A musical minigolf course, an obstacle course and a waltz around the grounds? It must be Figment NYC. The participatory-art festival returns Saturday for its 11th year, transforming Governors Island into a giant experimental playground.
“It’s going to be intense this year,” says producer Benjamin Jones. “Everything is tighter, not as spread[-out] as in the past — so we’ll have more opportunity for different events and artwork to play off each other.”
The artwork is bigger, too. The large obstacle course “Revenge of the Third Rail,” by artists Chris Niederer and Debra Everett-Lane, invites visitors to channel their inner vermin — the subway terrors that are rats and roaches — and scavenge as many faux food scraps as possible. Mixed-media artist Giovanni Gelardi filled three floors of one of the island’s abandoned brick houses with 250 of his paintings, collages and miniature dioramas. And Katya Grokhovsky has tapped 50 performers to invite passersby to waltz through the grounds as part of her piece “Slow Dance.”
Other highlights include Kostume Kult, which brings a caravan of disguises for children to wear for the day; the Good School’s mobile learning workshop, which will teach kids and adults alike how to make their own stop-motion animated films, and the City of Dreams pavilion, a silver structure of recycled aluminum cast into cracked clay made from the soil of the East River.
And then there’s the artist-designed minigolf course, which will stay up through the end of the summer. This year’s theme, “New York City Has the Beat,” celebrates the Big Apple’s musical diversity. There’s a boombox-inspired structure, a bell-strewn obstacle course evoking church chimes and a minimalist structure that, with each play, will play a different, John Cage-like musical composition.
“All the sounds will bleed into each other,” says Jones of the possible cacophony. “But that’s what will make it great.”
Figment NYC runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; minigolf remains open through Aug. 26, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week. Ferries leave for Governors Island daily from the Battery Maritime Building (10 South St.) and from Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park on weekends. Schedules at GovIsland.com.