5th Annual Loisaida Festival TheaterLab 2018

Co-produced by MEZCOLANZA NYC & Loisaida Inc.

Starting at 12:00 pm on La Plaza Cultural Community Garden

[Read Press Release here!]


The Loisaida Festival’s Theater Lab, a production of Loisaida Inc. with Mezcolanza NYC, returning for the third year to the Plaza Cultural on the SW corner of 9th Street & Avenue C in the East Village as part of the annual Loisaida Festival on Sunday, May 27th. Among the highlights of the program is the New York premiere of ¡Ay María!, a play that explores the post-Maria reality for an isolated group of neighbors in Puerto Rico that must come together after the storm.

The play was initially written to provide catharsis to performer and audience alike following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. In turn, members of Mezcolanza NYC will be among those discussing the role of contemporary theater and performance in post-Maria Puerto Rico as part of a panel discussion organized by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, which will take place days before the festival, on Thursday, May 24th at 6pm.

Loisaida Inc. remains committed to the voices of Puerto Rican playwrights and performers in wake of Hurricane Maria. Following a special one-night only performance of Pateco, el sepulturero by acclaimed Puerto Rican actor Teofilo Torres this past December, the Loisaida Center will again host another timely theatrical work that addresses the aftermath of Hurricane Maria with humor, improvisation, satire, and introspection.

This creative window into the island’s trauma and the resilience of local communities is also an extension of the theme of the annual Loisaida Festival: “Bridging Resurgence: From Sandy to Maria.”


Schedule:


12:00 pm. Fernandito Ferrer / DJ /

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: Fernandito Ferrer is a soulful singer-songwriter of nueva trova and folk fusion from Sabana Grande, PR. This year at Loisaida’s TheaterLab he will be spinning an eclectic mix of reggae, pop and soul to jump start the afternoon. Fernandito is a long time Loisaida contributor and once again we have been fortunate to have him as  TheaterLab’s  stage manager. His services as a stage manager are very underrated as he’s experience spans over 20 years in the industry.


12:25 pm. Julián Garnik / Performance / 2018 Loisaida Theater Lab Emcee

Title: A mis Amigos de la Locura

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: Julián Garnik is an actor and director from Puerto Rico based in New York City. His theatre credits include Jacob in Morning at the Bridge Theatre in Manhattan and El actor tiene permisos part of the III Festival del Monólogo Latinoamericano in Cienfuegos, Cuba. As a director, his short films La Secadora and Tessellation have been screened in several festivals around the world, such as the Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival and the Durham Regional International Film Festival.


12:35 pm. Anthony Rosado / Performance /

Title: Hatuey’s Dream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece:  For the sake of revealing true stories, archiving indigenous & contemporary Caribbean practices, and sharing methods of ancestral commemoration, I will facilitate interviews. As part of the Native Caribbean Heritage Preservation Project, the interviews function to provide future generations with the inherent understanding of where they come from, so they may know who to become. Interviews with historians, contemporary practitioners, and other descendants of Caribbean peoples will be recorded in effort to (1) act as a digital archive with printed transcriptions and (2) portions of each interview will be presented in a solo performance where I embody each interviewee. This form of oratory storytelling descends from Native Caribbean communicative modes of information sharing and is glorified in Hatuey’s Dream.


12:50 pm. Calle Joroba / Clown Theatre /

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: : Calle Joroba es un colectivo de clown teatral, teatro físico, circo y títeres creado por el mimo, teatrero y maestro Luis Oliva en el año 2014. La misión del colectivo es poder exponer a través de estas técnicas temas universales como lo son la creación, la escasez del agua, la contaminación del aire, entre más. Su repertorio de piezas incluyen “Am i Ea” (2015), la primera pieza que estrenó el colectivo en el Circo Fest En el 2015 y “Wata” (2016) también presentada en el Circo Fest, que luego estuvo de gira por diferentes escuelas en Puerto Rico. .


