Loisaida Inc.

Fiestas de Cruz at Loisaida
2019-05-11 17:00 - 20:00 UTC | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Loisaida Inc. Center presents:
Fiestas de Cruz at Loisaida
Saturday, May 11 – 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm
A Loisaida Tradition!
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.
Come and enjoy the good company and traditional “plena” sounds of Puerto Rico.
Arrive promptly at 5:00 pm to savor a bowl of traditional “Sancocho” or Puerto Rican stew before the ceremonies begin. Courtesy of Pepe Flores.

LOISAIDA SMORGASBORD CABARET & RESTORATION PROJECTS
2019-05-10 18:30 - 22:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
L.A.B. & Loisaida Inc. Center present: A night of visual art and performance not to be missed!
Friday, May 10, 2019
at the Loisaida Center, 710 E 9th St
6:30 pm – Doors Open to mingle and jingle
8:00 pm – Performances begin!
Event ends promptly at 10:00 pm
Plus:
Opening reception of: Rolando’s Winter Flowers & Bimbo Rivas’ post-mortem prints: part of the Loisaida Restoration Projects at El Semillero. Special Edition prints will be on sale!
And, a special world premiere screening of the new Garbagia Projects short by: Audaz Productions! Woohoo!
Loisaida Inc. presents an evening of esoteric clowns, iconoclastic puppetshows, and strange & wonderful performance in the 4th dimension!
Tickets: $10-15
This event will serve as a fundraiser for the upcoming free community workshops and events in the LES community gardens, hosted by LAB, More Gardens, and the Loisaida Center. Throughout the month of May, visiting artists from around the world will be collaborating with local artists, community volunteers and gardeners to create giant puppets, masks, costumes and installations. Final performances will be held in different gardens of the Lower East Side on Friday, May 24, and Saturday May 25, and of course on Sunday May 26 at the Loisaida Festival, with the parade and the theater lab, culminating in the community pageant. All performances will highlight the struggles, and celebrate the rich stories of the gardeners, the everyday heroes that bring back the green Oasis to the island of Manhattan.
Featured performers for the May 10 show include: Bryan Fernandez, Alexandra Tatarsky, Alex Millan, Merry Carver, Marta Maria, Paola Michelle’s yoni dance, Kalan Sherrard bringing you some ecclectic performance Watch Out! Returning to Loisaida for the fourth year; Adam Ende’s Jawbone Puppet Theater, Pablillo Varona Borges of Casa Mucaro, national treasure Daniel Polnau, and more!
This will seriously be a weird and wonderful show that you don’t want to miss out on!
Check out the Loisaida’s Restorations Project: http://loisaida.org/the-seedbed/restoration-projects/
And check the work of last year’s Loisaida Artists in Residence: More Gardens http://www.moregardens.org/

Pasado y Presente: Art After the Young Lords
2019-05-03 | Nathan Cummings Foundation, 475 10th Avenue, New York, NY, 10018, United States
Pasado y Presente: Art After the Young Lords
On View at Nathan Cummings Foundation
475 10th Ave., 14th Floor
New York, NY 10018
May 3rd – October 25th, 2019.
Viewing is by appointment only.
Second site exhibition at Loisaida Inc. Center, opening to the public June 3rd, 2019

The Loisaida Inc. Center in partnership with the Nathan Cummings Foundation, are pleased to announce the opening of Pasado y Presente: Art After the Young Lords, an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Young Lords Organization in New York that will be on view at the Nathan Cummings Foundation offices through October 25, 2019. Active between 1969 and 1975, The Young Lords described themselves as a revolutionary party fighting for the liberation of all oppressed people. Their spectacular demonstrations, artful self-presentation, and masterful deployment of DIY media via their newspaper, Pa’lante, brought international attention to demands voiced in black and brown communities across the United States for cultural equity, equal rights for women and the LGBTQ population; communal control of housing, healthcare, education, sanitation; alternatives to methadone; and independence for Puerto Rico and other subjugated nations.
Spanning different generations, nationalities, and ethnicities, the artists displayed in Pasado y Presente represent a creative community that is connected to the Young Lords by their passion for art in the service of social justice and vanguard aesthetics. The work displayed here illuminates the influence that the Lords have had on activists and artists far beyond their six years as a formal organization. Featured in this exhibit are documentary photographs of Young Lords activism by Máximo Colón and Luis Carle and vintage posters from Taller Boricua, an East Harlem print collective that was allied with the Young Lords. Additional artists on display include: AgitArte, Pepe Coronado, Sophia Dawson, Marcos Dimas, Hatuey Ramos Fermín, Miguel Luciano, Carlos Jesús Martínez Domínguez, Shellyne Rodríguez, Adrián Viajero Román, Juan Sánchez, Nitza Tufiño, Rafael Tufiño, and Valor y Cambio.
The Loisaida Center will also be the first host-site of the VyC (“Valor y Cambio”) machine, an ATM-style device, which will travel to various locations distributing bills and, in return, gather stories on video about what people value.
Pasado y Presente will be accompanied by a booklet and a related exhibition at the Loisaida Center by AgitArte, Coronado Print Studio, Sherezade García, and Valor y Cambio that explores migration, movement, intra-diasporic Caribbean identity in NYC, alternative economies, story-telling and decolonial narratives. On Sunday, May 26, several participating artists in Pasado y Presente will take part in interactive urban interventions during the 32nd Annual Loisaida Festival.
Additionally, Nathan Cummings and the Loisaida Center will host a series of public programs investigating topics such as history and influence of the Young Lords in New York, feminist and LBGTQ activism in Latinx communities, cultural production and organizing in Puerto Rico post-Maria, the intersection of environmental justice with anti-displacement efforts in NYC’s poor and working class neighborhoods. Updates and dates of programming will be posted on the Nathan Cummings and Loisaida Center websites.

To set up an appointment to visit the exhibit, contact exhibits@nathancummings.org
The related exhibition at the Loisaida Center will be on view starting June 3rd, Mondays through Thursdays from noon to 4pm, and by appointment. Contact info@loisaida.org for scheduling.

Related Programming:
The Liquid Highway
Sunday, May 26th, 2019 at Loisaida Inc. Center’s Courtyard (710 East Ninth Street near Avenue C) from 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm.
Developed in collaboration with No Longer Empty and taking place during the Loisaida Festival, The Liquid Highway is a participatory printmaking workshop that celebrates movement and migration. Artist, Scherezade Garcia, will be on site leading an interactive installation of marine landscapes on inner tube material presented as scrolls. This urban intervention and printmaking workshop honors our shared collective history and the commitments we have to one another. Through the act of printmaking, the public will have the opportunity to print a section of the landscape and own their own piece of this complex history.
Valor Y Cambio – NYC Launch
Sunday, May 26th, 2019 at Loisaida Festival STEM Zone (between 6th and 7th Streets on Avenue C) from 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm.
Valor y Cambio (#valorycambio) is a story-telling, community-building, and solidarity economy project started by the artists Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Sarabel Santos Negrón. It raises the question of what Puerto Ricans value as a society and introduces a community currency—pesos of Puerto Rico—as a means of change, in the sense of both money and social transformation.
After its successful February 2019 launch in Puerto Rico, the community currency interactive project will make its NYC debut during the Loisaida Festival, as part of the Eco- STEAM zone.

“Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in their personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc., its affiliates or staff.”

LATINOAMERICANIDAD
2019-04-02 18:00 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Description

The Loisaida Inc. Center in collaboraton with Caribbean Cultural Center and African Diaspora Intitute (CCCADI) present, Fabián Villegas:
LATINOAMERICANIDAD: RACIAL IDENTITIES, COLONIAL IMAGINARIES & NATIONAL NARRATIVES
About:
Fabián Villegas is a writer, journalist, spoken word artist, scholar and researcher in Global South epistemologies, decolonial thoughts and racial studies. Since 2007 to date, Villegas has been invited to give multiple conferences, seminars, lectures and workshops in various universities and academic centers, renowned art biennials and community cultural centers across the globe. He is also the co-founder of Contranarrativas, a collaborative project that seeks to create horizontal knowledge production spaces to stimulate the visibility, dissemination and production of epistemologies, decolonial narratives and peripheral aesthetics of the Global South. Born in Mexico City, Villegas currently resides in the Dominican Republic.
Join Fabián Villegas on April 2nd, 2019 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at Loisaida Inc. Center – 710 East Ninth Street and Avenue C, for an evening of Storytelling, Spoken Word and Creative Writing.
Lower East Side, NYC (Loisaida)

Agroecology & Food Sustainability
2019-03-30 18:30 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Simultaneous events at Loisaida Inc. Center and :Pública, a cultural space in Santurce, Puerto Rico; will explore the perceived tension between the traditional and the 21st century methods of harvesting and preparation as it relates to all things FOOD. Themes and topics will include: growing ingredients, recipes, colonization and agriculture, farming and imported food, where traditional cuisine comes from and what it means, and where and how Puerto Rican food can be found and prepared locally – both in the Lower East Side and in Santurce, Puerto Rico.
Space is limited, please RSVP here.
Presented as part of the Loisaida Inc. Center AIR Program. Lead by resident artist, Jocelyn Bonadio de Freitas.

@ Loisaida Inc. Center
Speakers: Tara Rodriguez-Besosa, Jocelyn Bonadio-de Freitas
Food by: Tara Rodriguez-Besosa (Asopao – Puerto Rican Stew))
Music/Sound Collage by: Jocelyn Bonadio-de Freitas
@ Pública
Speaker: Ian Pagan, Natalia Vallejo
Food by: Natalia Vallejo (Asopao – Puerto Rican Stew)
Program:

Doors Open at 6:00 pm
Event starts at 6:30 pm and ends at 8:00 pm EST
Rundown
6:30-6:45: Introduction and explanation of event by Jocelyn Bonadio-de Freitas
6:45-7:30: Talk/Sharing from Tara, Ian, Natalia including explanation of “asopao” (Puerto Rican Stew)
7:30-7:45: Audience eats, Q&A, Jocelyn set up
7:45-8:05: Jocelyn Live Sound performance*

Media Used for Justice, Equity, Respect
2019-03-25 17:30 - 19:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Pre-registration is required. Click here to register.
Limited spaces available.

Project LAZO: CROSSROADS
2019-03-19 18:00 - 2019-03-30 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
*Image by: Pedro Wainer | ‘Cruces’ , 2019.
LAZO at Loisaida present:
CROSSROADS
Opening Reception: Tuesday, March 19th, 2019 | 6-8 PM
Only through Saturday, March 30th
Curated by: Silvia Benedetti in collaboration with LAZO
Participating Artists:
Isabella Cruz-Chong
Jose Joaquín Figueroa
Catalina Schliebener
Pedro Wainer

Overview:
Standing in a crossroads makes us realize that the greatest block we can create for ourselves is the idea that there is a single right choice. This exhibition gathers a series of artworks –in a variety of mediums– in which the literal and figurative meaning of a crossroads is present. Daily life, childhood, gender, class, landscape, and identity are a few of the themes brought to bear by the works in the exhibition. These references, intersected through a range of material and narrative gestures, reveal how various perspectives can exist in a given moment.
This exhibition brings together four Latin American artists from different backgrounds for which New York functions as a point of intersection. The works on display build narratives along different lines: Isabella Cruz-Chong’s works reference the US-Mexico border fence, filmed on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Mexico where she grew up. She presents a performance/video of an invisible wall highlighting the struggle and irony that goes with it. Cruz-Chong also has on view instructions made for Mexican children who are learning how to behave when crossing the border.
José Joaquín Figueroa presents a record of everyday environments illustrating his ongoing pilgrimage. In his drawings he reflects on the fragility of fleeting moments, the complications of inter-layered identities, and the impossibility of a single perspective.
Catalina Schliebener presents a series of collages made with children’s books; material that carries implicit narratives around gender, sexuality, and class. She researches childhood, considering it an important period in which the limits between reality and fiction are not yet defined.
Lastly, Pedro Wainer explores analogue film and photographic techniques by reconfiguring technologies in disuse. He presents composite footage and moving projections made from still images of the East River from both sides in Manhattan and Brooklyn–highlighting the river and its bridges as both a geographic and man-made border meant to be crossed.
This exhibition was organized in collaboration with Silvia Benedetti, a Venezuelan New York-based independent
curator and art writer, and is part of a series of events organized by LAZO at The Loisaida Center in NYC.
Read more about the LAZO project and residency here.
Download press release here.

About the artists:
LAZO is a collaborative project founded by Alva Mooses and Claudia Cortínez. We are artists of Latin American descent focusing on intersections of photography, sculpture and printmaking and began working together while doing our graduate studies together at Yale University. We have organized exhibitions, publications, and talks that support artists while furthering cross-cultural dialogue. Both born in the U.S. (Alva to parents from Mexico & the U.S. and Claudia to parents from Argentina & Chile) our practices have relied largely on being based in NYC while working internationally creating ties to distinct communities.
Alva Mooses is an artist based in New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union and her MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited her work at the 10th Havana Biennial, Instituto Cervantes in NY, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Logan Center for the Arts, Eduardo Sívori Museum, among others. She has completed residencies such as the APL Program at The University of Chicago, Tou Trykk in Stavanger, Norway, the Davidoff Art Initiative in the Dominican Republic, and Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has presented her work through artist talks at the Swiss Institute in NYC, Rogaland Kunstsenter in Norway, University of Chicago, among others. She is the recipient of a Yale University Schoelkopf Fellowship, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Community Engagement Grant, and UChicago Arts Grant, among others. Since 2004, she has organized community art initiatives and collaborations in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, and Argentina. Alva currently teaches Sculpture at The Cooper Union School of Art.
Claudia Cortínez is a visual artist currently living and working between Buenos Aires and NYC. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at Yale University. She is the recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship from Yale University (2012), the Blair Dickinson Memorial Grant from Yale University (2013), the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in NYC (2013), among others. She has exhibited her work extensively in solo and group shows in the US, Latin America, and Europe, and has curated exhibitions at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center in NYC (2016) and the Eduardo Sívori Museum in Buenos Aires (2018), bringing together artists from both cities. She has participated in various residencies such as LMCC Swing Space (2014), La Ira de Dios (BsAs, 2016), Mass MoCA (2017), Real Time and Space (CA, 2018), and Tou Trykk (Norway, 2018), among others. She is currently an artist in residence at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY.

“Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in their personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc., its affiliates or staff.”

Project LAZO: ANALEMMA
2019-03-02 18:00 - 2019-03-12 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
*Image by: Alva Mooses | ,2019
LAZO at Loisaida present:
ANALEMMA
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 2nd, 2019 | 6-8 PM
Only through Tuesday, March 12th
Curated by: Javier Bosques in collaboration with LAZO
Participating Artists:
Javier Bosques
Alva Mooses
Mauricio Cortes Ortega
Sofía Reeser del Río
Ana Vaz
Pedro Wainer

Read more about the LAZO residency here.

