Loisaida Inc.

Ecological Arts Puppet Workshops
2018-02-24 12:00 - 16:00 UTC | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Puppet Workshops with artist: Lucrecia Novoa
1st Session
Saturday, February 21st, 2018

Join us and take action on climate!
Participate in Earth Celebrations’ ECOLOGICAL CITY in partnership with Loisaida Inc. Center, LUNGS Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens and over 20 community partners.
Ecological City engages the Lower East Side community through creative strategies co-creating a theatrical pageant and environmental action project to develop and bring together climate resiliency and ecological sustainability plans within the gardens, neighborhood and waterfront of the Lower East Side of New York City, and its contribution to city and global climate challenges.
PUPPET & COSTUME WORKSHOPS:
Costumes: Every Wednesday starting February 21 from 6-9pm
Puppet: Every Saturday starting February 24 from 12-4pm
@ Loisaida Center 701 East 9th St. (Bet. Aves. C & D)
ECOLOGICAL CITY PAGEANT
Saturday May 12th, 2018

Sign up to participate.

ECOLOGICAL CITY - CREATIVE CLIMATE ACTION PUBLIC PLANNING MEETING
2018-02-07 18:00 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
ECOLOGICAL CITY – CREATIVE CLIMATE ACTION PUBLIC PLANNING MEETING
Wednesday February 7th @ 6:30 pm
@ Loisaida Inc. Center – 710 East 9th Street btw. Aves. C & D

Loisaida Inc. Center’s 2018 Artists in Residence; Earth Celebrations engages the Lower East Side community through: ECOLOGICAL CITIES, a theatrical pageant and environmental action project to co-develop and bring together climate resiliency and ecological sustainability plans within the gardens, neighborhood and waterfront of the Lower East Side of New York City, and highlight its contribution to the city and address global climate challenges.

View Calendar and Register Today for the FREE Community Workshops.

Soul of a City - Exhibition Ongoing
2018-01-19 18:00 - 2018-03-18 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Katharine Wright, in conjunction with neighborhood photographer, Ryan John Lee have curated an auction wall to benefit the initiatives of Loisaida Inc. The wall showcases local and international artists, emergent and established artists, all representations of the DIY, immigrant ethos here in Loisaida. Check out the artwork below.

Silent Auction Now Live!

Loisaida Inc. is proud to present Ryan John Lee. Contact us to view exhibition by appointment. Lee is a photographer/filmmaker based in New York City. He is a longtime resident of the Lower East Side. The soul of a city is manifested through its inhabitants: the newspaper sellers, subway riders, pavement pounders, and window shoppers. These seemingly banal routines and daily chores are what feed a city’s energy and identity. Soul of a City represents a collection of these everyday moments I’ve been fortunate enough to capture. Some are humorous or touching, while others are heartbreaking. In these photographs, I’ve aimed to transform the ordinary into something more magical and highlight the calm within the chaos of the urban landscape.

Book Talk: Street Gangs of the Lower East Side
2018-01-16 18:30 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Details
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.
Free with Registration
Co-sponsored by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and Loisaida Inc.
Books for sale and signing following the program.
This event is fully accessible.

ReconstruirMX@Loisaida
2018-01-13 19:00 - 22:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
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.
In November of 2017 an art benefit was held at 41 Cooper Gallery for communities devastated by earthquakes in Mexico. Through the raffling of over 100 artworks generously donated by local and international artists we were able to fundraise $13,000 USD in support of the relief and rebuilding efforts of the artist collective Los Carpintruenos, the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, and Centro Cultural Bacaanda.
While we began organizing partly due to our familial ties to Mexico and with the intention of making a gesture of support and camaraderie across borders, these efforts have been an urgent reminder to connect with international artistic communities; the need to stay connected, share stories and ideas, and cultivate long lasting relationships that transcend locality and lived experiences.
In December we visited Los Carpintruenos and the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico, whose work and energy is truly impressive and inspiring. The purpose of the upcoming event at Loisaida is to share the stories of these artistic communities and their impassioned work as well thank our extended NYC community for their ongoing support.

