In 2020, North Brooklyn saw a rise in mutual aid efforts as more and more community members were spending less time commuting and more time in their own neighborhoods. There also was, of course, a global pandemic. Those facts, combined with a trip to Germany, inspired Birgit Rathsmann to start Plumes in our neck of the woods.
“I was visiting my parents who live outside Munich and read a book the community next to them published about a ritual in which they made costumes and creative characters and choreography and music to basically chase evil spirits out and it felt very timely. And so something that we could use in North Brooklyn,” Rathsmann explained.
From there, Rathsmann began talking with friends throughout the community and NYC and learning more about similar rituals in other countries, which ultimately had a snowball effect. After coming together for creative workshops to come up with their own respective characters based on their personal goings-on in the neighborhood, the group took to the local open street in May 2023 for the first surprise plume experience basically akin to a flash mob, but more artistic and mysterious. During these Plumes, participants will perform as their characters for an audience of neighbors and passersby.
(In another act of guerrilla artfare, Plumes is also responsible for the gallery on the community fridge outside Lot Radio.)
The same happened the following year in 2024, though with no social footprint or formal record of it, Rathsmann and the group decided to create Plumes Publication to document their work and give them something to look back and reflect on.
And after launching the first publication at the old Sunview Luncheonette location in 2023 (Rathsmann has had a longstanding relationship with the co-operative, noting the alignment of Plumes’ mission and Sunview’s usual programming), Plumes returned to Sunview at its new address, 255 Nassau Ave—quite literally a stone’s throw from their old spot and officially named Sunview at the Acropolis—to unveil the 2025 issue last Saturday.
The biggest difference between this year and last? People’s investment in their art and storytelling.
“People are getting very invested in the characters they originally created,” they noted. “They’re developing them, coming up with choreography to build them out and keep thinking about how they could be better. People who are visual artists have made [Plumes] part of their practice.”
And that shows in the Plumes Publication, too. This latest issue (created by Rathsmann with a risograph printer over the course of a single week in the Catskills) features short pieces from a number of this year’s participants about what Plumes means to them.
“Everybody’s investment in it means that people continue to think about what it is that we’re doing and how it relates to mutual aid and our creative endeavors,” they said. “I don’t have to be a spokesperson for it, it’s a collective.”
All are welcome to participate in Plumes. The collective conceptualization process is from January to March, followed by character creation before and taking them to the street in May.