About the artists:
LAZO is a collaborative project founded by Alva Mooses and Claudia Cortínez. We are artists of Latin American descent focusing on intersections of photography, sculpture and printmaking and began working together while doing our graduate studies together at Yale University. We have organized exhibitions, publications, and talks that support artists while furthering cross-cultural dialogue. Both born in the U.S. (Alva to parents from Mexico & the U.S. and Claudia to parents from Argentina & Chile) our practices have relied largely on being based in NYC while working internationally creating ties to distinct communities.
Alva Mooses is an artist based in New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union and her MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited her work at the 10th Havana Biennial, Instituto Cervantes in NY, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Logan Center for the Arts, Eduardo Sívori Museum, among others. She has completed residencies such as the APL Program at The University of Chicago, Tou Trykk in Stavanger, Norway, the Davidoff Art Initiative in the Dominican Republic, and Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has presented her work through artist talks at the Swiss Institute in NYC, Rogaland Kunstsenter in Norway, University of Chicago, among others. She is the recipient of a Yale University Schoelkopf Fellowship, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Community Engagement Grant, and UChicago Arts Grant, among others. Since 2004, she has organized community art initiatives and collaborations in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, and Argentina. Alva currently teaches Sculpture at The Cooper Union School of Art.
Claudia Cortínez is a visual artist currently living and working between Buenos Aires and NYC. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at Yale University. She is the recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship from Yale University (2012), the Blair Dickinson Memorial Grant from Yale University (2013), the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in NYC (2013), among others. She has exhibited her work extensively in solo and group shows in the US, Latin America, and Europe, and has curated exhibitions at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center in NYC (2016) and the Eduardo Sívori Museum in Buenos Aires (2018), bringing together artists from both cities. She has participated in various residencies such as LMCC Swing Space (2014), La Ira de Dios (BsAs, 2016), Mass MoCA (2017), Real Time and Space (CA, 2018), and Tou Trykk (Norway, 2018), among others. She is currently an artist in residence at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY.

“Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in their personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc., its affiliates or staff.”

Art in the Garden: Painting Ceramic Tiles
2019-02-20 17:30 - 19:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Description

Facilitated by artist Alejandro Epifanio Juan of Loisaida, Inc. and ceramic specialist Essye Klempner
Make beautiful ceramic tiles to bring art to your garden! This workshop is the first of two parts. Led by artists Alejandro Epifanio Juan of Loisaida, Inc. and ceramic specialist Essye Klempner, participants will paint ceramic tiles during this class and pick up their fired tiles from the GreenThumb office at a later date. The second part will be held in the spring where we will install our new decorative ceramic tiles in gardens through mosaic paver stones and other options.
Space is limited*. Registration does not guarantee admission, which will be on a first-come first-served basis, with priority given to those who register here on Eventbrite until 5:30 pm, when we will open it up to the public. *SOLD OUT*
Pictured: Bimbo Rivas, mosaic by: Carlos Pinto installed at Two Boots Pizzeria in Loisaida.

Ecological City: Climate Solutions Project -Planning Meeting
2019-02-06 18:30 - 20:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Description
2018 Loisaida, Inc. Artist in Residence: Ecological City is planning its yearly neighborhood wide Procession for Climate Solutions. Come to the meeting and learn how to get involved
Share ideas, brainstorm and and collaborate co-creating the Ecological City: Procession for Climate Solutions at the ECOLOGICAL CITY – PLANNING MEETING
Find out how to participate in Ecological Arts Workshops from March 2- May 8 every Wednesday 6-9pm and Saturday 12-4pm creating spectacular giant puppets, costumes and performances exploring local sustainability sites and climate solution initiatives. Workshop location to be announced.
Groups and organizations are invited to create groups arts projects.
Visual arts and performance projects created through the workshops are presented in the culminating Ecological City: Procession for Climate Solutions on Saturday May 11, 2019 with 20 sites performances celebrating climate solutions and ecological sustainability initiatives throughout community gardens, neighborhood and East River Park waterfront on the Lower East Side.
Space is limited. Registration does not guarantee admission, which will be on a first-come first-served basis, with priority given to those who register.
Pictured: Ecological City contingent at the 2018 Loisaida Festival.

Project LAZO: Supported at its Ends—Hanging by its Weight
2019-01-29 18:00 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
*Image by: Luciana Pinchiero | El Cuello con Manchas de El Eco (El Eco’s Spotty Neck), 2017
LAZO at Loisaida present:
Supported at its Ends—Hanging by its Weight
Opening Reception: January 29th, 2019 | 6-8 PM
January 29th – February 8th, 2019
Participating Artists:
Ronny Quevedo
Amy Westpfahl
Dolores Furtado
Gaby Collins-Fernandez
Mauricio Cortes Ortega
Pedro Wainer
Daniel Greenfield-Campoverde
Luciana Pinchiero
Esperanza Mayobre
Bernadette Despujols
Omar Barquet
Kristin Reger
Maximilliano Siñani
Constanza Alarcon Tennen

Read more about the residency here.

About the artists:
LAZO is a collaborative project founded by Alva Mooses and Claudia Cortínez. We are artists of Latin American descent focusing on intersections of photography, sculpture and printmaking and began working together while doing our graduate studies together at Yale University. We have organized exhibitions, publications, and talks that support artists while furthering cross-cultural dialogue. Both born in the U.S. (Alva to parents from Mexico & the U.S. and Claudia to parents from Argentina & Chile) our practices have relied largely on being based in NYC while working internationally creating ties to distinct communities.
Alva Mooses is an artist based in New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union and her MFA from Yale University. She has exhibited her work at the 10th Havana Biennial, Instituto Cervantes in NY, Shirley Fiterman Art Center, Logan Center for the Arts, Eduardo Sívori Museum, among others. She has completed residencies such as the APL Program at The University of Chicago, Tou Trykk in Stavanger, Norway, the Davidoff Art Initiative in the Dominican Republic, and Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has presented her work through artist talks at the Swiss Institute in NYC, Rogaland Kunstsenter in Norway, University of Chicago, among others. She is the recipient of a Yale University Schoelkopf Fellowship, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Community Engagement Grant, and UChicago Arts Grant, among others. Since 2004, she has organized community art initiatives and collaborations in Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, El Salvador, and Argentina. Alva currently teaches Sculpture at The Cooper Union School of Art.
Claudia Cortínez is a visual artist currently living and working between Buenos Aires and NYC. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at Yale University. She is the recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship from Yale University (2012), the Blair Dickinson Memorial Grant from Yale University (2013), the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant in NYC (2013), among others. She has exhibited her work extensively in solo and group shows in the US, Latin America, and Europe, and has curated exhibitions at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center in NYC (2016) and the Eduardo Sívori Museum in Buenos Aires (2018), bringing together artists from both cities. She has participated in various residencies such as LMCC Swing Space (2014), La Ira de Dios (BsAs, 2016), Mass MoCA (2017), Real Time and Space (CA, 2018), and Tou Trykk (Norway, 2018), among others. She is currently an artist in residence at the NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY.

“Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in their personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc., its affiliates or staff.”

g e o d e s i c l i n g u i x ; Charas as Infinite Thought Object
2019-01-09 08:00 - 17:00 | The Poetry Club, 131 E. 10th Street, New York, NY, 10003, United States
Matthew Mottel & Edwin Torres
EVENT DETAILS:TICKETSWednesday, January 9, 2019, 8:00 pm

g e o d e s i c l i n g u i x ;
Charas as Infinite Thought Object
The history of dome building on the Lower East Side goes back to when CHARAS built domes in collaboration with Buckminster Fuller in 1972/73. Syeus Mottel documented this effort in his photojournalism book CHARAS; THE IMPROBABLE DOME BUILDERS, first published in 1973 and now re-published in 2018 by Song Cave Press & Pioneer Works.
On 1.9.19, The Poetry Project, will stage a performative action between artist, and researcher Matthew Mottel and poet Edwin Torres. Torres has been an active member of the Loisaida community since the 90’s, where he’s performed his ‘lingualisualist’ poetics, rooted in sight and sound, at many iconic venues. Mottel, has been a member of the experimental arts community of New York City since the late 1990’s.
In interviewing Chino Garcia (co-founder of CHARAS), Matthew was told that one of the domes CHARAS built in the 1970’s was portable and used as sites for experimental performance. In this spirit,Mottel and Torres will perform in and around a Geodesic Dome built inside the Poetry Project.
Mottel will screen a documentary video on the history of CHARAS’s dome building activity. And Torres will perform from his recent book, “XOETEOX: THE INFINITE WORD OBJECT” (Wave Books) within a sonically & visually-charged geodesic environment.
As the finale of the evening, the two will collaborate in and around the dome. This event will further expand the narrative of CHARAS’s original dome actions, to pair with contemporary performance and poetics, and to champion new forms with new content. This collaboration was facilitated by the Loisaida Center, who introduced the artists and hosted Mottel’s exhibition ‘Charas is alive on Spaceship Earth’ in May – June 2018.

MATTHEW MOTTEL

Matthew Mottel (born 1981, New York, NY) is an artist, performer and writer. Matthew researches political and cultural histories to ameliorate the relationships between archival historical documents and their contemporary context. These investigations often are in the form of sculpture, intermedia art installation and performance; creating unique environments for archival media to exist within. Matthew was an Artist In Residence At Issue Project Room in 2010 and an LMCC Swing Space Recipient in 2011. He has presented work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Kitchen, New York; Deitch Projects, New York; All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival; London and Moers Music, Germany.
He received in 2003, a B.A at SUNY New Paltz, his degree in Political & Cultural Studies. He presented his thesis exhibition towards an M.F.A. at City College’s Digital Intermedia Art Practice program in 2018 with graduation in 2019.

EDWIN TORRES

Edwin Torres is a NYC native whose books include, XoeteoX: the infinite word object (Wave Books), Ameriscopia (University of Arizona Press), and The PoPedology of an Ambient Language (Atelos Books). Anthologies include: American Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics of Social Engagement, Who Will Speak For America, Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing, and Aloud; Voices From The Nuyorican Poets Café. Recent collaborations include; Sowndhauz-an electro-lingo duo with Matt Harle, Poex-a collection of sound pieces created with Stephen Vitiello, and Resurrection-a site-specific installation performance with Julie Carr. He is editor of the forthcoming anthology from Counterpath Press entitled, The Body In Language: An Anthology.

Exhibition Closing: Our Time by Antonio Serna
2018-11-30 11:00 - 17:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Last chance to see the exhibition:
Documents of Resistance: Our Time
by: Antonio Serna

Overview:
Loisaida Center Inc. is pleased to present Documents of Resistance: Our Time, a participatory exhibition and residency of new work by Antonio Serna.
How do we give contours to an art history that remains unwritten, scattered across archives, and siloed in scholarship? How can we begin to reconnect the struggle for civil rights across all artists of color and their fight for inclusion in our cultural institutions? How can we being to reflect on the complexity of artists of color and their unique experience, political actions, and art production as part of the art history in American? In the exhibition, Documents of Resistance: Our Time, Mexican-American artist, Antonio Serna is hoping to take us down a visual path to consider these and many other questions in regards to the important but often overlook contributions of artist of color.
Central to the exhibition will be a series timeline collages of art and activism from each decade, from 1960s up to our current decade. In combining the histories of artists of color, visitors will be able to visually locate overlapping shared concerns and experiences of artists of color: from the Chicano Movement to the Black Power Movement, and from the Labor Movement to the Feminist, Third World Movement, and beyond. Leading up to and during the exhibition, Antonio Serna is asking the public to send in their memories of this resistance: people, places, or events relevant in order to continue to expand this histories. Serna’s interest is not just a reflection of the past hopes to inspire and empower a new generation of people of color to join the struggle in becoming the next generation of artists, activists, curators, historians, archivist, and museum workers, to help end discrimination in our cultural institutions.
Goals:
My current project ‘Documents of Resistance,’ is an ongoing art project that draws inspiration from the history of art and activism by artists of color from 1960-present. My goal is to develop several specific in depth projects under this expansive umbrella. Specifically, for my residency at The Loisaida Center, I will be focusing on ‘Our Time,’ a multimedia installation that chronicles the connections and relationships between people, places, and events that influenced artists of color. Central to ‘Our Time’ is a series of 4 visual timeline-collages that contextualize this unique history. The timelines include historic images of protests against racism in museums in New York and collective activities in places such as Watts and East Los Angeles, among other political activities. By giving visual form to this history, we can gain an overview of overlapping concerns, cross-cultural themes, and socio-political forces that affected the studio production and protests organizing of artists of color. Over the span of my residency at The Loisaida Center visitors, special guests, and the public will be ask to comment and contribute to the project.
During the research and development phase of the residency, the artist will conduct a Call for Public Participation, to participate please fill out this form.
Outcome, exhibition:
Documents of Resistance: Our Time
September 14th – November 30th
Exhibition Closing: Friday, November 30th, 2018 – 11am to 5pm
For his exhibition, ‘ Documents of Resistance: Our Time, the upcoming exhibition at Loisaida, resident artists Antonio Serna, is creating timelines to highlight the art and activism of artists of color. Help us build these important timelines by sending in your memories of resistance: people, places, or events relevant to the history of art and activism by people of color; These timelines will provide information for future research, scholarship, and display.
Call for Public Participation:
Do you remember a spot in your neighborhood that was an important place for artists of color meet and make art. Do you recall a rally or protest organized by artists of color? How about and exhibition by and for artists of color? Or community art projects that were made by and for communities of color? We want to collect all these important moments.
Contribute by filling out the form below:

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About the artist:
Antonio Serna is a Mexican-American artist, activist, and independent researcher. For over a decade Antonio has helped lead and co-organize several art projects and activist interventions in New York, Texas, Las Vegas, Spain, Mexico, Berlin, and Romania. Most recently he has contributed to labor equity portion of “People’s Cultural Plan,” which launched at Artists Space in 2017, and the Brooklyn Community Forum on Gentrification at the Brooklyn Museum in 2016. Other notable projects include his work on alternative economies for artists including artCommons at The Queens Museum and “What Do We Do Now?” at Eyebeam, both held in 2013. Antonio Serna is originally from Texas and holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, and a Bachelor of Arts from Parsons School of Art and Design.
His current project Documents of Resistances has recently been included in a new book Art As Social Action, edited by Gregory Sholette, Chloe Bass, and Queens Social Practice (Allworth Press). An artist residency and exhibition for this project has also been schedule for the Fall of 2018 at The Loisaida Center in New York City.

Relevant links to websites/publications/reviews/etc.

Personal website: www.antonioserna.com
Press: “Empowering Latinx Arts Practitioners at the Latinx Artist Retreat (LXAR),” Lynnette Miranda. Chicago Artist Writers, June 7, 2017.
Press: “Can Protest Art Survive And Thrive During A Trump Presidency,”Anjali Enjeti. Pacific Standard, May 27, 2017.
Press: “Antinomies of Art Activism and Documentation: The Curatorial Approach of Agitprop at the Brooklyn Museum,” Izabel Galliera, Issue 4, Field Journal, 2016.

“Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in their personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc., its affiliates or staff.”

