We refused to cave In

Sept. 24th, 2015 – “We refused to cave In”: Gender, Race, Class, and Decolonial Intersectionality in the Young Lords’ Liberation Politics

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Darrel Wanzer-Serrano
Assistant Professor, The University of Iowa

Based on a chapter from The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation (Temple University Press, 2015), this talk engages the process by which the Young Lords shifted from an organization rooted in the idea that “machismo” could be “revolutionary” to one that rejected machismo as a product of a racist/sexist/imperialist/capitalist system. The Young Lords advanced a nuanced and cutting-edge critique of the intersectionality of oppression and extended their analysis from the internal workings of the organization to society at large. The transformation ushered in by this “revolution within the revolution” was not instantaneous, however. Rather, there was significant struggle within the organization that first led to policy and leadership changes. Once the Young Lords advanced the rejection of machismo in their official platform, it opened space for the emergence of a gay and lesbian caucus and coalitional politics with lesbian, gay, and trans* activists, like Sylvia Rivera. Their intersectional perspective was central, I argue, to a kind of decolonial critical politics that eschewed a focus on rights in preference for attentiveness to and claims for liberation. In this framework, which is also advanced by most scholars of de/coloniality, liberation is an alternative to emancipation—the latter of which relies on claims to recognition that fortify the legitimacy of the modern/colonial system. Liberation, then, seeks a liberty delinked from classical liberalism, mindful of affiliations and fraternal connections, and guided by an ethic of decolonial love, even as colonial wounds can never fully heal.

About the book:

The book summary and a blurb by Andrés Torres can be found on the Temple Press website here: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2346_reg.html

The publicity manager at Temple is Gary Kramer and can be reached at gkramer@temple.edu.

Author/Speaker Short Bio:

Darrel Wanzer-Serrano is an assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa.

¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York.

Loisaida Inc. presents

¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York.

Dates : July 30^th – ~~October 10^th~~

Now extended through December 1st, 2015

Modified hours from October 20th and 22nd – 11am to 3pm

*NEW HOURS*

Tuesday & Thursday (12:00 pm – 7:00 pm) Saturday (12:00 pm – 3:00 pm) All other days are by appointment only. For more information please email info@loisaida.org or call (646) 757-0522

Loisiada Inc. will focus on the Young Lords’ founding and impact in the Lower East Side—displaying rarely seen photographs, posters, and audio and video recordings of live performances. The exhibit begins with the announcement of the founding of the New York Chapter of the Young Lords at Tompkins Square Park on Saturday, July 26, 1969. The exhibition will feature lesser-known perspectives of the Young Lords legacy within the Lower East Side, and their cultural impact upon New York’s cultural scenes. Some highlights include the organizing efforts of the Gay and Lesbian Caucus, the transgender activism of Sylvia Rivera, and innovative “artivism” generated by Eddie Figueroa, the founder of the New Rican Village, an influential multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary art space once located at 101 Avenue A.

by: Maximo Colon — Felipe Luciano and Tato Laviera in pre-production planning of the 1st Festival de Loiza Aldea in the LES. Photo by Máximo Colón.

The exhibition is co-curated by Libertad Guerra and Wilson Valentín-Escobar and features many un-published photographs by Máximo Colón and Hiram Maristany, as well as poster art by Sandra Maria Esteves, and rare live video and audio recordings of some of the leading salsa and Latin jazz musicians, plus an art installation commissioned specifically for this exhibition by contemporary artist Adrian “Viajero”Román.

The overall collection of materials depict the critical role that YL members played in the environment that lead to Loisaida becoming a safe refuge for a community struggling for respect, belonging, political power, and public legitimacy.

“I was involved with the Young Lords… it was a time of initiation -into ourselves, into the history of our people, and into the deep images of our culture”.

-Eddie Figueroa, Founder New Rican Village

¡PRESENTE! The Young Lords in New York is co-organized by El Museo del Barrio (July 22 – October 17), Bronx Museum of the Arts (July 2 – October 15) and Loisaida Inc. (July 30 – October 10). The multi-venue exhibition is accompanied by an ambitious range of programs and events to build awareness of the Young Lords’ innovative contributions to the struggle for civil rights and influence on contemporary artists, and to spark conversations about grassroots community activism today. For a limited time only, the first 1000 visitors at each partnering organization will receive a commemorative button, inspired by the Young Lords. Collect them all! For more info, please visit our featured items page.

