The Miss Rockaway Armada is a collective of artists and teachers, sailors and activists, and composers and clowns.  For the multi-venue project, 44 members of the Armada assembled in Philadelphia from around the country to create a flotilla of several sculptural elements composed entirely from recycled and salvaged materials to be utilized as a floating interactive sculpture on the banks of the Schuylkill River. These were then transformed into floats for two public parades and festivals before being converted into an interactive installation inside the galleries at the PAA. At each iteration, the artists staged musical performances, aerial acrobatics, shadow puppetry, and spoken word performances using their flotillas/sculptures as stage sets. Reaching over 10,000 visitors, the exhibition also included a comprehensive catalog/box, which included original art posters and postcards created by the artists themselves.

 

The Miss Rockaway Armada’s process for creating the project began with the discovery and selection of materials. Roaming the city for discarded wares (and working with local artist resource organizations) grew into an enthralling scavenger hunt for bric-a-brac, architectural debris, clothing, and furniture.  What became significant during this intense building phase was the act of imbuing what was considered useless with a value and significance; a powerful statement in and of itself that is profoundly political that reflected The Miss Rockaway Armada’s overall distaste for mass market consumerism and corporate culture.  The emphasis of the installation as an interactive environment invited the visitor to reconsider the ways in which we experience art.  By deconstructing the found materials over and over again and reinterpreting them as a response to the building, including its entryways, hallways and stairwells, the visitor--who may or may not have viewed the public events that took place before their existence in the galleries--encountered these materials in a new light. This unlocked the limitless potential of their source material, breathing new life yet once again into what was ostensibly labeled as trash.

 

Established in 2006 by an eclectic group of artists and performers from all over the country, The Miss Rockaway Armada has been nationally recognized for their engaging and interactive mobile constructions and art installations. Through unexpected and innovative works of art, the members of the Armada share and promote sustainable ways of living while addressing important environment issues involving the use of renewable resources.  The group generated headlines for their two year journey down the Mississippi River from 2006 to 2007, traveling on a sustainable flotilla of rafts while stopping in towns to present musical performances and vaudeville variety-theater. The Miss Rockaway Armada seeks to create a new sustainable way of traveling while demonstrating different ways of living and moving that are friendlier to the environment and to each other.

 

In the larger context of artistic and craft-based practices, the focus of the collective certainly refutes the traditional studio model of the finished end product created through a specific set of skills that are mastered and polished over time. From the process of collecting salvage, to building seemingly implausible flotillas capable of transforming into anything from bike sculptures to parade floats, the focus was on the performative in the artistic process outside the confines of an institutional space.

 

download press coverage part one

 

download press coverage part two

 

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