1:15 pm. Casa Cruz de la Luna / Theater /

Title: The Marquis de Sade is Afraid of the Sea (second movement)

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: A re-visitation of the 1918 legendary earthquake in the South West of Puerto Rico; bodies resurrected from the flood; agitation of the masses, and the peaceful violence of quotidian life meet in the staging of this text by Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya. Featuring: Alejandra Morales, Christopher Cancel, Laura Mercedes and Caridad del Valle.


1:35 pm. Teatro 220 / Improv Troupe /

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artists: Grupo de jóvenes actores latinos que por medio de la improvisación teatral, llevamos comedia, música y entretenimiento para toda la familia. Nuestro fin es llevar alegría, risas e impactar a su audiencia con un mensaje refrescante y positivo. El grupo está compuesto por: Andrés López-Alicea, Gilberto Gabriel, Zuleinette Ralat y Venuz Delmar. Teatro 220, significa que somos ese conducto de 22O voltios de locura por el cual transmitimos alegría y carcajadas a nuestro público.


02:00 pm Mezcolanza NYC Performances 


1. Kairiana Núñez / Performance / 15 min

Title: Chiquita

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: In Chiquitita, Ms. Miller Parachute Woman is a character that moves between ridiculous and reality. Between the joke and the speeches that have us cornered in the dependency.
She is a right-wing military officer. She is a recalcitrant Republican. She repeats neoliberal spiels as if there were critical ideas she owns. The fact is that many military were part of the so-called “Reconstruction” of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. They took over the streets along with the local police. The military returned, as they always return.

En Chiquitita, la Sra. Miller Parachute Woman es un personaje que se mueve entre el ridículo y la realidad. Entre el chiste y los discursos que nos tienen acorralados en la dependencia. Ella es una oficial del ejército de derecha. Ella es una republicana recalcitrante. Ella repite el discurso neoliberal como si tuviera ideas críticas que le pertenecen. El hecho es que muchos militares fueron parte de la llamada “Reconstrucción” de Puerto Rico después del huracán María. Tomaron las calles junto con la policía local. Los militares regresaron, como siempre regresan.

About the artist: Actress taurine and Puerto Rican. Graduated from the Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, (2009). She began his career in 1996 with Pedro Santaliz, and later became a founding member of the theater group in the streets Jóvenes del 98 under the direction of Maritza Pérez Otero. Later she continued his training with Puerto Rican teachers and artists Rosa Luisa Márquez, Teresa Hernández, Viveca Vázquez, among others. In Argentina, she trained at Sportivo Teatral with Mirta Bogdasarian and Ricardo Bartís (2011-2013, Buenos Aires), and was part of the Quinto Piso Theater Companies, directed by Daniel Godoy, and El Rizoma Collective (2011-2016, Buenos Aires) . In 2017 she returns to Puerto Rico, where despite the imbalance, she bets on continuing to grow artistically, professionally and ideologically.


2. Karen Langevin / Performance / 15 min

Title: Fortune

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: An interactive whimsical game of chance that uses improvisational movement to foretell. Fortune winks at the futility of our desire to know the future through the unavoidable presence of the body.

Fortuna, Un juego de azar interactivo que usa la improvisación de movimiento como herramienta para predecir. FORTUNA es un guiño a nuestro deseo banal de conocer el futuro, usando la inevitable presencia del cuerpo.
​diseño camisa: ​Zaida Goveo Balmaseda.


3. Luna y Vecky / Musical Performance / 30 min

Title: Luna y Vecky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece:  After having expanded their audience to more than 15 people, Luna and Vecky decide to make a little concert in ​the Loisaida Theater Lab​. Luna and Vecky studied music at Berkley and fuse their music with different musical genres and performance. They use their music to express their darker feelings. They have been depressed for more than 10 years.

