A celebration is coming:
The Loisaida Festival has been historically celebrated on the Sunday before Memorial Day, this year is on:
2017’s theme is Immigration where we’ll be recognizing and celebrating the Im/migrant experience in the Lower East Side – The Gateway to America, and celebrating the Latin American Immigrant and their contributions to this community, city and country.
Join us on Thursday March 16th for an artist talk featuring many of our participating artists.
The artists will share about themselves and their artistic practice, as well as the meaning behind the artworks they created for the CitiCien exhibit.
SPEAKING ARTISTS:
Bonafide Rojas
Carlos Jesus Martinez Dominguez
Melissa Montero
Vagaond Alexander Beaumont
Yasmín Hernández
Will Rosado
Juan Sanchez
Manny Vega
Jean Oyola
Shellyne Rodriguez
Other artists in attendance:
Sofia Maldonado
Daniel Alago
Nelson Host Santiago
Leenda Bonilla
Luis Pagan
Jo-El Lopez
Nia Andino
Oliver Rios
Signed in 1917 by President Wilson, The Jones-Shafroth Act granted U.S. citizenship to anyone born in Puerto Rico on or after April 25, 1898, a complex and significant turning point for the people of Puerto Rico.
Following strict visual guidelines of size and a black-and-white only palette, the exhibit’s theme is one of visual consistency and commitment, acting as a metaphor of the unified voice and solidarity of Puerto Ricans during this critical political time. Coinciding with the 100 year anniversary of the signing of the Jones Act, CITICIEN, in an effort to nurture greater solidarity and collaboration, will feature 100 Puerto Rican artists from the island and the diaspora.
Curated by Puerto Rican artist Adrián Viajero Román, DEFEND PUERTO RICO’s CITICIEN traveling exhibition will feature 100 artworks highlighting the historical and present-day impact of the Jones Act.
About DEFEND PUERTO RICO
Defend PR is a multimedia project designed to document and celebrate Puerto Rican creativity, resilience, and resistance. Recognizing the complex and dynamic landscapes that comprise Puerto Rican daily life and struggle, Defend PR seeks to deepen connections between Puerto Ricans on the island and throughout the diaspora, in the hopes of nurturing greater solidarity, collaboration, and kinship.
#CITICIENPR #DEFENDPR
Visit www.defendpr.com
www.facebook.com/Defendpr / instagram.com/defendpr
Cover photo: “Wall of Resistance” by Leenda Bonilla + Luis Pagan
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Loisaida Inc. and Atomic Culture are proud to present:
Renowned scholars, artists, cultural activists and critics–Ricardo Dominguez, Teddy Cruz, Fonna Forman and Ed Morales–ccome together to discuss their distinct yet cross-cultural perspectives on the intersections of arts and culture, activism and policy, and forced migration and community building, utilizing examples of neighborhoods including the Lower East Side.
We will consider how might our cultural activism, advocacy, and participatory planning begin working to create stronger collaborative movements and build solidarity within and beyond our multiple communities?
In the face of political uncertainties, we will also consider what tactics and strategies work to strengthen cultural equity advocacy, to influence policy and to advance equity principles as part of what should be enshrined in NYC’s cultural plan. A report-back on the discussion will be included as a set of recommendations to the New York City Council’s 10 year Cultural Plan.
Please RSVP, limited capacity!
Loisaida Inc. and the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation are proud to present:
The Lower East Side in the 1980s and 90s was home to a radical squattingmovement that
blended urban homesteading and European-style squatting in a way never before seen in the
United States.
Ours to Lose takes a close look at a diverse group of Lower East Side squatters who occupied abandoned city-owned buildings in the 1980s, fought to keep them for decades, and eventually began a long, complicated process to turn their illegal occupancy into legal cooperative ownership.
In this multimedia event Starecheski will use oral histories to explore the complicated
relationships between homesteading and squatting on the Lower East Side, and in American
history.
Amy Starecheski is co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia
University. She received a PhD in cultural anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where
she was a Public Humanities Fellow. In 2016 she was awarded the “Will the Next Margaret
Mead Please Stand Up?” Prize for public anthropological writing.