Book Talk: Counter Institution by Nandini Bagchee
2018-11-28 18:30 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Book Talk: Counter Institution by Nandini Bagchee
Wednesday, November 28, 6:30pm
Loisaida Center, 710 E 9th St
Counterinstitution: Activist Estates of the Lower East Side, examines the open-ended histories of activism in the Lower East Side by looking at the spaces used by activists- storefronts, gardens and offices to bring forth the hidden dimensions of these organizational spaces through a collaging together of architectural drawings techniques with archival research, photography and writing. This book examines three re-purposed buildings on the Lower East Side that have been used by activists to launch actions over the past forty years. The Peace Pentagon was the headquarters of the anti-war movement, El Bohio was a metaphoric “hut” that envisioned the Puerto Rican Community as a steward of the environment, and ABC No Rio, a name appropriated from a storefront sign with missing letters, was a catchy punk name that appealed to the anarchistic sensibility of the artists that ran a storefront gallery in a run-down tenement. The “activist estates” explored in this book represents both a conceptual and a literal struggle to create a space for civic action in a city that is built upon real estate speculation.
A book talk by author Nandini Bagchee will be followed by a discussion with Dr. Gregory Sholette. Nandini Bagchee is an Associate Professor of Architecture and History at City College New York and a Principal at Bagchee Architects. Greg Sholette is an artist, activist and author of Delirium and Resistance: Art, Activism & the Crisis of Capitalism (Pluto Press 2017) and Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2011). At this event we will also launch a call for participation for an exhibition planned at the Loisaida Center titled, “Activist Estates: An Alternate History of Real Estate in Loisaida”.
This exhibition designed and curated by Nandini Bagchee in collaboration with Loisaida Center will be mounted in May 2019 to celebrate the history of space-based activism in the Lower East Side. Through timelines, photographs, artifacts, film and architectural models- the exhibit will invite visitors to share their own stories and images to fill in the blanks or simply re-interpret the material within the show. Community workshops and envisioning sessions will open new discussions of the future of community-
controlled space.
Co-Sponsored by the Loisaida Center and GVSHP
This event is fully accessible.

Reflect to Revolutionize - Critical Thinking Seminar
2018-11-16 14:00 - 2018-12-14 16:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Reflect to Revolutionize – Critical Thinking Seminar
Loisaida, Inc | 710 East 9th Street | New York, NY 10009
Friday, November 16, 2018 at 2:00 PM – Friday, December 14, 2018 at 4:00 PM (EST)

Pilot collaboration presented by Radical Love consciousness and Loisaida Inc.
REFLECT TO REVOLUTIONIZE

4 Sessions
2 Fridays, November 16 and 30
2 Fridays, December 7 and 14
2 pm – 4 pm
Loisaida Inc. – 710 East 9th Street and Avenue C

RLC Mission Statement:
Radical love is a verb, ethic and revolutionary mindset; a consciousness that demands the liberation of all. We are a team of women of color dedicated to the liberation of all people through radical love and critical consciousness. Based in New York City, we organize workshops, classes and programs that strive not only to be accessible, but cater to the wants and needs of poor and working class people of color.
We are a team of young women of color dedicated to the liberation of all people through radical love and critical consciousness. Based in New York City, we organize workshops, classes and programs that strive not only to be accessible, but cater to the wants and needs of poor and working class people of color. We are organizing various programs throughout the next month, and are interested in hosting our “Reflect to Revolutionize” workshops in the Loisaida Center for four consecutive Tuesday nights this November.
The Reflect to Revolutionize workshops are devoted to practicing critical thinking and meaningful self-reflection as pathways to liberating transformation. These facilitated discussions will shine light on the ways that oppressive systems and legacies of colonialism and slavery affect our daily lives and choices. We will rethink and redefine our notions of self, purpose, power and community. Our goal is to provide an active space where we confront our own trauma and fear in order to rise stronger as a collective.

Organizer and facilitator: Amy Neshama
Hosted by: Loisaida Inc.

Ed Morales and Urayoán Noel in Conversation
2018-11-01 18:00 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Ed Morales and Urayoán Noel in Conversation
Thursday, November 1, 2018 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Loisaida, Inc – 710 East 9th Street New York, NY 10009 (View Map)
DESCRIPTION

“Latinx” (pronounced “La-teen-ex”) is the gender-neutral term that covers one of thelargest and fastest growing minorities in the United States, accounting for 17 percent of the country. Over 58 million Americans belong to the category, including a sizable part of thecountry’s working class, both foreign and native-born. Their political empowerment is altering thebalance of forces in a growing number of states. Yet Latinx barely figure in America’s ongoing conversation about race and ethnicity. Remarkably, theUS census does not even have a racial category for “Latino.”
Please join Ed Morales in conversation with Urayoan Noel, both members of Loisaida’s Artistic Advisory Board on Thursday, November 1st, on his new book: Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture.

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 acontributing editor to NACLA Report on the Americas, and a frequent contributor of op ed columns for The Progressive Media Project.
Urayoán Noel is a South Bronx-based writer, critic, performer, translator and intermedia artist originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is an associate professor of English and Spanish at New York University, and also teaches at Stetson University’s MFA of theAmericas. Noel is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Buzzing Hemisphere/Rumor Hemisférico (University of Arizona Press, 2015), as well as the critical study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press, 2014), winner of the LASA Latina/o Studies Book Award.

Decolonial & Third World Studies: Discussion & tour with Antonio Serna
2018-10-25 18:30 - 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Decolonial & Third World Studies: Discussion & tour with Antonio Serna
Thursday, October 25, 2018 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Panel Discussion: 7:00–8:30 PM*
*Pre-Event: 6:15 PM Exhibition Walk-thru with artist Antonio Serna

Panelists: Macarena Gomez-Baris, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Conor Tomás Reed.
Moderated by Patrick Jaojoco.

Since the 1960s, students of color have fought to decolonize campuses across the Americas. One of their goals was to introduce studies related to their own experiences and include their history outside of the dominant Eurocentric lens. We will discuss some of the original demands and achievements, and compare them to the current wave of decolonizing academia.Secondly, one of main concerns in the project Our Time is to highlight the racism in the arts as affecting all people of color across America.
We ask, what can we gain from a comparative ethnographic analysis of this history? What are the limits and pitfalls of such study? How does it affect the visual arts and visual cultural studies in general (framework of research, production, participation, and consumption)?As a third discussion point, we will consider spaces of resistance, noting Esteban Izquierdo Mejia’s intro to Spaces of Cultural Resistance that is similarly echoed in Macarena Gomez-Barris’ intro to The Extractive Zone. Can we consider examples of the importance of spaces of resistance (decolonial or otherwise) that, as Mejia notes, “operate to create imagined geographies of belonging that challenge the effects of cultural oppression at the local and regional level?”
This panel is held in conjunction with “Documents of Resistance: Our Time” Antonio Serna’s exhibition and residency at The Loisaida, Inc. Center, September 14–October 28, 2018. Support for “Documents of Resistance: Our Time” is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs‘ Development Fund.
*Pre-Event: Exhibition walk-through with artist Antonio Serna starts at 6:15 pm
Moderated by Patrick Jaojoco
Bios
Patrick JaojocoisaBrooklyn-based arts professional, curator, researcher, and writer focusing on political ecology and historiography, in particular how creative practices and landscape interpretation can aid in public understanding of long-term ecological, economic, and political histories. He has organized numerous exhibitions and public programs throughout New York; recently, he worked withthecuratorial collective Frontview onaproject around American pre-colonial, colonial, and cartographic histories and practices. He currently works at Storefront for Art and Architecture, where Patrick supportstheorganization’s exhibitions and projects as Development and Communications Associate. Patrick wasa2015-2017 Curatorial Fellow at SVA’s MA Curatorial Practice program, and received his BA in English Literature and Environmental Studies from New York University.
Macarena Gomez-Barrisis Professor and Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She is also Director oftheGlobal South Center (GSC),aresearch center that works attheintersection of social ecologies, art/politics, and decolonial methodologies. Her instructional focus is on Latinx and Latin American Studies, memory andtheafterlives of violence, decolonial theory,theart of social protest, and queer femme epistemes.
J. Kēhaulani Kauanuiis Professor of American Studies and affiliate faculty in Anthropology at Wesleyan University, where she teaches courses related to Indigenous studies, critical race studies, settler colonial studies, and anarchist studies. She isthecurrent Chair of American Studies andthecurrent Director oftheCenter fortheAmericas. Her first book isHawaiian Blood: Colonialism andthePolitics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity(Duke University Press 2008) and her second book isParadoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, andtheColonial Politics of State Nationalism(Duke University Press, 2018). She also hasanew edited book,Speaking of Indigenous Politics: Conversations with Activists, Scholars, and Tribal Leaders. Kauanui currently serves asaco-producer for an anarchist politics show called “Anarchy on Air,”amajority POC show co-produced withagroup of Wesleyan students, which builds on her earlier work on another collaborative anarchist program called “Horizontal Power Hour.”