Luego de haber expandido su público a más de 15 personas, Luna y Vecky deciden hacer un conciertito en el Loisaida Theater Lab dentro de la Plataforma Mezcolanza​. Luna y Vecky estudiaron música en Berkley y fusionan su música con distintos géneros musicales y performance. Usan su música para expresar sus sentimientos más oscuros. Llevan en depresión más de 10 años.


03:30 pm ¡Ay María!


4. ¡Ay María! / Short Play / 30 min

 

About the piece:   Some neighbors who did not know each other before hurricane Maria, have joined after the catastrophe, to collect debris, share food and rely on their needs. These neighbors are the actors and actresses. Some of the people / characters represented in the piece are taken from the Puerto Rican reality, people / characters that we find in our neighborhoods, urbanizations or towns. We also parody public figures and politicians who through the media have been part of the hurricane experience.

Cast: Mickey Negrón, Mariana Carbonell, José Eugenio Hernández, José Luis Guitierrez, Marisa Gómez
directed by​: Maritza Pérez Otero​

Unos vecinos que no se conocían antes del huracán se unen después de la catástrofe, para recoger escombros, compartir la comida y apoyarse en sus necesidades. Estos vecinos son los actores y actrices. Algunos de las personas/personajes representados en la pieza son sacados de la realidad puertorriqueña, personas/personajes que encontramos en nuestros barrios, urbanizaciones o pueblos. También parodiamos las figuras públicas y los políticos que a través de los medios han sido parte de la experiencia huracanada.

​Elenco: Mickey Negrón, Mariana Carbonell, José Eugenio Hernández, José Luis Guitierrez, Marisa Gómez
Dirección: Martiza Pérez Otero.


5. Mickey Negrón / Performance / 15 min.

Title: Carpeta

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: A look at the process of persecution that the Puerto Rico Nationalist Party experienced in the past and the current crisis.

​U​na mirada al el proceso de persecución que vivió​ el movimiento nacionalista de PR en el pasado y la ​resistencia actual.


6. Paulina Pagán / Performance / 15 min.

Title: Bestias de paraíso 2 – El fuego y la jicotea*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: In honor of my Caribbean grandmothers, especially Levina Wiltshire (1938-2014) In this piece my body becomes a river, a vessel, a bridge between my ancestors, our island ecology, Puerto Rican bomba, its violent history and the joy of dancing. *The jicotea (Trachemys stejnegeri stejnegeri) is the only native Puerto Rican freshwater turtle. The bomba song “El fuego y la jicotea,” composed by Christian Tonos, ignited this creative process.

A mis abuelas caribeñas, en especial a Levina Wiltshire (1938-2014) En esta pieza mi cuerpo funge de río, de nave, de puente entre mis muertas, la ecología isleña, la bomba puertorriqueña, su sangrienta historia y el placer de bailar. *La jicotea (Trachemys stejnegeri stejnegeri) es la única tortuga nativa de agua dulce de Puerto Rico. La canción de bomba “El fuego y la jicotea,” compuesta por Christian Tonos, fue uno de los detonantes de este proceso creativo.


6. Eduardo Alegría and Desmar Guevara / Musical Performance / 30 min.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: Puerto Rican musician and singer-songwriter, developed in theater and experimental dance, improvisation, democracy and politicization of the body. This amalgam of disciplines informs his work. Part of training as an actor he did with the director Maritza Pérez Otero in the political theater. He is an observer of the country and of society.On this occasion he will sing accompanied by Desmar Guevara on the piano.

Músico y cantautor puertorriqueño, desarrollado en el teatro y en la danza experimental, la improvisación, la democracia y politización del cuerpo. Esta amalgama de disciplinas informa su trabajo. Parte de formación como actor lo hizo junto a la directora Maritza Pérez Otero en el teatro político. Se nombra a sí mismo como: un observador del país y de la sociedad.​ En esta ocasión cantará acompañado por Desmar Guevara en el piano.