Check out video of the talk below:
Atomic Culture in collaboration with the Loisaida Inc. Center as part of the 2017 Art Residency Program at Loisaida. presents:
Exhibition open from February 4 to March 18, 2017
Opening Reception: February 4th, 2017 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Details:
Future Now // Futura Ahora calls to attention the movement of artists reclaiming and reconfiguring their cultural disposition and narratives with society at large. Through sound, installation, literature, and visual arts each artist presents compelling possibilities for the future by embracing and reclaiming their histories, traditions, and present-day experiences.
During Atomic Culture’s curatorial artist residency at the Loisaida Center. They will bringing together 15 artists native to the southwest United States, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and California to discuss futurism and geopolitics. Futurism is not just about technology but an act of self preservation and concern toward the creation and dismemberment of invisible borders, pillaging of natural resources, and colonization. Through decolonization and reclamation of traditions, personal culture, land and natural medicine.
Within the exhibition and workshops each artist addresses these issues blending their complex histories with a contemporary perspective creating a new trajectory.
Future Now/Futura Ahora will host multiple workshops on reclaiming use of the land and the natural remedies she provides you, discussions and screenings on chicanx futurism. The exhibition serving as a catalyst to discuss and initiate thinking and being in a time of increased tension and unknown.
Artists:
Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0, Nani Chacon, Gilbert “Magú” Luján, Ryan Dennison, Zeke Pena, Chico MacMurtrie, Claudia X. Valdes, Ruben Ortiz Torres, William Camargo, Rick Cortez, Lindsay Kane, Delilah Montoya, Cristobal Martinez, Scott Williams, Cultural Workers, and a SSSK Distro retrospective.
We are excited to host FABNYC’s next Sustainable Artist Toolkit workshop,
Artists with Radical Visions: Shifting, Challenging, Thriving!
Before we all break for the holidays, let’s refocus our energies towards realizing our self-determined liberated life. Engage in a strategic dialogue around needs and resources and learn to work together to define boundaries, affirm goals, and stand in our power.
Tuesday, December 13, 7-9pm right here at Loisaida Inc. Center!
RSVP: http://fabnyc.org/archive/artists-rad-visions/
ARTISTS:
Antonio Tovar, Darío Fresco,
Ed Álvarez, Edwin Torres, Evelin Velásquez, Frank Guiller, Hillie Galarza, Ignacio Soltero, Jonás Hidalgo, Luis Carle, Ray Llanos, Rafael Carabano, Yelaine Rodríguez.
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE BY:
Carlos Rivera
Bronx Latin American Art Biennial’s Curators: Alexis Mendoza & Luis Stephenberg
OVERVIEW
I am one of those peoples that…
The 2016 edition of the Bronx Latin American Art Biennial under the title, “I am one of those people that…” will examine artworks referring to personal aspects of the creation process, what is in the mind of the artists sometimes is not what is reflecting on the work or the personal opinion; the personal philosophy. The curators and organizers of the 5th Bronx Latin American Art Biennial will focus the selection of the artworks more in the way artists think and what are the specifics behind the creating process. We encourage the artists to be very vocal about their work. Also, our intention is to have the opportunity to explore some of today’s local, national and international social issues such as: migration, women’s rights, political conflicts, different types of discrimination, and more important issues that reflect on the autonomy of the opinion. We are not seeking for every artwork to be a portrait or self-portraits, rather to be a self-representation of the artist’s way of thinking.
Sometimes art’s autonomy is proposed not as a genuine theoretical claim but as strategic one, where the suggestion is that only by claiming that art is indemnified by its very nature against moral culture can we prevent the forms of censorship that art is regularly subject to. But this strategic appeal to autonomy may purchase art’s freedom only at the cost of denying art’s power. I believe that a society that supports the arts supports the cultivation of minds that are able to pay attention, to think and notice what’s on artists’ minds become a habitual experience. Only then are there opportunities to reinforce the national culture. That will be the ultimate autonomy. Here we have drawn unlikely under current conditions, opinion, proposing instead a problematization of the same to the extent that we would no longer or with a referential field or with the discursive strategies capable of taking charge of the experience under the dissolutive operations that ideology, while constituting each of the moments of the object, has practiced on the disciplines and techniques that seek to address it.