At Loisaida Inc. ¡PRESENTE! The Young Lords in New York was made possible with support from:

About the Curators:

Wilson Valentín-Escobar, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Sociology at Hampshire College. He holds a Ph.D. in American Studies and an M.A. in Sociology from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in Sociology and Puerto Rican/Latin@ and Latin American Studies Studies from Fordham University. He was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University in 2011-2012. A Brooklyn New York-native, Dr. Valentín-Escobar is currently completing his forthcoming book, Bodega Surrealism: The Emergence of Latin@ Artivists in New York City (New York University Press). The book examines the cultural activism, or “artivism,” of two community-based art communities and projects that originated in the 1970s within the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City: the New Rican Village Cultural Arts Center and El Puerto Rican Embassy. His scholarship, which he regularly presents at national and international conferences, has been published in various academic journals and anthologies, and has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among several others. He, along with the late Dr. Juan Flores, co-edited a special two-volume issue on Puerto Rican music for the Puerto Rican Studies journal, Centro. Dr. Valentín-Escobar currently Chairs the Five College Consortium Program in Latin@, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies.

Libertad O. Guerra is an urban anthropologist, educator, social researcher/historian, independent curator and environmental activist. Her academic research and publications have focused on Puerto Rican, Latino and Latin American social-artistic movements and cultural activism in urban immigrant settings. Publications include Uncommon Commonalities: Aesthetic Politics of Place in the South Bronx in Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, (2011); and ‘Building the Aura: a social aesthetics of placement in-the-making.’ in New York / Berlin: Kulturen in der Stadt, (2008). Ms. Guerra has organized numerous local and international exhibitions, panels and conferences among them:
–Loisaida: the Visible/Invisible Body of Puerto Ricans sectors on the Lower East Side to the Downtown scene, PRSA Biennial Conference, (2010).
–Spanic Attack: Living, Making, and Reading the Latin/o American City, LASA Conference, Rio de Janeiro, (2009).
–Re- Membering Loisaida: Lure of the Retro Lens, and Visualizing Hindsight, sponsored by Council Member Rosie Méndez and The Center for Puerto Rican Studies, (2009).
–Noricua: Performing the Living City, The House of World Cultures, Berlin, (2007).
–Going Down for Real: Imagining the Estate of our Town, NYU’s Center for Latino and Caribbean Studies, (2006).
–Constructivismo 2006, Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, (2006).
–La Marginal, Centro Cultural España (CCE) Lima, (2004).
She is Artistic Director of Loisaida Inc., and current curator/event planner of the Loisaida Festival since 2014.

en casa afuera

June 12- 19

Opening Reception and Performances June 12 at 6:00 pm.

A live exhibit which will bring together new young artists— Mckenzie Angelo, Anthony Rosado, Jonathan Gonzalez, Yoira Santos, Adam Echahly, Lamar Stephens, Adam Rhodes, Chazz Bruce, and Stephanie Mota.

Curatorial Statement

en casa afuera –

Think gentrification is completely erasing the hirstory and identities of native New York residents? Think again. Amidst new developments, increasing rents, empty storefronts, newcomers in LES, Crown Heights, Washington Heights, Harlem, & Bushwick, artists are finding ways to claim their stake in the areas, tethering the old soul of these communities. A group of such artists are coming to Loisaida, Inc.’s Center, one of the remaining physical spaces serving the LES and NYC Latino and independent community, to present a series of interactive works paying tribute to the Home(s).

en casa afuera, a live exhibit which will run from June 12th to June 19th, brings together new young artists from the metropolitan New York and New Jersey region spanning the ages of mid 20’s-30’s.— Mckenzie Angelo, Anthony Rosado, Jonathan Gonzalez, Yoira Santos, Adam Echahly, Lamar Stephens, Adam Rhodes, Chazz Bruce, and Stephanie Mota. They came together to investigate the intersections of home and displacement, as well as the potential for art making to reflect and revision these relations. Loisaida Inc., as the performance hub, may then be the home or shelter that localizes this web of creative results.

The process of what initially began as a series of conversations on the shifting dynamics of New York City, the forces that will it, and what is authentic in these urban amalgamations, developed into a need to generate around these lofty queries – what is home? and what remains as the physical departs from what we know it to be? (whether by a stripping of possession or decay.) Lastly, what does this process of transition look like, feel like, for us?

