Powerhouse

Arts

|

Fête

of

the

Fates,

Featuring

Sibyl

by

William

Kentridge

Like many areas in New York City, the lot on 153 Second Street in the Gowanus district of Brooklyn has experienced many periods of change. If one were to look at an extended timeline, in origin it was Lenape land. By 1886, one could find the block on Gowanus Canal on a lithographed Sanborn map as the Nassau Sulfur Works and the Shaw Matthew Materials and Paper Stock. A fire in Ridgewood, a railroad accident & a squatter colony later, the once-firing Brooklyn Rapid Transit Power Station has settled into its current identity as an emerging nonprofit contemporary art center, Powerhouse Arts.

Lending itself as a creative production center, the industrial landscape of the historic Boiler House has become somewhat of a burgeoning incubator for a wide range of multidisciplinary artists. In an era in which the future of fine arts programming and education is in an all-too-precarious position, the Powerhouse lends itself to be a brick-laden haven for print, ceramics, and public arts production.

On October 9th, Powerhouse Art’s held its second annual Artists Celebration, entitled the Fête of the Fates. A movable feast of sorts, it was the only place in New York that night where one could unwittingly stumble on both caviar on eggs as well as an industrial printer the size of a car (but could still delicately inscribe a barbed chain on top of feathers.) The evening had culminated in William Kentridge’s U.S debut of his opera, Waiting for Sibyl for which the two-part production had earned the 2023 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera.