The Black Factory, brainchild of artist William Pope.L, will be setting up shop in the 7th St. parking lot behind the Art Center on Thursday, June 16.

The Black Factory (or BF, for short) is a mobile art installation built into a 22-foot white panel truck and an inflatable igloo. The truck has three components: a workshop, a library and a gift shop. The BF's mission is to travel the country transporting a fresh conversation about how difference works in the U.S. and how it can produce important social transformation. The Black Factory uses the idea of blackness as a means to get the conversation started, though blackness is not an end in itself but a beginning.

Pope.L says, "the Black Factory does not make blackness, it makes opportunity, the chance to imagine the social future we'd like instead of the one imposed on us. The chance to open up our hearts, schemes and imaginations and allow ourselves to laugh and talk freely, maybe even disagree about what brings us together as well as what divides us."

As a working art installation, the BF requires the participation of audience members to do its work. Participants are invited to bring objects which reference "blackness" to them. The factory's performers use these objects in improvised skits to stimulate an exchange - a flow of ideas or images. Some of these objects are housed in the factory's archive for later use; most are photographed and made a part of the Factory's virtual library; some are pulverized in the Factory's workshop and made into new products to be sold in the Factory's gift shop, with proceeds donated to a local charity.

Visit www.theblackfactory.com for more information about the Black Factory.