Oct 19th – Nov 18th
Opening Reception: Oct 28 at 7:30pm
The EXODUS series explores the Puerto Rican experience of migration, past and present. Focused on towns and municipalities that are encountering a rapid decrease in population, causing separation of families, homes to be abandoned, and businesses to be closed down. Today’s crisis of the poor economy, high taxes, drugs and violence, and a decrease in agriculture that was once a thriving industry for Puerto Rico’s economy has contributed to an estimated over 300,000 people leaving the island in the past 10 years, with 144,000 of them leaving in the last 4 years, and 64,000 leaving in 2014 alone.
Adrian blocks some traffic on Broadway to show people what Puerto Rico looks like. (Wood house siding cut out in the shape of Puerto Rico, the black outlines are the shapes of the municipalities with the highest population of Puerto Ricans that have left their homes).
This is a portion of Viajero's installation on display at Loisaida Inc. Center which will become a permanent installation on display at the NYC Facebook office headquarters.
#LOISAIDACenter #exodus #crisisisland #DefendPR
Tuesday, November 15th, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.
Published in 1999, Seth Tobocman’s War in the Neighborhood remains one of the most relevant graphic novels exploring housing and community issues. Called a “masterpiece of gentrification” and “the comic book version of Rent,” War in the Neighborhood is a riveting first-hand account of radical neighborhood transformations in late 80’s and early 90’s New York.
With nuance and candor, Tobocman tells the tales of courageous communities built from rubble while exploring the moral complexities inherent in any movement, and the struggles against displacement that continue in varied forms today.
To coincide with the republishing of this classic novel by Ad Asta Comix, Tobocman will lead an illustrated discussion of his experiences, his art, and how the two intersect.
Seth Tobocman co- founded the magazine World War 3 Illustrated and is the author of many graphic books including his latest, Len, A Lawyer in History, about civil rights attorney Leonard Weinglass. His illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, the Village Voice, The Museum of Modern Art, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, posters, banners, murals, patches and tattoos by people’s movements all over the world.
This event is co-sponsored with GVSHP.
Below there is video documentation of the event for those who missed it.
Loisaida Inc. presents:
BRAINLINGO – A poetry workshop for the body and mind.
With: Edwin Torres
Thursdays, September 15th, 22nd, 29th & October 13th from 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
710 East 9th Street New York, NY 10009
(Joining Edwin on Sept. 22 will be guest artist Will Power, Doris Duke Foundation Resident Artist at New York Theater Workshop)
OVERVIEW:
A Poetry Workshop For The Body And Mind — is a creative laboratory combining elements of theater, collage, and movement structured around language. Participants will explore the performative edges that embody transition as rich tools for transformative work. By cultivating an awareness between the disciplines of body language and archetypes of imagination, the tri-lingual voice, the speaking-seeing-hearing voice, will be nurtured. The four weeks are oriented around opening the sensory awareness necessary for artistic expression.
The workshop is structured sequentially for maximum effect, however each class can be taken individually to fit your schedule. Please enroll online.
September 15th – CLASS 1: GROUND
Poets are creatures grounded in awareness. To establish that ground, we need to see what happens to awareness as it transitions. We activate that trigger by presenting two immersive exercises built to represent the evolution of the creative process as a microcosm of the writer’s experience. The writing that emerges is then shared and a discussion follows, utilizing the newly-charged creative space. This becomes groundwork for transition to become a resource in the creative process.