Mezcolanza NYC


About TheaterLab co-producers:

MEZCOLANZA NYC 2018 – 13th Edition

Mezcolanza is a cultural platform born in 2013 in the city of Buenos Aires produced by Helen Ceballos. It gathers short pieces of artists and multi-disciplinary collectives in order to maintain a live and open stage for the processes and creations of emerging artists in different cities around the world. We aim to erase distances and expose pieces of author, which account for the social reality that is lived in our changing environments. To date, Mezcolanza has hosted over 250 artists among the cities of Buenos Aires, New York and San Juan de Puerto Rico. On this occasion, Mezcolanza visits the city of New York for the third time and celebrates its twelfth edition. We have convened 14 multidisciplinary artists. These artists work in theater, performance, movement, music, improvisation, construction, musical composition, costume making, sculptures, sound and video art. In this edition of the Festival Loisaida and within the framework of the Theater Lab. Mezcolanza presents the urban interventions of 14 outstanding artists from the local and international scene of Puerto Rico, Latin America and the United States, interlacing the scenic discourses of these creative artists with their status as permanent immigrants.


04:35 pm Community Pageant


Loisaida Community / Short Play / 20 min

Photo by: Ryan John Lee

 

About the piece:   The pageant is a large scale outdoor performance, using giant puppets, painted flats, masks, costumes, music and dance performed by and for the community to tell the their own story.


#LoisaidaFest@LoisaidaFest

The 31st Loisaida Festival

The 2018 Loisaida Festival

Sunday, May 27th 2018

11:00am – 5:00pm

Avenue C Corridor / Loisaida Avenue / Alphabet City.


The Loisaida Festival is the largest ethnic community pride festival in the Lower East Side. On the Sunday before Memorial Day, over 29,000 converged on Avenue C— Loisaida Avenue to participate in last years amazing street fair event. More locals, citywide, regional and global visitors pack the Avenue every year. The Loisaida Festival offers diverse manifestations of the Puerto Rican and Latino cultures expressed through music, dance, live theatre performances, cuisine, and the arts and crafts of the many artisans that are our prime vendors. Besides delivering top-notch live musical entertainment that features well-known names, the event is also a venue for local artists and emerging talent. It also serves as an important vehicle to disseminate educational, wellness and community services information to its visitors.

The Loisaida Festival, along with the colorful and expressive Artist/ Community Parade that precedes and kicks-off the day-long event, have become the annual signature Loisaida, Inc. production that brings together all cultures to celebrate the inclusive spirit of the LES. Funds raised go directly to our non-profit for programming and community services that are based out of our new Loisaida Community Center on 9th Street and Avenue C, where we now enjoy a long-term lease [50 years] for our 10,000 square foot facility. Our corporate, public and individual supporters that contribute generously to the event appreciate that the Sunday, May 27th Festival is a true culmination of a year-long community curated program of workshops, residencies, intergenerational activities and partnerships that are the foundation of, and create the energy and impetus behind the Festival.

Your support guarantees innovative cultural and community development programs in media and technology, healthy living, as well as our culinary arts component in development of our upcoming teaching commercial kitchen, plus much more, it keeps our community thriving!

From contract to cleanup, the Loisaida team aims to meet sponsor expectations at every level providing an excellent opportunity to engage thousands of festival visitors on the day, and display branding Logo throughout social media, and beyond, for many preceding and subsequent months.


CHARAS IS ALIVE ON SPACESHIP EARTH

CHARAS IS ALIVE ON SPACESHIP EARTH

A project by: Matthew Mottel in collaboration with Loisaida Inc., La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez and DIAP (Digital Intermedia MFA program at City College)

Programming from May 5 through May 12, 2018 from 12:00 pm to 8:00 pm 

Exhibition Open by Appointment from Wednesday, May 30th onward. Contact us to schedule a visit.


The history of dome building on the LES goes back to when CHARAS built domes in collaboration with Buckminster Fuller in 1972/73. Syeus Mottel documented this effort in his photo-journalism book CHARAS THE IMPROBABLE DOME BUILDERS , first published in 1974 and now re published in 2017 by Song Cave Press & Pioneer Works.