Visitors and members of the community, old and new, are encouraged to the engage in and think about the daily rituals of Home(s). The series of installations range from the symbolic to the banal. One of the works, a collage in the main hallways shows a Nuyorican’s response to gentrification while another shares with audiences the everyday objects our communities use to pamper themselves. Together, all works zoom in and out of the experience of a changing neighborhood.

en casa afuera represents and shines light onto the complex process of change and gentrification in NYC, and celebrates the histories that are passed on from generation to generation and carried everywhere. Above all, they encourage artists and guests to preserving our stories and our communities will follow.

When asked what Loisaida means for them the group responded:
“Loisaida has been an iconic place-maker for both its residents and the world at large. It architecturally houses the pride and cultural breadth of a community, while transcending the energetic embodiment of LES – a location/identity in flux. These dynamics are at the heart of our creative interests and explorations en casa afuera.”

2015, Events, Festival, Music, Performance, Plenatorium, Storytelling, Visual Art

Invisible Loisaida – Ideas City

Posted on May 27, 2015March 12, 2016 by Alejandro

IDEAS CITY

Part of the Street Program 12:00 -6:00pm

Loisaida Inc: Invisible Loisaida

The booth by Loisaida, Inc. will play with the visible and invisible tensions of rescued social spaces, their cultural output, and their lack of inclusion in the mainstream story line of the Lower East Side. Through a collaborative installation by resident artists Edgardo Tomás Larregui and Alejandro Epifanio, the booth will recreate the vernacular architecture of “seclusion” and social gathering elements of the traditional casita or urban community garden. Our casita also involves a strategy to render visible the reality of Loisaida, Inc., a social-cultural-artistic community (Latino/Puerto Rican Lower East Side), whose contributions to New York City and the downtown scene have usually remained unacknowledged, absent, and invisible to the hegemonic artistic and cultural narratives of New York City’s creative myth. The presentation will feature a listening station of oral histories by Laura Zelasnic, performances by ongoing Loisaida Center collaborators and projects: the Salvage Project; Flux Theater Ensemble; the Plenatorium, which nurtures and documents the “plena universe”; and Edwin Torres, a Nuyorican poet, performer, and downtown icon, who will explore the nonappearance of “No-isaida.”

A– ONGOING programming throughout the day:

1. Display and live screen-printing of the templates and prints developed and produced through our workshop: Building Community Through the Arts, a partnership with Hester Street Collaborative.

2. Listening Station featuring oral histories focused on local Latino cultural and community organizations such as CHARAS and Loisaida, Inc., by Laura Zelasnic.

3. Visual Collaborative Installation(s) between artist collaborators of the Loisaida Center. The entire booth will act as an installation and visual collaboration between visual artist’s Alejandro Epifanio and Edgardo Larregui with the support of Urban Garden Center NYC.

B– SCHEDULED programming by time-slots:

3:00 pm – The Salvage Project:

Story circles facilitated by the Loisaida Center’s artistic residents Flux Theater Ensemble where community members will share the stories of a precious object and have their stories transformed by professional playwrights into short monologues.

http://www.fluxtheatre.org/2015/02/flux-announces-art-residency-loisaida-center/

4:00 pm – Edwin Torres:

“Nuyorican” (New York-Puerto Rican) poet-performer-sound artist and downtown icon will present work based on the Invisible Loisaida theme. Torres’s work bridges numerous downtown and Loisaida traditions and scenes, from the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and beyond. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Torres_(poet)

5:00pm – PLENATORIUM:

A project initiative of the Loisaida Center focused on the nurturing and documentation of the practice of Puerto Rican plena, a genre of popular traditional music, song and dance native to the island of Puerto Rico, but related to similar Afro-diasporic expressions throughout the Caribbean and commonly present within the casita/community garden culture.

Planetarium means a space for the plena-universe of activities such as forums, workshops, performances, and other forms of plena-focused sociocultural participation.

http://loisaida.org/plenatorium/

Invisible Loisaida was made possible by: 9C Community Garden – Northeast Avenue C & 9 Street

Pa’ la calle!! – Theatre Workshops for the Community

Theatre workshop for community members: Pa’ la calle!!
– 16 +, open to public in general

5 hours, English and/or Spanish, maximum capacity: 10-15 people
– site specific work
– street theatre techniques
– object manipulation
– corporal mime training techniques
This is an introductory workshop and it’s open for people without any experience. Artists will work with basic concepts of each technique. On the other hand, if you have previous experience, the artists will guide, council and help you apply these tools to facilitate your creative process.