September 22nd – CLASS 2: BALANCE (with guest artist Will Power)
In this class, we’re lucky to be joined by award-winning playwright and performer Will Power. To nurture creativity is to spark the imagination, to see the world from many viewpoints, to cultivate where balance lies, literally, from one foot to the other. Using alignment to explore movement in theater and performance, we’ll integrate exercises from The Alexander Technique that explore the spine’s relationship to language, and how support is integral to creativity. We’ll then explore improvisation in dialogue on stage and in action by creating brief performances in group settings. Between Will Power and Edwin Torres, an immersive narrative among a range of genres will create an intoxicating blend of creative inspiration for the class to journey by.
September 29th – CLASS 3: SIGHT
Our volume, our mass, the weight of our perception is defined by the movement we attach to it. This week, we’ll take what we explored with Will Power the previous week and interpret music as movement, words as sound, interconnecting the accumulation of classes as possibilities for interpretation. The students will be taking their places with each other to create movement plays, based on word exercises reducing writing into vowels and consonants. Our movements are mapped into choreo-poems, as concrete poetry and collage are explored and assigned, creating new pathways into the visual senses.
October 13th – CLASS 4: VOICE (Please note that the first Thursday in October, Oct. 6th, will be skipped)
To communicate what’s being listening to requires an understanding of border with intention, defined as “voice.” This final class explores the Japanese dance Butoh – which explores energy slowly traveling through the dancer’s body. Butoh will be used to translate the voices within, to interpret listening to unknown voices into action. Mantra and repetition will be used to generate new writing out of trance states, further opening the possibilities of sensory awareness. Collaged pieces will be adapted into new texts, creating a performance of collected works to be presented at The Loisaida Center at a later date in November.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Edwin Torres came to poetry as a graphic designer in New York City, becoming a self-proclaimed “lingualisualist,” fluent in the languages of sight and sound. The iconic diversity of the East Village during the 90’s, along with the combined forces of Dixon Place, The Nuyorican Poets Café, and The St. Marks Poetry Project, shaped his multi-disciplinary approach to language. He was a member of the poetry collective “Nuyorican Poets Café Live” that helped revitalize Spoken Word, performing and giving workshops worldwide. He is the author of eight books of poetry, including Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press 2014), Yes Thing No Thing (Roof Books 2010), In The Function Of External Circumstances (Nightboat Books 2009) and The PoPedology of An Ambient Language (Atelos Books 2008). He’s received fellowships from the DIA Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Foundation For Contemporary Performing Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and The Poetry Fund among others.
In 2016, he judged the Andre Montoya Poetry Prize at the University of Note Dame, performed his solo show “Mi Voca Su Voca” at The Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, is part of a 2-year artist’s residency entitled Open Studios at The Drawing Center in New York City, and received a residency fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, Creative Writing Program for the upcoming semester. His visual poetics have been exhibited at Exit Art, EFA Gallery in NYC, and a graphic retrospective “Poesís: The Visual Language of Edwin Torres” at The Center for Book and Paper Arts, Chicago, Il. His CD “Holy Kid” (Kill Rock Stars Records) was part of the Whitney Museum’s exhibit “The American Century Part II.” Anthologies include, American Poets in the 21st Century: Vol. 2 (Wesleyan University), Angels Of The Americlypse: An Anthology of New Latin@ Writing (Counterpath Press), Post-Modern American Poetry Vol. 2 (Norton), Best American Poetry (Penguin), Kindergarde: Avant Garde Poems and Plays for Children (Black Radish Books), and Aloud: Voices from The Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Holt).
Will Power is an award-winning playwright and performer. Plays include “Stagger Lee” (Dallas Theater Center), “Fetch Clay, Make Man”(New York Theater Workshop, Marin Theatre Company, Roundhouse Theatre, True Colors Theater), “Steel Hammer” with SITI Company (Humana Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music), “The Seven” (Lucille Lortel Award Best Musical, New York Theater Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, Ten Thousand Things Theater Company), Five Fingers of Funk! (Children’s Theatre Company), Honey Bo and The Goldmine (La Jolla Playhouse) and two internationally acclaimed solo shows “The Gathering,” and “Flow.”
In addition to being the Doris Duke Foundation Resident Artist at New York Theater Workshop, Power is also on the faculty at The Meadows School of the Arts/SMU, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Playwright in Residence with the Dallas Theatre Center