makes you happy,” says Valeo. “Everyone always jokes about having a day job, then going home to make music or art. The beautiful thing about Bushwick and living out deep in Brooklyn is that you can actually create a situation where you can make a viable living doing music and art. That’s one of the focuses we’re trying to do with BAP. It’s a legitimate non-profit, and we’re getting big sponsors and donors and trying to help create grants for artists.”

With low-income artistic types getting priced out of Manhattan altogether, and the overblown ostentatiousness of fake artists and trust fund fashionistas crowding Williamsburg, Bushwick is becoming the destination of choice for creatives wanting to get their art on without having to deal with the bullshit. Blogs like Bushwick is Beautiful (bushwickisbeautiful.com) and diversified venues like Office Ops and Asterisk Art Project are helping to foster the very real sense of community in the area.

The newly opened 3rd Ward, a multi-disciplinary creative facility, will play host to this year’s BAPLab. It will encompass the first and third floors, with a total of 30,000 square feet of interactive art, video, audio and electronic installations by over 40 different artists—some of whom have shown at MoMA, PS1 and the Guggenheim, as well as museums and galleries across the country and overseas. There will also be five “complete and discrete” different music programs with performers from Ghostly, Spectral Sound, M_nus, Kranky and Clink among many others. It’ll be an intensive day of sensory overload, and the M.O. is experimentation—mixing the established audio and visual talent with the up-and-coming.  

Much of the art will stand alone, like Feedtank’s interactive installation of colored squares projected on the ground that flutter away when walked over, and Douglas Henderson’s 12” woofers, painted like swimming pools and filled with water, that ripple from an unheard 79 minute ultra-low frequency composition. Many of the artists have been paired with certain musicians to create a unique environment for the viewer/listener. Valeo and Garon worked with almost a dozen other art and music curators with a goal of creating a dialog between visual artists and musicians that will hopefully remain with those that experience it long after the event is over.

“There’s such a potential here,” says Valeo. “It’s an experiment. An experiment in community…Our goal is to bring everyone together and combine them in one space and say, ‘Now here’s a proper NY party.’”

“We look at it as intelligent entertainment,” agrees Garon, who also hopes to expose and educate people to the history of the various mediums, like the program of video art that places new, young talent alongside artists from the ’70s. “We are hoping it’ll be a crazy, beautiful chaos.”

BAPLab, July 22, 3rd Ward, 195 Morgan Ave., Bushwick, Brooklyn (Morgan L stop); 4 p.m.-6 a.m., $15, www.bushwickartproject.org.