Bring

-An object (that you can perform with)

-comfortable clothes

-Water and snacks

-Yoga mat and/or towel

Boiler plate
About Vueltabajo:
The transdisciplinary art collective now working in Puerto Rico adopts the name Vueltabajo Teatro in Barcelona, Catalunya in 2012. It was born with the initiative of re-habilitating and activating a space: Magatzem Voltaire in Poble Sec, dedicated to art investigation and production. Its creative collaborators have been working together for more than 10 years now. The collective has developed methods of creating repertoire based on “practice as research” (presentations, residencies and laboratories). Each artist creates a seed (concept) and together research the use of diverse tools: physical theatre, movement, performance, street theatre, visual arts, media experimentation, music, site-specific.
About Narices Negras:

Concept:
A duet of characters that stumble upon everyday situations use their imagination to create worlds that help them cope with their routines. Common household chores are taken to the street, making the personal habits public, as something very natural. Narices Negras are nomads, floating on the frontier.
The performers use street theatre techniques, clown and corporal mime to shape their training. Improvisation and site-specific work is essential during the creation and investigation process for further developing the characters, thus the piece itself.

Click here to RSVP

Pa’ la calle!! – Theatre Workshops for the Community

Theatre workshop for community members: Pa’ la calle!!
– 16 +, open to public in general

Bring

-An object (that you can perform with)

-comfortable clothes

-Water and snacks

-Yoga mat and/or towel

Click here to RSVP

Ninth Street Tell-A-Thon

Click here for directions to La Plaza Cultural

Please fill out registration form below:

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Click here for directions to La Plaza Cultural

NuyoCuba: Poetics & Diaspora

Tuesday, April 21, 2015, 6:00pm – 8:00pm.
2 hrs ·

(a panel plus performance)

featuring Alberto Abreu Arcia, Aja Monet, and Rich Villar, moderated by Urayoán Noel.

Born in 1961 in Cardenas, Matanzas province, a heartland of African culture in Cuba, Alberto Abreu is a novelist, essayist, and social critic on such topics as race and identity and LGBT issues. He is a member of ARAAC, the Cuban civil rights organization. He was coordinator of Virgilio Piñera Narrative Workshop, held in the city of Matanzas. In 1988, he published a volume of short stories The big world. His essay Virgilio Piñera: a man, an island received in 2000 the Enrique José Varona UNEAC Prize. His La Gaceta de Cuba (2003) received mention in the X Prize . He organized the selection and preparation of Zero hour, an anthology of Matanzas stories which was released in 2005. That same year his book The Writing Games received the Dador Award from the Cuban Book Institute . He also received the Casa de las Américas Prize in 2007. (from http://www.afrocubaweb.com/abreu.htm)
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Aja-Monet is a Cuban-Jamaican poet originally from East NY, Brooklyn. At 19 years old, she was the youngest to ever win the Grand Slam Champion title of the Lower East side’s legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café in 2007. Her work is classically surrealist, engaging altogether Hip Hop, Soul, and literary audiences.

She dedicates her time and energy working with inner-city adolescence, providing performance poetry workshops and opportunities. Aja Monet received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Aja Monet’s first book of poems, The Black Unicorn Sings, was independently published with Penmanship books (2010). She recently collaborated with poet/musician Saul Williams to edit a book of poetry due out on MTV Books/Simon & Schuster Publishing in Fall 2012 called, Chorus. She is currently working on a book of science-fiction and new music. (from https://www.facebook.com/poetajamonet/info?tab=page_info)
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Rich Villar is a writer, performer, editor, activist, and educator originally from Paterson, New Jersey. His first collection of poems, Comprehending Forever, won the Editor’s Choice from the Willow Books Literature Awards in 2013, and it was published by Willow the following year. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee for both his prose and his poetry, and his work has been published in several journals, including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Rattapallax, and Black Renaissance Noire.

He served as a founding director, host, and co-curator for Acentos, a grassroots project fostering the Latino/a voice in American letters. From 2003-2012, through its workshops, panels, reading series, and public programming, Acentos allowed Latino/a poets at all skill levels to connect with multicultural audiences as well as their peers, in the one of the most historic Latino enclaves in the nation, the South Bronx. He has been quoted on Latino/a literature and culture by HBO, The New York Times, and the Daily News. On the radio, he has been heard on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York, and on the long-running NPR newsmagazine “Latino USA.”

