Along with New York's regularly scheduled gallery and museum openings, there's always a slew of art-related events happening in the city just below the radar. ArtWeLove's weekly events digest helps you navigate the art scene's offerings, on and off the beaten track.

MONDAY: BRING OUT YOUR INNER CANDY DARLING

After spending the last few weekends giving over its Chelsea gallery to the first 20 artists who show up, Lyons Wier is throwing open its doors even wider tonight with "Instant Art History Immediately: The Fak'try." For a weeklong open-call experiment modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory, artists Fahamu Pecou and Hebru Brantley are inviting any and all artistic types to come by the gallery and... just be creative. The proceedings, intended to mimic the antics of Warhol's "Superstars," will then be captured on film for use in a mocumentary about this sure-to-be beautiful flashing art-historical moment. Oh, and to set the proper mood, each night the gallery will turn into a rollicking DJ-ed party. Hours: 6 p.m. - 9 p.m. Admission: free.

TUESDAY: DING! GO WATCH A PAVLOVIAN ART FILM

Looking to test your cinematic reflexes? Art historian and October magazine eminence Annette Michelson will be commandeering Brooklyn's Light Industry to present a showing of "Mechanics of the Brain," Soviet director V.I. Pudovkin's influential film documenting experiments of Ivan Pavlov's theories of suggestion and control. In screening this clear-eyed investigation of a disturbing branch of psychology, Michelson will discuss the strange movie's intriguing parallels with Surrealist cinema. At Light Industry, 220 36th Street, 5th Floor, Brooklyn. Hours: 7:30 p.m. Admission: $7.

WEDNESDAY: EXPLORE A TREND THAT'S NOT JUST A "NOVEL"TY

Book and text art has been popping up everywhere lately as a kind of aesthetic hair shirt for these post-Boom times, with curators and galleries embracing its low-key intellectualism and lack of flash. To become better acquainted with this burgeoning (if sometimes thinky) medium, head to the Center for Book Arts for an artist talk on the subject with six artists from the Chelsea non-profit's current show, "Threads." At 28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor. Hours: 6:30 p.m. Admission: $10.

THURSDAY: WITNESS NAVAL WARFARE IN QUEENS

If you like makeshift art armadas but found Swoon's "Swimming Cities" too tame, you might want to check out "Those About to Die Salute You," a full-fledged naval battle that artist Duke Reily is staging in a Worlds Fair-era pool outside the Queens Museum. Featuring toga-clad crews of artists and curators wielding baguette swords and watermelon cannons on cobbled-together ships of Viking, Roman, and other warlike origin, the skirmish--complete with buckets of fake blood--will end only when one victorious ship sails alone. Riley, a nautically-fixated artist who made headlines in 2007 when the Coast Guard arrested him for operating a replica Revolutionary War-era submarine in New York Harbor, is a talent to watch. Hours: 6 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. Admission: free (and free drinks).

FRIDAY: SALUTE A PIONEERING DOWNTOWN INSTITUTION

A scrappy Lower East Side gallery, Cuchifritos will be capping off its summer by celebrating an older, scrappier local space, ABC No Rio. Curated by Erin Sickler, the show "Hanging Out at ABC No Rio" will mark the 30th year of the artistic/activist community center with a series of artist-led events and discussions examining the site's influence in the changing corner of the city. One representative change: from early on an active participant in the squatter movement, ABC No Rio will soon be getting a new headquarters alongside its gentrifying neighbors. At Cuchifritos, 120 Essex Street (inside the Essex St. Market, at the South end). Hours: 4 p.m. - 6 p.m., followed by a BBQ at ABC No Rio. Admission: free.

SATURDAY: WATCH AN ARTIST MAKE HIMSELF AT HOME

Inverting the standard procedure of taking art home from a gallery, artist/curator Damian Weinkrantz will be transporting his own Philadelphia apartment to Fuse Gallery, recreating it in the downtown space together with a selection of art and functional objects created by more than a dozen artists. A nod to Rirkrit Tiravanija or just a way to get out of a month's rent, the show, "Please Be Welcome," will be up until September 12. Hours: 7 p.m. - 10 p.m. Admission: free.

SUNDAY: GLIMPSE THE SCI-FI FUTURE OF ART (AND EVERYTHING ELSE)

As part of Jack the Pelican's "The Final Five," a show of virtual art that has been accompanied by a series of talks and events focused on the still-controversial medium, the adventurous Brooklyn space is hosting a talk by noted futurist and entrepreneur Jerry Paffendorf. A mad social scientist whose projects include a plan to turn a swatch of Detroit into a collaborative-living Utopia, Paffendorf foresees a coming technological evolution where people will transplant themselves to a fully-immersive virtual online world, making Second Life a contender for First Life-hood. Doesn't Mel Gibson have a movie coming out about that? Where everyone dies? Terrific. Hours: 6 p.m. Admission: free.