Conor Tomás Reedis an archivist, doctoral student, educator, and organizer attheCity University of New York,acollective member of Lost & Found:TheCUNY Poetics Document Initiative, andaco-founding participant intheFree University of New York City. Conor researches twentieth and twenty first-century literatures of social movements and urban freedom schools, and isa2016-2017 Scholar-in-Residence attheSchomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Conor is currently working on his dissertation:CUNY Will Be Free!: Black, Puerto Rican, and Women’s Compositions, Literatures, and Studies attheCity College of New York and New York City, 1960-1980.

About the Exhibition:
Documents of Resistance: Our Time
September 14th – October 28th
Loisaida Center Inc. is pleased to present Documents of Resistance: Our Time, a participatory exhibition and residency of new work by Antonio Serna.
How do we give contours to an art history that remains unwritten, scattered across archives, and siloed in scholarship? How can we begin to reconnect the struggle for civil rights across all artists of color and their fight for inclusion in our cultural institutions? How can we being to reflect on the complexity of artists of color and their unique experience, political actions, and art production as part of the art history in American? In the exhibition, Documents of Resistance: Our Time, Mexican-American artist, Antonio Serna is hoping to take us down a visual path to consider these and many other questions in regards to the important but often overlook contributions of artist of color.
Central to the exhibition will be a series timeline collages of art and activism from each decade, from 1960s up to our current decade. In combining the histories of artists of color, visitors will be able to visually locate overlapping shared concerns and experiences of artists of color: from the Chicano Movement to the Black Power Movement, and from the Labor Movement to the Feminist, Third World Movement, and beyond. Leading up to and during the exhibition, Antonio Serna is asking the public to send in their memories of this resistance: people, places, or events relevant in order to continue to expand this histories. Serna’s interest is not just a reflection of the past hopes to inspire and empower a new generation of people of color to join the struggle in becoming the next generation of artists, activists, curators, historians, archivist, and museum workers, to help end discrimination in our cultural institutions.
Originally from San Antonio Texas, Antonio Serna is a Mexican-American artist based in New York. Antonio maintains both a studio and collective social practice. These two practices often balance and ground the sum of his production. Antonio Serna holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, and a BFA from Parsons School of Art. He has exhibited in New York, Texas, Las Vegas, Spain, Mexico, Berlin, and Romania. His speaking engagements include ArtCenter, Flux Factory, CUE Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Pratt, Common Field Convening, Eyebeam, Smack Mellon, Queens Museum, and Museo Tamayo. Recently he has participated in residencies at Triangle Arts Association, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and The Luminary and has taught at Brooklyn College and Parsons School of Design.
Document of Resistance:Our Time is made possible in part by funds from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Grant

1ra Reunión del Movimiento Comunitario para Energía Eficiente
2018-10-15 19:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
DESCRIPCION

1ra Reunión del Movimiento Comunitario para Energía Eficiente

Presentado por Loisaida Inc., LES Ready! con Beyond the Grid

Cuando: Lunes, Octubre 15, 2018

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
En: Loisaida Inc. – 710 E. 9th St and Avenue C

Como nosotros, residentes del bajo Manhattan podemos tener un impacto positivo en el medio ambiente, mejorar nuestra calidad de vida y ahorrar dinero?
Únete a Loisaida Inc. y Beyond the Grid el Lunes 15 de Octubre desde las 7 – 9 pm para una reunión especial con el grupo comunitario LES Ready! Además se presentará un pequeño taller para aprender lo importante de utilizar la ENERGÍA RENOVABLE para lograr autonomía energética y mejorar la calidad de vida en nuestro hogar y nuestra comunidad.
Ayuda nuestro movimiento “Somos Loisaida” (We Are Loisaida) para organizar y dirigir mas atención a nuestra campaña masiva de acción directa e identificar, contar, reemplazar y reciclar electrodomésticos derrochadores en nuestro barrio.

Nos puedes ayudar a recopilar data compartiendo nuestra encuesta aquí: Take the SOMOS LOISAIDA Leadership (in) Energy Savings (LES) Survey.

This project is made possible by the 2018 LES Ready! Pass-Through Grant and the NYCT (New York Community Trust).

1st Community Energy Efficiency Movement Meeting
2018-10-15 19:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
DESCRIPTION

1st Community Energy Efficiency Movement Meeting

Hosted by Loisaida Inc., LES Ready! and Beyond the Grid

Monday, October 15, 2018

7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Loisaida Inc. Center – 710 E. 9th St and Avenue C

How can Lower East Side residents make an impact on climate, save money, improve quality of life?
Join Loisaida, Inc. and Beyond the Grid on Monday October 15th from 7 to 9 PM for this special LES Ready! meeting and workshop on how ENERGY EFFICIENCY is an important element in achieving resilience and improving quality of life in our community.
Join our “Somos Loisaida” (We Are Loisaida) movement to organize a mass direct action campaign to identify, finance, and replace old and aging energy wasting appliances with highly efficient new ones.

You can keep helping us to gather data here: Take the SOMOS LOISAIDA Leadership (in) Energy Savings (LES) Survey.

This project is made possible by the 2018 LES Ready! Pass-Through Grant and the NYCT (New York Community Trust).

Post-Cuban Cabaret with Omar Pérez at the Loisaida Center
2018-10-13 09:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
DESCRIPTION

Cuban artist Omar Pérez, visiting from Havana, invites performers and community members to join him in the creation of the Post-Cuban Cabaret, an intensive workshop culminating in an evening performance. Workshop participants will do theatre exercises, explore themes in multiple forms (music, poetry, dance), and go through improvisational situations. Omar Pérez envisions the manifestation of different cultural traditions and some focus on themes related to “island” – sea, water, Cuba, Latin and Caribbean culture, clichés, neighborhoods, etc. In the evening, the workshop participants perform material that has emerged during the day. All the arts and skills of the troupe members are integrated into the performance, which continues to be based on improvisational principles.
Workshop: 9:30 am to 7:00 pm
Perfomance: 8:00 pm
Omar Pérez: “The Cabaret was created in Havana more than 10 years ago by contemporary dancer and choreographer Sandra Ramy and myself in order to facilitate improvisation and interaction between “artists” of various kinds: dancers, of course, actors, poets and musicians but also designers, painters, rappers, amateurs…whoever was willing to go through the experience of an ad hoc workshop in order to build a one-night show, a one timer”.
BIO: The son of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, poet, editor, and translator Omar Pérez was born and raised in Havana. He earned a degree in English at the University of Havana and studied Italian at the Universitá per Straniere di Siena. He has worked as a journalist for El Caimán Barbudo, and as an editor for the magazine La naranja dulce. A former member of the Cuban intellectual group Paideia, he edited the poetry magazine Mantisfrom 1994 to 1996.
Ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk, Pérez composes poems that engage languages, Zen, and political and cultural transcendence. His poetry collections include Lingua Franca (2010), Oíste hablar del gato de pelea?(1999, translated as Did You Hear about the Fighting Cat? by Kristin Dykstra, 2010), and Algo de lo Sagrado (1996, translated as Something of the Sacred by Kristin Dykstra and Robert Tejada, 2007). His translations include Italian-Cuban novelist Alba de Céspedes’s Nadie vuelve atrás(2003) and Shakespeare’s As You Like It (as Como Les Guste, 2000).
Intensely interested in the ways in which poetry overlays experience, Perez noted in an interview with Jacket magazine that “the verse, the poem, even the rhyme, the melody of poetry are the tip of the iceberg, they are just one familiar aspect of a huge reality which we call consciousness […] Poetry is a natural function, like god, or DNA, or rain. The fact that we can give notice of it does not mean that we make it.”
He received Cuba’s Nicolás Guillén Prize for Poetry for Crítica de la Razón Puta (2009) as well as its National Critics’ Prize for his essay collection La perseverancia de un hombre oscuro (2000). His work has also been featured in the anthology The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry, A Bilingual Anthology (2009). He lives in Havana.