Los Carpintruenos, whose name combines carpinteros (carpenters) and truenos (thunder), is a group of seven volunteers whose mission is to generate effective, quick, and direct aid in the construction of houses and temporary refuges in both a long- and short-term capacity to regions affected by the earthquake. Los Carpintruenos met while assisting with carpentry, demolition, reconstruction, and rescue work in the area around calle de Gabriel Mancera, Mexico City’s post-earthquake “ground zero”. Buoyed by a sense of purposeful collective energy, they decided to stay in touch as they continued to assist with rebuilding efforts throughout the capital. More recently, they have expand their work beyond Mexico City, transporting supplies to the towns of Jojutla and El Jicarero in the state of Morelos and to this date successfully built 16 wooden houses for individuals and families left homeless.
Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico located in Valle de Chalco, on the outskirts of Mexico City, the Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico was built on an ex-hacienda dating to 1529. The Museum now houses an impressive collection of pre-Columbian objects and safeguards the archaeological remains of the Valle de Xico. In response to the earthquake, the museum has partnered with organizations in the region to deliver supplies directly to affected populations. To date, they have sent out three brigades and with our support they are now establishing medical outposts to assist those with medical needs.
Centro Cultural Bacaanda is a project founded by the Visual Artist Cristian Pineda Flores in May of 2006 in Juchitán of Saragossa, Oaxaca. It is an artistic proposal that unites the efforts and ideas of artists in diverse disciplines to create dynamics of exchange, formation, contemporary artistic production and cultural diffusion in the state of Oaxaca, especially in the region of the Isthmus. After the September 7 earthquake—which destroyed hundreds of houses in Juchitán—architects, engineers, people dedicated to the field of construction with experience, organized to support those that lost their homes and everything there.

Teófilo Torres es: Pateco en Loisaida
2017-12-28 20:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Thespian Maestro, TEOFILO TORRES, performs about post-hurricane María crisis in specially commissioned X-mas show. One night only @ LOISAIDA CENTER.

NEW YORK, NY, DECEMBER 15, 2017 – Puerto Rico’s most treasured monologist, Teófilo Torres, whose acting career spans over 40 years ––will perform at Loisaida Cultural Center on December 28th with his new creation: Pateco el Sepulturero (Pateco the Gravedigger).
Pateco’s character is borrowed from an old Puerto Rican folk tale. Legend has it that in 1899, after the deathly devastation of hurricane San Ciriaco, so many people died in the island -both during and in the hurricane’s aftermath- that dead bodies were left piling up at the gate of a local cemetery. The gravedigger was called Pateco, it is said. From then on, after someone has passed away, the people in the island have been known to say that ‘Pateco took them under’, ‘a fulano se lo llevó Pateco’.

Torres’ take on Pateco comes back to life in 2017, this time after hurricane María devastated Puerto Rico, to take to the grave those “dead bodies” and zombies now piling up all over the island. Torres’ Pateco character is portrayed as a half-drunk, half-political pundit, that has found a new devotion to singing jíbaro folk music “Décimas”. He is a jokester, however a complicated character that takes a swing at killing us (the audience) softly with his rhymes, and makes us aware of the current political and fiscal crisis facing the Caribbean island.
You can find more information online at loisaida.org/events
Loisaida Inc. has produced many performances throughout this year, some that recasts the current fiscal crisis of Puerto Rico, and more recently others hosting visual artists, musicians and academics interpreting through their work the impact on Puerto Rican communities in the wake of the 2017 hurricane season. Loisaida keeps the creative diaspora stemming from the Caribbean island to present a forward-looking merger of eco-urbanism and art-based community making.

Teófilo Torres (born 6 March 1954 in Ponce, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican actor, director and professor of theatre. He has acted for both television as well the big screen, and has performed in Puerto Rico and internationally.

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Teófilo Torres (born 6 March 1954 in Ponce, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican actor, director and professor of theatre. He has acted for both television as well the big screen, and has performed in Puerto Rico and internationally.

Fantasy Island: Exhibition Closing
2017-11-18 18:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
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 reception will include a special performance.
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.

Tale 53;Snowhite
2017-11-17 20:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Loisaida Inc. & Maskhunt Motions proudly present:
Tale 53;Snowhite
with: Deborah Hunt & Shanti Lalita