Through a collaborative project between Loisaida Inc., La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez and DIAP (Digital Intermedia MFA program at City College), artist and researcher Matthew Mottel (Syeus Mottel’s son) will build 2 geodesic domes (one at La Plaza and the other at the Loisaida Inc. Center’ courtyard) as an interactive art installation. In interviewing Carlos “Chino” Garcia as part of his research, Matthew was told that the domes CHARAS built functioned as both recreational activity spaces and as experimental examples of how to build disaster relief housing in non urban areas. The same functions apply now. The dome at La Plaza Cultura, will be seen from the street, with high visibility. This will bring people to the other dome in the courtyard and exhibition happening at Loisaida Center, which will feature a more detailed documentation of the original events of 1972-73.

This work highlights the achievements of CHARAS and hopefully expands the pressure on the NYC mayoral office to follow through on their promise to re-acquire El Bohio for the Loisaida community.

The week of the exhibition opening, many public performances, talks and workshops will transpire in both the Loisaida Center dome, and at La Plaza Cultural. These events will be influenced by the type of programming that happened during the 20+ years of events and exhibitions of El Bohio before being pushed out of its iconic and historic location on 9th Street, formerly known as P.S. 64.

As a sneak preview of the thesis exhibition, you can see one of the geodesic domes installed at pioneer works, today!, april 8th during their second sunday’s program!

Resources:

The Improbable Dome Builders

Matthew’s essay on the book.

The video that will be screened during the exhibition opening; CHARAS IS ALIVE ON SPACESHIP EARTH –  Wednesday, May 9 at 6:00 pm


Schedule, Programming & Activities:

  • Saturday, May 5 at 6:00 pm – Archive exhibition of the 1972/73 CHARAS Geodesic Dome opens during Fiestas de Cruz at Loisaida Center.
  • Sunday, May 6 at 2:00 pm – Dome Building Workshop where participants will assist in the building of a 12′ geodesic dome. There will also be a special screening of archival footage from Bucky Fuller. 
  • Wednesday, May 9 at 6:00 pm – Geodesic Domes unveiled with exhibition at Loisaida Center and La Plaza Cultural with performance by poet Edwin Torres.
  • Thursday, May 10 at 12:00 pm – Exhibition hours at Loisaida Center.
  • Friday, May 11 at 6:00 pm – Exhibition hours at Loisaida Center + Oral history project of the Lower East Side  featuring interview with Chino Garcia by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, with documentary screening of Matthew Mottel’s video CHARAS IS ALIVE ON SPACESHIP EARTH at 6:00 pm.
  • Saturday, May 12 at 12:00 pm – Exhibition hours at Loisaida Center + performances in the afternoon thru evening at La plaza Cultural and Loisaida Center Courtyard.

Senior Day – December 2017

‘SENIOR DAY’

PROGRAMA DICIEMBRE 2017

12:00-1:30pm:

  • REGISTRO

1ra Sesión de Talleres

  • ETIQUETAS NUTRICIONALES  – Teatro
  • ZUMBA (ejercicio) – Salón 1

1:30-2:30pm:

  • COFFEE BREAK

2:30-3:30pm:

2da Sesión de Talleres

  • ETIQUETAS NUTRICIONALES  – Teatro
  • ZUMBA (ejercicio) – Salón 1

3:30-4:30pm:

  • MUSICA con Jeannie Sol

This Senior day is sponsored by: UnitedHealthCare

Fantasy Island – Exhibition Performances

For Shey Rivera Ríos and Huáscar Robles, Hurricane María is an atmospheric manifestation compounded by the fiscal crisis troubling Puerto Rico’s urban landscape. The installation and performance Fantasy Island is an experience that explores how tourism and consumer culture sell a “fantastical” luxury lifestyle, a tropical paradise twisting crisis into “opportunity”. A door opens into a real estate office selling dreams of luxury and reconstruction and the viewer delves into a dizzying spell of animated gifs, performance and altars.

