Join Culture Push and Associated Artist, Christina Freeman, whose work UltraViolet Archive is currently featured in Queens International 2018: Volumes, for the launch of the first print edition of PUSH/PULL, the Culture Push online journal. This issue will focus on artistic freedom and expanded notions of censorship, including conversations with Dread Scott, Svetlana Mintcheva of the National Coalition Against Censorship, and Srirak Plipat of Freemuse, an independent international organization advocating for and defending freedom of artistic expression.

UltraViolet Archive is a collection of endangered creative works including films, graphic novels, music, literature, visual and performing arts that were formerly banned, challenged, or partially censored. For Queens International 2018, the interactive collection and installation focuses on works on loan from the Queens Library that are set in or challenged in New York, or authored by New Yorkers.

Culture Push is excited to partner with the Domestic Performance Agency to celebrate the holiday season with crafts, gifts, and good cheer direct from our artists in the Fellowship for Utopian Practice—a process-based program where artists and other creative people test new ideas through civic engagement.

For ten years, Culture Push has supported the work of over 40 artists, and we’re excited to bring them to DPA on Sunday, December 16, from 1-7pm. Fellowship Alums Nancy Nowacek, Chloë Bass, Sal Muñoz, Sarah Dahnke/Dances for Solidarity, Sonia Louise Davis, aricoco, and more will be vending pins, t-shirts, books, zines, greeting cards, talismans, and a slew of one of a kind items, most of which you can’t find anywhere else! Come meet our staff and our artists, and support the work of our network of do- gooders/makers/thinkers/and Culture Pushers all under one roof.

Queens Art Intervention: Dwelling
Dec 11 2017-Jan 19 2018

Four years ago Yvonne had the idea of sharing some of her funding with other artists to create more impact in more places in Queens. Queens Art Intervention, QAI for short, was born.

QAI consists of artistic interventions that happen between the artist and the community every September over one or two weekends. This December, QAI 2017 is going from the streets of Queens to the Queens Museum.

The interventions are commissioned and based on Yvonne's Fellowship project, Women Who Build-Artists Who Own. The project included a collaborative design and build of a mobile tiny house that upon completion was transformed into a tea and Zen garden catalyzing conversations around feminine dwelling.

The Museum exhibition will highlight the research project and commissioned interventions with interactive installations that extend the work, impact, and longevity beyond the streets of Queens.

Saturday December 16 from 2-4pm: Opening Reception & Dialogue
Saturday, January 6th from 12-4 there will be several workshops at the Queens Museum presented by the QAI community.

Ted Kerr from What Would an HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD?) has organized an event with the Museum to mark the Day With(out) Art / World AIDS Day, marking the release of two new books that explore the power of art and collective action: After Silence: A History of AIDS Through Its Images, by Avram Finkelstein and Militant Eroticism: The ART+ Positive Archives edited by Dr. Daniel Berger and John Neff. Finkelstein and Berger will be on hand to share stories, art and context from their books, joined by Jennifer Flynn Walker (The Center for Popular Democracy) and Jaron Benjamin (Housing Works). The conversation will be moderated by Lisa Dent. 

In an open conversation with attendees, CAB, along with the South Asian Women's Creative Collective and Yellow Jackets Collective, will address: How do we do cultural work? How do we resist institutions? What Asian artist-activist legacies shape our organizing and our histories? What are our communities’ most pressing needs?

As part of Clarivel Ruiz's project, Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, this Saturday Dominican and Haitian artists will share their work that responds to and reimagines the celebration of The Dominican Republic's independence from Spanish governance.

On July 15, 1865, the Dominican Republic liberated itself from the governance of Spanish rule, 373 years after Columbus' landfall on the island. In this first wave, indigenous people died due to extreme brutality, enslavement and illness. On the anniversary of the day of independence, Clarivel invites participants to remember this history, the continued liberation from imperialistic rule, and the creation of an unknown future.

For more information, visit the event facebook page

Clarivel Ruiz has organized a free film screening and panel discussion geared towards junior and high schools, as part of her project Dominicans Love Haitians Movement. 

She will be showing Deported, a film that follows members of a unique group of men in Haiti: criminal deportees from North America. Since 1996, the United States has implemented a policy of repatriation of all foreign residents who have been convicted of crimes. Every two weeks, about 50 Haitian nationals are deported from the United States; 40 percent are convicted legal residents who completed their jail sentence in America. To a lesser extent, Canada applies a similar policy.

Through the portraits and interviews of four deportees in Haiti and their families in North America, DEPORTED presents the tragedy of broken lives, forced separation from American children and spouses, alienation and stigmatization endured in a country they don't know and don't understand. A new life begins for these deportees in an environment that is both completely unfamiliar and quite hostile. Many no longer have family on the island and speak little, if any, Creole. Some struggle with addiction and others are coping with mental illness. Most have very limited financial means with which to manage any sort of reintegration. And Haitians are generally less than welcoming. They know that these North Americans have committed crimes and view them with suspicion.

DEPORTED, winner of Best Documentary Award at the Vues D'Afrique International Film Festival, goes far beyond the borders of Haiti and addresses the global issue of migratory policies.

Lise partners with map scientist Stuart Lynn to present History Hidden in Plain Sight: Bushwick Scavenger Hunt.