Since 2008, he has served as a curator for La Casita at Lincoln Center Out Of Doors, appearing twice as the show’s emcee. He has been a frequent performer, host, and curator at the iconic Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe, and he has contributed poems and performances to various theater spaces, including Actors Stock NYC, and Luna Stage in West Orange, NJ. (from https://literatiboricua.wordpress.com/about/)

Taller de Plena Mayagüezana – 2nd Round

PLENA MAYAGÜEZANA WORKSHOP – 2nd Round –

COME JOIN US TO LEARN THIS UNIQUE VERY OLD STYLE OF PLENA!

APRIL 4TH – MAY 16TH

12:00 – 2:30 PM

AGES YEARS 18 +

This second series of workshops will consist of six sessions.These sessions will work on basic aspects of the plena mayaguezana, such as:

– Tuning of the hand drums (panderos) and proper care-taking of the leather head-drum. Afinacion de panderos y explicacion sobre el curao de los cueros

– Basic rhythm patterns of the main base hand-drum (pandereta hermana)

– Basic rhythm patterns of the second hand-drum (pandereta prima)

– Relationship between the prima and hermana drums.

– Specific hand techniques: ahogo, llorao, chachareo, tono, esplayao, caballo, golpe brocha/guiro, camapeneo

– Relationship and similitude to bomba rhythms.

– Palitos/clave

– Maraca

– Structure of some plena riffs and verses.

For more info and tickets HERE

Bilingual, Dance/Movement, Festival, Partners, Partnerships, Performance, Residencies, Theater, Workshops

2015 Artists in Residence – FLUX Theatre Ensemble

Posted on February 5, 2015March 12, 2016 by Alejandro

The Loisaida Center is proud to announce

2015 Theater Co. Residency Recipient:

Flux Theatre Ensemble

Time frame of Residency @ Loisaida: February 24th 2015 to April 25th 2015

Proposed project for the residency:

Flux Sundays:

Are you an actor, playwright or director?

Join Flux Theatre Ensemble’s unique play development process and vibrant artist community for their weekly workshop, Flux Sundays. Once a week, up to 30 theatre artists gather for three hours in the afternoon to lightly stage new scenes from playwrights in the community. Not a theatre artist, but want to get involved? Feel free to join us for the final hour of Flux Sundays, where we share all of the scenes, and see plays in their earliest stages of development brought to vivid life by a welcoming community of artists.

Official Dates for Flux Sundays: 2/15, 2/22, 3/1 and 3/15 from 4:00pm – 6:00pm
Email Flux Sundays to learn more about how you can participate.

The Salvage Project:

Behind every special object we keep, there’s something even more important: a story.

Flux Theatre Ensemble’s The Salvage Project is a series of story-circles where communities come together to share stories about the precious objects of their lives. Through the sharing of these stories, we’ll learn what matters most to the people with whom we share this city and why. The Salvage Project culminates in a free, full-length production of the world premiere play Salvage, which imagines a band of searchers looking for precious objects left behind in a post-catastrophe NYC. Interested participants in The Salvage Project will have the option of sharing their object as part of the scenic design of the production, as well as opportunities to have their stories transformed by professional playwrights into short monologues. Stories and objects may also shared as part of The Salvage Project blog.

Email Sol Crespo to learn more and participate in The Salvage Project.

The Salvage Project WORLD PREMIER: Thursday, April 10th 2015 at 8:00pm

About Flux Theatre Ensemble:

Since 2006, Flux has produced 20 productions and countless readings and developmental projects. The ensemble is made up of eleven Creative Partners composed of actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. Flux is the proud recipient of the 2011 Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, presented annually to an Off-Off-Broadway theatre company that consistently produces outstanding work. The company’s productions of Hearts Like Fists and Ajax in Iraq were chosen as “New York Times Critics’ Picks” and in 2008, nytheatre.com chose Flux Theatre Ensemble as one of their “People of the Year” saying “This rising theatre company had a hit in the New York International Fringe Festival with Other Bodies, written by artistic director August Schulenburg, and then went on to mount the fall’s most ambitious indie show, Johnna Adams’ The Angel Eaters Trilogy.” Over the years, Flux has received New York Innovative Theatre Award nominations for their productions of Jane the Plain, Sans Merci, Hearts Like Fists, Ajax in Iraq, The Angel Eaters Trilogy, The Lesser Seductions of History and Dog Act.

Flux Theatre Ensemble is a member of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/NY, the Network of Ensemble Theaters and the League of Independent Theatres.

Website: Click here.