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".
Please join us on January 13th, 2018 for a night of music, dance, tamales and the celebration of the artistic spirit in the rebuilding efforts of communities impacted by the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico. Performances by Sandra Soto Silva, The Josh Craig and more.
With “The Street Gangs of the Lower East Side,” Jose Cochise
Quiles and Clayton Patterson provide a brutally honest, self-reflective and moving account of one person’s struggle to break the cycle of violence and poverty since birth through creativity and compassion for others in the East Village / Lower East Side. Quiles pulls no punches about the experiences that took him from gang leader to an historian of gangs, artist, and author who creates with a joyous yet desperate edge, for the sake of sheer survival.
You are invited to join us for a launch celebration of El Semillero - The Seedbed, a maker space community hub for cultivating our skills & community. Set for the first component to open mid 2018. The benefit event will feature a silent auction where over 10 established and up-and-coming artists will donate a piece of art for visitors to bid on and take home that same night. The auction wall is curated by Ryan John Lee and Katharine J. Wright. There will also be a performance by surrealist bohemia pioneer Joe Louis and the New York City + Puerto Rico sensational deejay D'MARQUESINA and much more!
Joe Louis returns with his experimental bohemia to NYC from PR. Come and enjoy a night full of stories to wait for the end of the world and face it. Come to love and be loved with music and vocal improvisation. Swimming in the "Río Piedras" had never been so far away.
Direct from Puerto Rico, Giovani Roberto, an organizer with Centro de Apoyo Mutuo - CAM (Center of Mutual Support), Caguas, will be discussing how its projects and others, are creating alternative solutions to meet the basic sustenance needs of the Puerto Rican people after Hurricane Maria. Other speakers include Melissa Fuster, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Brooklyn College, and Huascar Robles, author/journalist/producer of Catatonia podcast.
Loisaida Inc. and its project The Plenatorium are pleased to host a performance and ritual stemming straight from the faith based history of Puerto Ricans in the Lower East Side. The "Feast of the Holy Cross" roughly translates into "Fiestas de Cruz" and members of the community have kept it alive from generation to generation through oral history. On these days during the month of May, many families, neighbors, friends and strangers would gather to recite a live rosary chant accompanied by Puerto Rican traditional plena sounds.
Learn how to build a dome, using Build With Hubs, Kit for Geodesic Dome Building. This kit uses pre-fabricated connection hubs that allow for the sides of the dome to easily snap together. Come together and build a dome! . 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.
Reception + Performances
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 Overview: 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 [...]