ACCIONES
2018-09-20 18:00 - 2018-10-19 20:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
ACCIONES QUE LEVANTAN A PUERTO RICO (ACCIONES), IS THE ONLY STUDENT ART EXHIBIT OF ITS KIND, FEATURING 80 ORIGINAL PAINTINGS
FROM PUERTO RICAN STUDENTS IN THE WAKE OF HURRICANE MARIA’S DEVASTATING PATH THROUGH THE ISLAND OF PUERTO RICO.

The CHICAS by Alejandra Foundation (CHICAS Foundation), a leading social movement and non-profit organization against bullying and social injustice in Puerto Rico, announced that student art exhibit, Acciones que levantan a Puerto Rico (Actions that lift Puerto Rico), ACCIONES, will open in New York, September 20, 2018, to mark the first year anniversary of the devastating path of Hurricane Maria through the Caribbean island. ACCIONES is the only hurricane-themed student art exhibit of its kind.
Featuring original works by Puerto Rican students, from public and private schools, the two-part New York presentation of ACCIONES will be available at The Loisaida Center, September 20 through October 19; followed by the second part of the collection, which will be presented at the Queens College Arts Center, starting on October 4.
“The collection communicates a profound sense of hope for the future, as well as, its serves as a poignant reminder of the long road ahead to help Puerto Rico fully recover from the storm’s devastation. Acciones also reveals the values that best represent the people of Puerto Rico; such as service, family, empathy, solidarity, hospitality, culture, love of nature and resiliency,” expressed Frances I. Ryan, executive director of the CHICAS Foundation.
“Unveiling the exhibit in New York as we mark the first-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria, is a fitting gesture of appreciation to all New Yorkers, especially to the Puerto Rican community, which immediately galvanized to provide humanitarian support to victims in the aftermath of
the hurricane,” the CHICAS executive continued saying.
As one of the leading Puerto Rican community and cultural organizations in New York, The Loisaida Center, which in partnership with its umbrella organization, Acacia Network, has been at the center of New York’s humanitarian efforts to help Puerto Rico victims in the wake of Hurricane Maria. “Having ACCIONES at The Loisaida Center, is also our way saying thank you,” Ryan said, adding that the presentation at Queens College provides a different, yet very important academic setting, consistent with the student art exhibit.
Immediately after the passing of Hurricane Maria, the CHICAS Foundation participated in 200 humanitarian missions around the island. Also, in coordination with the Visual Arts Program of the Puerto Rico Department of Education, CHICAS hosted, Acciones, an island wide contest for
students, grades K-12, from public and private schools.

Despite dire conditions, nearly 100{d189f1124ffa6975f5923217354196c41f30852329af055ade71c436dc0b2403} of the island still in the dark, without water, telecommunications or access to roads, an astounding 630 original works were submitted to participate in the Acciones art contest.

A panel of artists, art teachers and community leaders selected 80 paintings that became the exhibit’s official selection The CHICAS Foundation envisioned the hurricane-themed art initiative as an important communication forum for Puerto Rican students, allowing them to express their life changing experiences and begin to heal through art. Many teachers participated in the art contest to facilitate communication with students as they returned to school after the hurricane.

“Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in their personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc., its affiliates or staff.”

EMPPT
2018-09-18 17:00 - 2018-12-15 19:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Electronic Music Production and Performance for Transformation
An introduction to electronic music production focusing on beat production, sampling techniques, and live performance methods. The workshop focuses on utilizing free or low-cost software and hardware resources, and provides a foundation for exploring music as a means for self-expression and as a pathway to entrepreneurship.

Artist: Riobamba

Presented by Abrons Arts Center and Loisaida’s El Semillero in partnership with Sonic Arts for All!

Electronic Music 101 w/ Riobamba and Sonic Arts For All!

Learn the Ins and Outs of :
– Beatmaking
– Audio engineering
– DJing
– The history of electronic music
– Producing and marketing your own mixtape!

Documents of Resistance: Our Time
2018-09-14 18:00 - 2018-10-28 17:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Antonio Serna: Documents of Resistance: Our Time
September 14th – October 28th
Opening Reception: Friday, September 14, 2018, 6-9PM
Loisaida Center Inc. is pleased to present Documents of Resistance: Our Time, a participatory exhibition and residency of new work by Antonio Serna.
How do we give contours to an art history that remains unwritten, scattered across archives, and siloed in scholarship? How can we begin to reconnect the struggle for civil rights across all artists of color and their fight for inclusion in our cultural institutions? How can we being to reflect on the complexity of artists of color and their unique experience, political actions, and art production as part of the art history in American? In the exhibition, Documents of Resistance: Our Time, Mexican-American artist, Antonio Serna is hoping to take us down a visual path to consider these and many other questions in regards to the important but often overlook contributions of artist of color.
Central to the exhibition will be a series timeline collages of art and activism from each decade, from 1960s up to our current decade. In combining the histories of artists of color, visitors will be able to visually locate overlapping shared concerns and experiences of artists of color: from the Chicano Movement to the Black Power Movement, and from the Labor Movement to the Feminist, Third World Movement, and beyond. Leading up to and during the exhibition, Antonio Serna is asking the public to send in their memories of this resistance: people, places, or events relevant in order to continue to expand this histories. Serna’s interest is not just a reflection of the past hopes to inspire and empower a new generation of people of color to join the struggle in becoming the next generation of artists, activists, curators, historians, archivist, and museum workers, to help end discrimination in our cultural institutions.
Originally from San Antonio Texas, Antonio Serna is a Mexican-American artist based in New York. Antonio maintains both a studio and collective social practice. These two practices often balance and ground the sum of his production. Antonio Serna holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, and a BFA from Parsons School of Art. He has exhibited in New York, Texas, Las Vegas, Spain, Mexico, Berlin, and Romania. His speaking engagements include ArtCenter, Flux Factory, CUE Foundation, Brooklyn Museum, Pratt, Common Field Convening, Eyebeam, Smack Mellon, Queens Museum, and Museo Tamayo. Recently he has participated in residencies at Triangle Arts Association, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, and The Luminary and has taught at Brooklyn College and Parsons School of Design.

Document of Resistance:Our Time is made possible in part by funds from Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Creative Engagement Grant

L.E.S. (Loisaida Elders & Seniors) Day
2018-09-10 12:00 - 16:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Fidelis Care

Date: Monday, September 10 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
(In lieu of Labor Day)
Cost: Free

Where: Loisaida Inc. – 710 East 9th Street and Avenue C

Live Music, Health & Wellness Info, Workshops and Light Snacks for our Super Adults.
This first Monday promises to be a lot of fun! With musical instrument making workshops, live music and snacks, make sure your abuelos do not miss our monthly celebration.