For Fantasy Island, Rivera transformed Loisaida’s space into a real estate office surrounded by a black and white grid that envelops visitors while monitors flash GIFs that borrow aesthetics from the vaporwave movement. In one image, a hand waves a wad of cash to a “Puerto Rico” neon sign while icons of the Virgin Mary and a ram, both cultural symbols of Puerto Rico’s syncretism and colonial history, spin in an enticing, dizzying spell. Viewers are also inspired to reflect on how natural disasters such as the path of hurricanes affecting not only Puerto Rico but also our Caribbean neighbors maybe twisted into “opportunity” after the crisis subsides.

For the Loisaida Center, a cultural enterprise with deep roots in the Nuyorican and Latinx New York community, Fantasy Island stretches the island to New York and its Puerto Rican and Caribbean diaspora as it hits common issues they all grapple with.

StormWater performance:

For Shey Rivera Ríos and Huáscar Robles, Hurricane María is an atmospheric manifestation compounded by the fiscal crisis troubling Puerto Rico’s urban landscape. The installation and performance Fantasy Island is an experience that explores how tourism and consumer culture sell a “fantastical” luxury lifestyle, a tropical paradise twisting crisis into “opportunity”.

Shey Rivera:  

Ixchel performance. Video projection and audio of poem.

Pick 5 poems from Hienas y Los buitres.

La jíbara bruja performance, with reading from “Naty and my chaotic stench”

Huáscar Robles performs:

“Héroes del estéreo”

“Salt and wine”

“Pupilas y gaviotas”

“Drenched”

“Las manos del campo”

Video projections: Sharks, Hurricane, Beach floor and photos of the devastation, sent by friends and family.

Audio files: Cocoon poem, Coquis by Fofe, Rain storm


Exhibition Viewing Hours: Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm and by appointment.


Throughout the fall, and beyond, the Loisaida Inc. Center’s programming will provide opportunities to pledge support to the relief and recovery efforts in the Caribbean.

 

Senior Day – November 2017

‘SENIOR DAY’

PROGRAMA NOVIEMBRE 2017

12:00-1:30pm:

  • REGISTRO

1ra Sesión de Talleres

  • ETIQUETAS NUTRICIONALES  – Teatro
  • ZUMBA (ejercicio) – Salón 1

1:30-2:30pm:

  • COFFEE BREAK

2:30-3:30pm:

2da Sesión de Talleres

  • ETIQUETAS NUTRICIONALES  – Teatro
  • ZUMBA (ejercicio) – Salón 1

3:30-4:30pm:

  • MUSICA con Jeannie Sol

This Senior day is sponsored by: UnitedHealthCare

The Avant Ricuas: A Cross-Generational Poetry Bombessa


Featuring:

Victor Hernandez Cruz

Urayoan Noel

and Edwin Torres

 

This event is a reading, performance, and discussion among three Puerto Rican luminaries, celebrating the publication of Hernandez’ new book, “Beneath The Spanish” (Coffee House Press). It will take place at our Center on Wednesday, October 25th at 6:30pm

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Beneath the Spanish is history, the clash and melt of cultures, the conquest of the New World, colonialism, bilingualism, fragmentation, and cubism. Poems built of tobacco, sugar, café; Spanish, Arabic, English; José Martí, Federico García Lorca, and William Carlos Williams. A history and exploration of Hernández Cruz’s Caribbean roots as well as a documentation of and counterpoint to the origin of the European cultural intrusion into the New World, Beneath the Spanish deconstructs and reconstructs a wounded history, offering a prayer for communication between distances, oceans, music, dance, and mountains, revealing the past in the present moment we live.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VICTOR HERNANDEZ CRUZ is the author of several collections of poetry including, most recently, The Mountain in the Sea and In the Shadow of AlAndalus. Featured in Bill Moyers’s Language of Life series, Cruz’s collection Maraca was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.

