The FlagSSS Day Collective (Angela Beallor, Hana van der Kolk, and Elizabeth (EP) Press) creates participatory public rituals engaging social, political, spiritual, and environmental questions creatively by using flags, puppets, costume, music, and choreography and collaboration. In our hometown of Troy, NY (and sometimes beyond), our work unfolds primarily in streets, inviting people to experience their city differently, gathering through making, movement, and collective presence.
Our practice draws from long-lived traditions that intertwine celebration and dissent—where protest meets party, and resistance is sustained through joy. Our collective formed in 2019 after the Flag Day celebration, mythically proclaimed the largest Flag Day celebration in the country, ceased in Troy, NY. We set out to (re)invent the holiday, pluralizing it while pushing against the original holiday’s nationalistic rationale. By expanding the use of flags as a site of multiplicity, focusing on building human connections, we respond to the conflicts of our time with flexibility, care, and sometimes even humor.
Since 2019, we have organized annual FlagSSS Day processions and rituals, including an election-day procession in November 2020 and an ongoing series of winter Crow Processions beginning in 2022. Each of our processions has a theme or prompt that responds to the moment with low barriers for community members to creatively craft costumes. For example, in 2024, after a large-scale spill of plastic nurdles in a nearby river, we chose the theme “Plastic Jubilee.” We were able to address our dangerous reliance on plastic and its consequences while crafting costumes and props largely with plastic detritus.
The Crow Procession developed as a response to the city-led effort to rid Troy of the large winter roosts. We called community members to join us in the winter streets to stand against displacement and for living in community with our corvid kin. This became the first of our yearly Crow Processions.
We also entwine with others’ events and spaces such as The Quiet Parade, The Earthling Parade, Lesbian Lives Conference 2025, and Collar Works.
More at https://flagsssday.org
Follow us on Instagram @flagsssday.troyny.
Check out the interview with Angela Beallor and Hana van der Kolk about the first ever FlagSSS Day in 2019: https://archive.org/details/media-sanctuary-troys-1st-ever-flagsss-day
