The VARIABLE CITY : fox square exhibition builds on the Institute’s program of projects that emphasize the important role art can play at the beginning of urban vitality and regeneration projects. It is a focused look at a project initiated by Julia Mandle, director of J Mandle Performance and Ariel Krasnow, an urban designer , with choregrapher Mark Jarecke, which explores the unique hybrid of outdoor site-specific performance and urban design research. Conducted in Fox Square , a fast-changing area in downtown Brooklyn , VARIABLE CITY demonstrates how performance art can engage the community in creative responses to the design of the built environment.

Mandle’s work often takes her out onto the streets, where she has developed a number of site-specific performances that impel passersby to stop and wonder and take note of their surroundings. Krasnow has also consistently been involved in investigating the condition of public spaces and how people occupy them. Interested in testing the boundaries of their respective disciplines, VARIABLE CITY developed into more than 100 performances, by 12 dancers, over 4 weeks, during the lunchtime and rush hour. Interrupting the daily routine of Fox Square , the performances were an unexpected sight in this busy crossroads.

Located at the intersection of Fulton Mall, a bustling shopping street, and Flatbush Avenue , a major thoroughfare, Fox Square like many of New York ’s great squares (think Father Duffy Square in Times Square or Herald Square ), is in fact triangular. It’s shape and location make it both a challenging and vibrant hub of activity. Although used every day by thousands of pedestrians and vehicles, the site remains an ill considered and overlooked corner.

Named after the 4,000 seat Fox Theater that was built adjacent to the site in 1929 by William Fox of 20 th Century Fox and demolished in 1970, the square’s origins are all but forgotten and few people refer to it as more than the intersection of “Flatbush and Fulton.” Yet its official name, Fox Square , still survives on maps of Brooklyn , which began identifying it as such in 1931.

This exhibition explores the square’s misplaced identity and latent historical and cultural significance and celebrates the cultural and social diversity of the site as well as prompts new thinking and a reexamination of the planning and design of the city.

Press Release

Taking Cues from The Variable City:
Alternative Approaches to City Making
Panel Discussion November 9, 2004
Julia Mandle, Ariel Krasnow and Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimlet

For overall support for the VARIABLE CITY: fox square project, J Mandle Perfomance would like to thank the Architecture/Design Department of the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Jerome Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, Printempia Corporation and Marie Nugent-Head, Two Trees Management, The Greenwall Foundation, James E. Robison Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Gayle and Roger Mandle, Julia and Cees de Bever, DeMatteo Monness, LLC, Wolff-Olins, the Stable artists, JMP Board of Directors and the many individual donors and invaluable volunteers.