 

Fantasy Island: Panel Discussion

Puerto Rico’s economic spiral has spread uncertainty on the island. A 120 billion debt in bonds and pension responsibilities has been deemed un-payable while a U.S. Fiscal Supervision Board suggests further austerity measures. About 170 schools have closed and a third of the island’s real estate is unoccupied. Puerto Ricans keep fleeing en masse while foreigners move in, altering the urban and cultural landscape.

Artists, scholars, activists, and other thought leaders from various sectors are in conversation throughout the diaspora with the intention of creating awareness and dialogue that can generate solutions. How can art further push to inform socially responsible urban development and shed light on inequitable real estate practices that cause displacement and economic disparity? What about this cult to tourism and its implications on the field?

This panel discussion will focus on the role of the arts in community development, the economic crisis in Puerto Rico, its implications and parallels with other cities/countries, tourism economy, real estate development, and disaster capitalism.

Speakers:

F. JAVIER TORRES  ArtPlace America

f. javier torres

Latest Blog Post: Reflecting on the Interstate’s Impact on an American City

F. Javier Torres is the Director of National Grantmaking at ArtPlace America. In his role he is responsible for building a comprehensive set of demonstration projects that illustrate the many ways in which arts and culture can strengthen the processes and outcomes of the planning and development field across the United States. Thanks to ArtPlace he has travelled across 48 states in the last 3 years and visited a wide variety of community contexts. This travel has expanded his interest in the networks and knowledge sets necessary to sustain creative placemaking as a practice over time.

Prior to his role at ArtPlace, Javier was Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Boston Foundation where he led an exploration of the role of culture as a tool for transformation, sustainability, and as central to the development of vibrant communities. Javier spent six years as the Director of Villa Victoria Center for the Arts, a program of IBA, a community based multi-disciplinary arts complex that operates as a regional presenter and local programmer for Latino arts. Currently, he is a board member for Grantmakers in the Arts and an advisory board member for the Design Studio for Social Intervention. He has previously served as a board member for the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, MASSCreative, was a member of the MA Governor’s Creative Economy Council and Chair for the Boston Cultural Council.

 

ED MORALES  Journalist and Writer

ed morales

https://edmorales.net/

Ed Morales is a journalist who has investigated New York City electoral politics, police brutality, street gangs, grassroots activists, and the Latino arts and music scene.  He has been a Latin music Newsday columnist and longtime Village Voice contributing writer whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Miami Herald, San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Jacobin, and The Nation. He was a contributing editor to NACLA Report on the Americas a frequent contributor of op ed columns for The Progressive Media Project.

Ed Morales is currently writing Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture, a definitive view of how Latin@s matter in the US’s race debate, to be published by Verso Press in Spring of 2018. In March 2002, he published his first book, Living in Spanglish on St. Martin’s Press/LA Weekly Books. A second book, The Latin Beat: From Rumba to Rock, was published on Da Capo Press in 2003. Morales is also a poet whose work has appeared in Aloud: Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Café (Henry Holt, 1993) and various small magazines, and whose fiction has appeared in Iguana Dreams (HarperCollins, 1992), and Boricuas (Ballantine, 1994).

He has participated in residencies as a member of Nuyorican Poets Café Live, touring as a spoken-word performer in several cities throughout the East Coast, in California, Florida, Texas, Denmark, and Washington, D.C.  Morales has also appeared on CNN, Hispanics Today, Urban Latino, HBO Latino, CNN Español, WNBC-TV’s Visiones, WABC’s Tiempo BBC television and radio, and the Fox Morning News in Washington D.C.

Ed Morales is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and occasionally appears as a host on WBAI-FM.