Sponsored by:

Garbagia Three Green Suns - Summer Program
2018-08-28 16:00 - 2018-09-15 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Rolando Politi’s Garbagia: The Three Green Suns.
Garbagia projects are part of Loisaida Summer Programs
Loisaida is proud to bring our community an ongoing summer program highlighting and revitalizing the migrant experience, our neighborhood’s historical inventiveness, and ecological resilience. Inspired by local artist and activist, Rolando Politi, whose iconic repurposed and recycled sculptures pepper community gardens throughout Loisaida, the program uses place-based pedagogy and recycled materials to equip youth and residents in using creative strategies to address the city’s urgent issues.
This program is funded by the New York City Council’s Cultural Immigrant Initiative.

Our third year open atelier summer program for collaborative and individual projects in textiles, gleaning, sculpture and painting was a resounding success. Community members joined the program to transform garbage into beautiful art, then showcase their work with a final community celebration at the historic Plaza Cultural community garden all while in keeping with neighborhood tradition.

Learn more about Rolando Politi’s Garbagia: The Three Green Suns.

This program is funded by the New York City Council’s Cultural Immigrant Initiative, in partnership with the New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

Garbagia Three Green Suns - Summer Program
2018-08-28 16:00 - 2018-09-15 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
DESCRIPTION
Loisaida is proud to bring our community an ongoing summer program highlighting and revitalizing the migrant experience, our neighborhood’s historical inventiveness, and ecological resilience. Inspired by local artist and activist, Rolando Politi, whose iconic repurposed and recycled sculptures pepper community gardens throughout Loisaida, the program uses place-based pedagogy and recycled materials to equip youth and residents in using creative strategies to address the city’s urgent issues.

Join Garbagia’s third year open atelier summer program for collaborative and individual projects in textiles, gleaning, sculpture and painting Join the program to transform garbage into beautiful art, then showcase your work with a final community celebration at the historical La Plaza Cultural community Garden!

OPEN WORKSHOPS @ The Loisaida Inc. Center
August 28 – 31 / 4-9PM / COSTUMES / Teaching Artist: Daniela Fabrizi
September 3 – 7 / 4-9PM / SCULPTURE / Teaching Artist: Daniel Polnau
September 10 – 14 / 4-9PM / PERFORMANCE / Teaching Artist: Marta V
Click here to register!
SHOW: SATURDAY, SEPT 15th, 2018 @ 5pm – La Plaza Cultural Community Garden (9th Street and Ave C Southwest corner)
RAIN DATE: SUNDAY, SEPT 16th, 2018 @ 5pm
BBQ / Creature Pasarela “Fashion Show” /
Market ‘Hallucination Station’
(2nd hand & Upcycled Pieces)
From 2pm – 7pm
@ La Plaza Cultural, 9th St w/ Ave C, Lower East Side
Contact Daniela Fabrizi for more information: dani.fabrizi@gmail.com

This program is funded by the New York City Council’s Cultural Immigrant Initiative, in partnership with the New York City’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

L.E.S. (Loisaida Elders & Seniors) Day
2018-08-06 12:00 - 16:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Fidelis Care

Date: Monday, August 6 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Cost: Free

Where: Loisaida Inc. – 710 East 9th Street and Avenue C

Live Music, Health & Wellness Info, Workshops and Light Snacks for our “Abuelitos”.
This first Monday promises to be a lot of fun! With musical instrument making workshops, live music and snacks, make sure your “Abuelitos” do not miss our monthly celebration.

Sponsored by:

Eye of the Storm
2018-08-01 18:30 - 20:30 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Issue Launch: Eye of the Storm

Wednesday, August 1 at 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Public Event – Panel

Hosted by Loisaida Inc. and North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)

Overview:
Nearly a year after Hurricanes Irma and Maria rocked the Caribbean, what lessons can we learn? In the midst of the 2018 hurricane season, what can both affected communities and their allies do to prepare for future climate events and prevent the kind of destruction the hurricanes wrought on the region?
In this panel, contributors from our summer issue of NACLA attempt to answer these questions, exploring the conditions that have led the Caribbean to where it is today. It is impossible to ignore the ways in which neoliberal capitalism, colonialism, and climate change have come together in the Caribbean to reanimate and strengthen economic and racial hierarchies that have long marked the region and its place in the world. From Puerto Rico to Barbuda and beyond, how we can create a safer and more just future for the region as a whole?
Featuring:
Hilda Lloréns, University of Rhode Island
Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Rutgers
Kenneth Gould and Tammy Lewis, Brooklyn College
Marie Cruz-Soto, NYU Gallatin
Moderated by Michelle Chase, Pace University, and Laura Weiss, NACLA
This event is free and open to the public.

Circo Social - Circus & Community
2018-07-28 14:00 - 18:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Loisaida Inc. and La Cia Yoyo present:
Circo Social
Juggling, Equilibrium and Acrobatics Workshops for Teens and Young Adults.

The different disciplines of the Circus, promote and enhance the development of multiple skills and protective factors, both at the group and individual level. In the group field, these techniques promote respect of one another, solidarity, mutual support, group identity and confidence as an important driver for the practice of various circus techniques. At the individual level they boost self-esteem, help manage tolerance, promote the ability to rise up, resiliency and learning from failure, to develop a sense of humor is a protective factor, help to know and to be surprised of oneself, to visualize the potentialities and to respect the body as a tool of work and artistic expression.

Circo Piquiniqui

Las diversas disciplinas del Circo, promueven y potencian el desarrollo de múltiples habilidades y factores protectores, tanto a nivel grupal como individual. En el ámbito grupal promueven el respeto, la solidaridad, el apoyo mutuo, la identidad grupal y la confianza como motor importante para la práctica de las diversas técnicas circenses. A nivel individual potencian la autoestima, ayudan a manejar la tolerancia a la frustración, promueven la capacidad de levantarse, la resiliencia y aprender de los fracasos, desarrollan el sentido del humor como factor protector, ayudan a conocerse y sorprenderse de sí mismo, a visualizar las potencialidades y a respetar el cuerpo como herramienta de trabajo y expresión artística.

Loisaida Inc. Center – 710 East 9th Street and Avenue C
Saturday, July 28 – 2pm to 6pm
*Register below:
1 Workshops divided into 2 age groups:
Group 1 ages 7 to 12 years
Group 2 ages 13 to 18 years.

Lying Lydia - Open Reading
2018-07-22 19:00 - 21:00 | The Loisaida Inc. Center, 710 East 9th Street, New York, NY, 10009, United States
Loisaida Inc. and Caborca Theatre present:
Lying Lydia
Open Reading

New work by the Loisaida Inc. Center’s 2014 artists in residence –CABORCA.
Written and directed by Javier Antonio González and featuring Laura Butler Rivera, Yaremis Félix, and Tania Molina, Lying Lydia is a piercing look at our civilization’s targeting of women, colonies, and the truth. In the mold of Churchill and Fornes, Lying Lydia is a mysterious and darkly funny chamber work featuring masterful performances from some of Caborca’s veteran actors, as well as an original soundscape by Keenan Hurley.

Truth may have died in the disaster. Two women are confined and forced to paint the landscape that may have once been. One of them is Margaret. The other is Lying Lydia, so called because everything she says is a lie. How do you know? Listen, you can hear her thinking. Like they said you would.
LOISAIDA INC. CENTER
710 E 9th Street, Manhattan
Free Admission
7pm

About Caborca:
Hailing from Puerto Rico, US America and beyond, Caborca makes sprawling, adventurous works in theatre and film. Combining epic auteurship with a tuned ensemble of actors and a flux of collaborators, we bridge language, background and media, inviting our audience, guest artists and members alike, to delve into the pleasure of seeing anew.
Caborca steals its name from the novel The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, in which a magazine of the same name is the official organ of visceral realism.

Opinions like those expressed while in a panel, event or presentation, performance or through artwork are expressed by the author in his personal capacity and are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Loisaida Inc. its affiliates or staff.