Buy tickets here! *$25

First gathering at NURTUREart, the scavenger hunt starts with an overview of Bushwick's history and a survey of the changing face of the neighborhood through historic maps. Then, everyone sets out with notebooks and pencils (and no phones!) to hunt and gather markers of the everyday, the legendary, and the unusual.

Finally, the group will convene at Lantern Hall to have a drink, eat, share discoveries, download the data collected, and create a new collective map of the places participants have found. Prizes will be given! Categories to be determined! Everyone will win!

This workshop is part of a series of public programs organized for The Archive of Affect, an exhibition of Fellows projects at NURTUREart.

Lise Brenner will lead a writing and drawing observational walk in the area around NURTUREart using tools from Vox Populi, a project that took an intimate, resident’s-eye look at the Dutch Kills neighborhood of Long Island City.

This workshop is part of a series of public programs organized for The Archive of Affect, an exhibition of Fellows projects at NURTUREart.

Salvador Muñoz and Ranjani Chakraborty will be presenting their workshop, "I'm Good, You Smile" as part of their fellowship project, Say What?! Street Harassment Intervention Strategies. Coinciding with Anti-Street Harassment Week, the event will lead participants in making art, speaking up, and connecting with other women, queer, trans and gender non-conforming people who experience street harassment. They will have screen printing, de-escalation skills sharing, and opportunities to plug in to local organizing.

Learn more on their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1815171585473868/

In coordination with the Dances for Solidarity installation in the exhibition, Sarah Dahnke and her team of collaborators will perform choreography co-created through written correspondence with incarcerated individuals in solitary confinement. The free world DFS team have sent the dates and times of performances to their incarcerated collaborators so that, if they wish, the individuals in solitary confinement can perform in their cells in coordination with the performance on the outside.

This is one of a series of public programs organized for The Archive of Affect, an exhibition of Fellows projects at NURTUREart. 

Olaronke Akinmowo will activate Free Black Women’s Library, a radical mobile library and interactive biblio installation that focuses exclusively on the literary output of Black Women, highlighting authorship that is often ignored. The pop-up library hosts readings by authors, and the public is invited to bring books written by Black Women to trade or donate.

There will be a special conversation and reading with Angela Flournoy, who is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times notable book of the year. Angela will read excerpts from the novel and take part in a conversation around her writing and the power, magic and importance of archiving our stories. Library opens at noon and the conversations will began at 2p.

This workshop is part of a series of public programs organized for The Archive of Affect, an exhibition of Fellows projects at NURTUREart.

The Worker’s Art Coalition is a collective of union workers who come together to demonstrate how art can build and strengthen labor movements. 

After a brief introduction to their work, members of the Workers Art Coalition (WAC) will invite the audience to engage in conversation using prompts from questionnaires that were distributed to union workers as part of Illuminating History, WAC's latest project. The conversation will touch on the relationship between work, art, and life.  After the conversation, a short selection of audio clips from the Illuminating History interviews will be played to represent the voice of the workers and the essence of the archive. 

This workshop is part of a series of public programs organized for The Archive of Affect, an exhibition of Fellows projects at NURTUREart.

Black Girl Museum is a trauma-informed public-participatory workshop and maker space that takes the form of a healing circle. Understanding that Black women, girls, and femmes have been looked over, left out, and marginalized in museum spaces, Black Girl Museum turns the idea of museum spaces and cultural institutions on its head by recognizing that we are individually, and communally, our own museums with storehouses of knowledge(s) and practices.

Over the course of the workshop, participants are walked through the 4 major points of the Bantu-Kongo cosmogram, and at each point, instructed on sound and movement and their relationship to releasing trauma. Participants are then placed in pairs/small groups, and following seven essential cues, each group/pair are given time to engage collectively on each cues’ applicability to their lives.

Participants are then given a variety of materials to choose from to create art and make meaning of their experiences. The session concludes in a gallery showing and artist talks by participants.

RSVP Required

Stop by NURTUREart to view a group show of projects from the Fellowship for Utopian Practice that work to dismantle common historical narratives by giving recognition to under-heard voices.

Show duration: March 17th-April 16th
 

Join us to get an early glimpse of The Archive of Affect, an exhibition of Fellows' projects at NURTUREart! The funds raised will support the free public programs that will take place throughout the duration of the show. Each ticket includes food, drinks, guided tours by artists of their projects, and a special performance by Sarah Dahnke and Dances for Solidarity of choreography created by individuals in solitary confinement.

Join Mass Story Lab for a screening of A Walk to Freedom: The Donna Hylton Story followed by conversation with Donna Hylton and Piper Anderson. 

RSVP to attend here!

Join Yvonne Shortt in NYC Tiny House Build: Empowering Women/Girls Meetup
New member meeting: 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.
Those who have never attended a meetup before must attend this meeting.

General Meeting: 10:00 a.m.- 11:30 a.m. 
The general meeting will be followed by two skill building sessions. 

RSVP here!

Students from UNCG brought Mass Story Lab to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum to promote empathy, healing, reform, and justice.

As a Partner in Residence at Brooklyn Studios for Dance, Sarah will be exhibiting ephemera from her project Dances for Solidarity, and will be performing with her collaborators for the opening.

The exhibition will be on view from October 2t-October 30th.

Dances for Solidarity is also seeking dancers and performers for the development of a new work this fall. Interested parties should email Sarah at dancesforsolidarity@gmail.com