 

SHEY RIVERA RIOS is the Artistic Director of AS220.

shey

 

With a professional background in administration, Rivera is also a performance and installation artist, musician and writer. At AS220, she focuses on community engagement, cross-sector partnerships, and strategic planning, alongside a team of program leaders. Rivera was part of the founding team of Festival de la Palabra in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2010 (the largest literature festival in Puerto Rico, still ongoing), and reactivated the historic Museum House Concha Melendez in San Juan with literary arts programming. She is an Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI) Fellow, Brown University Public Humanities Fellow, and alumni of the Leadership Institutes hosted by the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and the National Association of Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC). Rivera is a Certified NonProfit Accounting Professional (CNAP) and has also served on multidisciplinary art grant panels for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), NALAC, and Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. Rivera serves in Congressman Jim Langevin’s Art & Culture Advisory Committee and Providence Mayor Elorza Art & Culture Transition Team. She also serves in the Downtown Improvement District and Providence Parks Conservancy Advisory Committees, as the Dept of Art, Culture+Tourism’s Public Art Committee and Providence Cultural Equity Initiative’s Cultural Think Tank. She has been a speaker at Tulane University, University of Puerto Rico, New Bedford Museum of Art, RISD Museum, Philadelphia Mural Arts, and national conferences on art spaces and community development, including Alliance of Artist Communities, Pittsburgh’s Community Development Summit, Congress of New Urbanism, and NALAC, among others.  http://sheyrivera.com

 

Moderator: HUASCAR ROBLES writes and makes art about technology and culture.

He has published with The New York TimesChicago Tribune’s HoyMetro San Juan and other publications in United States, Puerto Rico and Brazil. He was a correspondent in Haití and  published Puertos príncipes: temblemos todos, a journal and photo book on Haiti after the earthquake. He is currently an Op-Ed contributor to Puerto Rico’s El Nuevo Día. 

The Country Under My Skin, Los silencios de Santurce, Portraits of Marassa, are some of his photo and multimedia performances in the U.S. and Puerto Rico as well as the documentary The Invisible Coast, on Haitian merchants’ struggle on Puerto Rico’s Loíza town.

He has participated with The Dart Center’s Ochberg Fellowship (2009), Center for Justice and Journalism’s Urban Fellowship (2009), AS220’s Artist in Residence, and Brunetto’s School cultural exchange in Brazil (2006). His collection Country Under My Skin as acquired by Rhode Island’s Historical Society’s Permanent Gallery.  Robles has an M.F.A. from New York University.

 

 

 

 

Fantasy Island – Exhibition Open

For Shey Rivera Ríos and Huáscar Robles, Hurricane María is an atmospheric manifestation compounded by the fiscal crisis troubling Puerto Rico’s urban landscape. The installation and performance Fantasy Island is an experience that explores how tourism and consumer culture sell a “fantastical” luxury lifestyle, a tropical paradise twisting crisis into “opportunity”. A door opens into a real estate office selling dreams of luxury and reconstruction and the viewer delves into a dizzying spell of animated gifs, performance and altars.

For Fantasy Island, Rivera transformed Loisaida’s space into a real estate office surrounded by a black and white grid that envelops visitors while monitors flash GIFs that borrow aesthetics from the vaporwave movement. In one image, a hand waves a wad of cash to a “Puerto Rico” neon sign while icons of the Virgin Mary and a ram, both cultural symbols of Puerto Rico’s syncretism and colonial history, spin in an enticing, dizzying spell. Viewers are also inspired to reflect on how natural disasters such as the path of hurricanes affecting not only Puerto Rico but also our Caribbean neighbors maybe twisted into “opportunity” after the crisis subsides.

For the Loisaida Center, a cultural enterprise with deep roots in the Nuyorican and Latinx New York community, Fantasy Island stretches the island to New York and its Puerto Rican and Caribbean diaspora as it hits common issues they all grapple with.

The opening and closing reception will include a special performance.


Exhibition Viewing Hours: Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm and by appointment.


Throughout the fall, and beyond, the Loisaida Inc. Center’s programming will provide opportunities to pledge support to the relief and recovery efforts in the Caribbean.