Tale 53; Snowhite is a sinister story told inside an intriguing wooden artefact that houses a toy theatre (with two- dimentional painted puppets moving on tracks), objects, a kamishibai (for backdrop changes) and a cranky or moving panorama. It is based on “Snowhite”, the creation of reknowned Spanish author and illustrator Ana Juan.
Deborah Hunt, (theatre maker, maskbuilder and operator, puppeteer, teacher and autor) has adapted and directed the tale and manipulates the puppets and backdrops. Shanti Lalita, (cellist, poet and performer) is the composer and live musician.
Far from the disneyesque version of Snow White, our tale relates the life of a young woman who falls prey to a blood thirsty stepmother, an hostile city, hustling dwarves and a rapacious prince. Based on the original story Tale 53 (The Little Snow White) of the Grimm Brothers published in 1812, the story of Ana Juan offers a biting and pertinent stare at the situation of women still relevant to our times. Justaposed with the beauty of the puppets, objects and painted backdrops, Tale 53;Snowhite promises a unique theatrical experience.
Toy theatre is a kind of theatre in miniature that flourished in the 19th century in Europe. The small theatres, scenery, backdrops and characters were printed on paper, painted and cutout and the stories were presented in the salas and drawing rooms of private houses, often accompanied with live music.
Hunt has presented the work in Puerto Rico (San German and San Juan) at the Odin Teatret in Denmark and now in New York. It will be presented at the Festival Internacional de Títeres de Matanzas en Cuba in 2018. Additionally I can offer a daylong workshop using the artefact of the show (toy theatre, kamishibai, cranky) as a point of departure. Participants work in groups creating short stories using these techniques.

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Mercado de Puerto Rico
2017-11-17 16:00 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States

ECOLOGICAL CITY-ENGAGEMENT/PLANNING MEETINGS
2017-11-15 18:30 - 20:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Next Meeting: Wednesday November, 15
When: 6:30-8:00 pm
Where: Loisaida Center – 710 East 9th Street (between Avenue C & D)
OPEN CALL – ARTISTS
Visual Artists, Dancers, Performers, Musicians & Poets
present and collaborate with community creating artistic works exploring climate resiliency, water and ecological sustainability
Please send links to past or current and proposed works related to ecological sustainability themes to mail@earthcelebrations.com (Subject Line – “OPEN CALL – ECOLOGICAL CITY” ) by November 15, 2017.

Fantasy Island: Performances
2017-11-11 19:00 - 22:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
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

Senior Day - November
2017-11-06 12:00 - 17:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
‘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
2017-10-25 18:00 - 22:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
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
2017-10-21 17:00 - 19:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
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

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

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.

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 Times, Chicago Tribune’s Hoy, Metro 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.

ART BUILD! LES Rises for Sandy 5 Year Action
2017-10-20 15:00 - 16:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Details
Five years after Sandy, we remember the storm and how our neighbors came together to support one another. Given the hoard of recent hurricanes impacting the Caribbean and other parts of the United States, we recognize the need to rise in solidarity for our siblings abroad, while also continuing to prepare to get through future storms together.
On the 5th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, New Yorkers will march together to remember the lives lost and the damage incurred from Sandy. We will march to demand bold climate action from Mayor de Blasio, Governor Cuomo, and Senator Schumer. Our elected officials must protect New Yorkers from climate change and mitigate its impacts – especially on already overburdened communities. New Yorkers cannot wait any longer. We march for climate, jobs, and justice.
We are hosting an Art Build to organize our LES contingent as we will be marching from Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn to Smith Houses in the Lower East Side. We will be marching on Saturday, October 28 and meeting at Cadman Plaza at 11am.

For more information, please visit:
** http://lesready.org/sandy5/ **

Fantasy Island: Exhibition Open
2017-10-12 13:00 - 17:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Fantasy Island by: Sheyla Rivera

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.

Exhibition Closing: Juan Bautista Climent-Palmer
2017-10-07 13:00 - 18:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States

Fantasy Island: Opening Reception
2017-10-05 19:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States

AbrazARTE: A Benefit for Puerto Rico
2017-09-30 18:00 - 23:55 | Teatro LaTEA, 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY, 10002, United States
The Loisaida, Inc. Center presents, AbrazARTE at Teatro LATEA. Fundraiser to help people affected by #hurricaneMaria in #PR and in solidarity with the evento Verde Luz artistic movement.
AbrazARTE is proud to present a showcase between local and international artists who love Puerto Rico and its people.
Please join us on Saturday to raise funds by those gravely affected. We will present an art auction, theater, poetry, and music, with ongoing projections of performances from the Puerto Rican Diaspora from all over the world.
Complementary food & drink by Port Morris Distillery from 6-7pm.
We are partnering with Eco Kit Puerto Rico, an ecological platform for responsible relief donations that respond to the island’s geography, weather conditions, contamination, waste management , and infrastructure. Funds will be added to the DonatePuertoRico.com which ensures us that 100{d189f1124ffa6975f5923217354196c41f30852329af055ade71c436dc0b2403} of ALL donations will go directly to victims of this hurricane and the legitimate grassroots efforts and organizations we have identified.
LIVE MUSIC BY:
Flaco Navaja and the Razorblades
Buscabulla
Fernandito Ferrer
D’Marquesina
PARTICIPATING PERFORMERS:
Teatro 220
Edwin Torres
Urayoan Noel
Peggy Robles-Alvarado
Bonafide Rojas
Bob Holman
Teresa Martinez
Colectivo
June Bug Basura & Papo Cucaracha Vertedero
Redi Dance Co
Natalie Nazario
Eva Cristina Vazquez
Nicole Cecilia
VISUAL ARTISTS:
Zule Alejandro
Juan Bautista Climent
Coco144
Pepe Coronado
Coronado Print Studio
Cybil Vladimir Charlier
Sofia Shaula del Rio
Giacinta Frisillo
Jonas Hidalgo
Leslie Jimenez
Rejin Leys
Fernando Ruiz Lorenzo
Carlos Jesus Martinez
Zahyde Pietri
Bonafide Rojas
Juan Sanchez
Erick Sanchez
Sebastian Vallejo
and many more
Thanks to co-sponsors: Acacia Network, Port Morris Distillery, Casa Adela, ABC Beer Company, Suffolk Arms, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, FABNYC, and more!

Solo Exhibition: Juan Bautista Climent-Palmer
2017-09-29 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-28 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-23 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-22 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-21 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-16 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-15 13:00 - 18:00, 2017-09-14 13:00 - 18:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States

Lecture: Introductory Workshops on Constructivist Aesthetics(in Spanish)
2017-09-22 19:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Exposition of the Constructivist Doctrine By Marcos Torres Andrada
BIO: Marcos Torres Andrada, son of the painter Augusto Torres, who received by direct oral tradition, the philosophy proposed by his grandfather, Maestro Joaquín Torres García, in his Constructivist School.
Relevancy and Urgency of The Constructivist Proposal, The need to redefine a Pan-American Culture (7:00-9:00 pm)
This conference will bring to light fundamental concepts of the Constructivist Proposal highly relevant in the Contemporaneity of the American Continent and global challenges.

Sing for Hope!
2017-09-21 18:30 - 19:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Come one, Come All!!
Loisaida Inc., Acacia Network and the Institute for the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Elderly invite you to experience the uplifting power of music with Broadway performers from Sing for Hope!
The Sing for Hope vision of art for all is informed by our belief that the arts have unique power to uplift, unite, and transform individuals and communities. Our outreach programs in under-resourced areas – from schools to community centers to healthcare facilities – demonstrate this every day.
Each Sing for Hope program is defined by the volunteer service of artists, the needs of the community, and our belief in the transformative power of the arts.

Merengue Prieto New York 2017
2017-09-09 16:30 - 19:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Loisaida Inc. Center and Afro-Inspira presents:
Merengue Prieto New York 2017
Marily Gallardo, choreographer/artivist and founder of Kalalú Danza Artes Escénicas, has come from Dominican Republic to share with us her work and provide a master dance class, interactive talk and healing circle. All funds are to support Kalalú Danza Project in keep moving forward their mission and work in Los Mercedes, Dominican Republic.
You are coordially invited to:
MASTER DANCE CLASS: Merengue Prieto / rhythm dance session – traveling steps with TAMBORA. Incorporate another perspective that focuses on the origins of popular tradition and its makers through the execution of poly rhythmic-gestural patterns and to enjoy “merengue” afro.
INTERACTIVE TALK: “Mujeres de la Candela” (Women of the Fire) / pedagogical experience on identity and black women power such as how women power and values are transmitted within the afro-descendant communities, like courage, daily intelligence, and spiritual beliefs, etc.
HEALING RITUAL: Creative full moon circle.
Class starts prompltly at 5pm followed by talk and healing circle.
Suggested Donation: $25
This event is FREE, no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please bring comfortable clothes and shoes.

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Mission:
Kalalú Danza, Dominican Republic
For Kalalú Danza, the Afro-antillian concept is presented as one that encompasses and is a synthesis of thought and expression of the socio-cultural diversity of the Caribbean. From that premise, Kalalú’s pedagogical approach affirms a particular study of rhythm and movement, of its oral tradition, and symbolism which influenced by “the Afro” can be found in the popular artistic manifestations of such cultures. Such artistic manifestations provides the basis to generate performance, scenic, and pedagogical proposals which contributes to the development of the local communities as well as the individual and social transformation.
