Barrow Street Press, Who Needs Poetry?

BARROW STREET PRESS presents...
WHO NEEDS POETRY ?
A READING IN CELEBRATION OF NEW WORK 

In celebration of our book contest winners, Sarah Ann Winn's 2017 Alma Almanac and Tina Barr's 2018 Green Target, we have invited these authors, along with contest judges and renowned poets Patricia Spears Jones and Elanie Equi, to join in reading from their work at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. We have also invited poet Jayson P. Smith, accompanied by dancer and choreographer, Morgan Burke, to perform together, and demonstrate more preciously, the interactive and multi-disciplined nature of the written word. We are so grateful to have these voices come together, as they each actively challenge, push against, and illuminate the silver-lining of our current social, political, and aesthetic realities. Come join us and be reminded of why poetry matters and who needs it. 

A.I.R. GALLERY
155 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Friday, October 5, 2018
7PM Sharp 

Fellowship Information Session

Wednesday, October 3

6:30-7:30PM.

Strategies of Difference

Wednesday, September 26

6:30-8:30 PM

Here at A.I.R. Panel Discussion

Marking the 25th Anniversary of A.I.R.’s Fellowship program, Strategies of Difference welcomes the 2018-19 Fellows in a conversation responding to the increasingly urgent priorities of what a feminist future looks likes. Strategies of Difference builds upon A.I.R.’s history of radical vision through presenting alternative methodologies and ideas intended to have an impact on contemporary configurations of power. Each Fellow will present an aspect of their research or work that reconfigures the role of the artist within their surrounding environments; both on an individual local level and on the systemic issues at hand. They will cover a range of themes including a failed prison system, language across cultures and generations, immigration and borders, representation and identities.

This year's Fellows Include:
Melanie Crean, Isabella Cruz-Chong, Kim Dacres, Macon Reed, Gabriela Vainsencher, and Zhiyuan Yang.

Moderated by Roxana Fabius and Patricia M. Hernandez.

Your Body Is a Planet: A Poetry Workshop About Identity & The Earth You Want To See

Thursday, August 23, 2018
6:00–8:00 PM

This workshop empowers marginalized communities to imagine their bodies in the world they want to see. We will learn about how art, murals and poetry have been the lifeblood for changing the world and shifting mental health: from migrant justice movements to prison abolition to supporting survivors of sexual assault, and to queer and trans resilience and liberation. Participants will write poetry that can empower new forms of care and healing in themselves and their own communities.

Artist and Poet, Jess X. Snow will present on her animation and mural work and share her own
spoken word poetry before leading into an intimate and meditative workshop where participants are invited to re-imagine their younger selves as a planet and write a poem from the perspective of that planet. We will learn how a poem, once written, can be shared in a room, on a public wall, online, or on a stage, and have the power to shift perspectives, unite communities and then open a portal into a future that we dream of living in.

Meet the Artist
Jess X. Snow is a queer Asian-Canadian public artist, filmmaker, and pushcart-nominated poet.
The Tribeca Film Institute, Adobe, and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center have supported her
film work. Her public art and political graphics have appeared on PBS Newshour, The LA Times,
the UN Human Rights Conference, NBC Asian America and outdoor walls across the country. She has illustrated children's books and cover art for Macmillan USA, Yale University Press, YesYesBooks, Black Girl Dangerous Press among others, and her work is in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress and the New-York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History. Her first chapbook of poetry is forthcoming.

Meet the Curator
Katie Fuller was an educator for eleven years before curating her first show, Race and Revolution: Exploring Human Injustices through Art, in the summer/fall of 2016. She uses curated art shows as a means of confronting and educating the public on historical trauma and systemic racism. Last summer she co-curated Race and Revolution: Still Separate – Still Unequal with Larry Ossei Mensah, an exhibition about contemporary school segregation. The show just closed at its third location and will continue to travel from Autumn 2018 - 2019. Still Separate – Still Unequal was chosen as a “Best of Brooklyn 2017” by Hyperallergic magazine. As a street art initiative, Unbroken by Bars was voted top ten Philadelphia street art projects by Streets Dept in 2017 and it just closed at the Gutman Library Gallery at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In addition, her shows and public programs have been reviewed by Vice, ArtForum, Artsy, Daily Kos, Art Fuse, and LA Weekly.

Removing Biases Against Families Impacted by Incarceration

Wednesday, August 22, 2018
6:00–8:00 PM

Unbroken by Bars in partnership with The Osborne Association presents "Removing Biases Against Families Impacted by Incarceration"

More than 2.7 million children in the United States have an incarcerated parent on any given day, yet these children are largely invisible due to the stigma that families experience when they share that a loved one is incarcerated. As a result, many families do not speak about incarceration and do not receive the support that would help them succeed and thrive. Most children want and need to visit with their incarcerated parents and incarcerated mothers want opportunities to parent while behind bars, but biases and misconceptions about what is best for children are a barrier. Join us for a discussion with three formerly incarcerated mothers who will share how their relationships with their children were Unbroken by Bars and learn how you can create safe spaces and confront stigma so that children, mothers, and families have the opportunity to thrive and flourish. The discussion will be moderated by Allison Hollihan of the New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents.

(Our Love Is) Unbroken by Bars is an ongoing art and storytelling project curated by Katie Fuller with prints and a mural by Jess X Snow. This iteration, held in collaboration with A.I.R. gallery, addresses the systemic neglect of women, who are the fastest growing prison population, specifically women who gave birth while incarcerated.

Lecture/performance Che Gossett

Wednesday, August 15, 2018
6:00–8:00 PM

Che Gossett will be executing a performative lecture based on their research on racial capitalism, animality and abolition, and queer anti-colonial struggles. This activation approaches themes developed and hinted to A.I.R.'s 1980 Exhibition "Dialectics of Isolation: An Exhibition of Third World Women Artists of the United States," curated by Ana Mendieta, Kazuko Miyamoto, and Zarina. .
Che Gossett is a trans femme writer, an archivist at the Barnard Center for Research on Women and a PhD candidate in trans/gender studies at Rutgers. They are the recipient of the 2014 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award from the American Studies Association, a Radcliffe research grant from Harvard University and the 2014 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies at the City University of New York, and the 2014 Martin Duberman Research Scholar Award from the New York Public Library. Most recently, they received a Palestinian American Research Committee grant and are currently serving as a 2017-2018 Queer Arts Mentor. They are working on a book project titled Blackness, the Beast and the Non Sovereign.
 

Performance Dominique Duroseau "Mammy Was Here"

Sunday, May 20, 2018
5:00–6:00 PM

If only we knew. Nothing’s new., Fellowship Artist Dominique Duroseau’s first solo exhibition in New York City comes to an end this May 20th with a performance as one of her entities: "Mammy Was Here."

Please join her.

How do we internalize history and its connections with current events?

What are the taxing effects whether we fight or stay neutral?

We're all being taxed and tolled daily, put through an exceedingly dull grinder, where the parts, gears, spaces and processes we endure are racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic...to say the least. We're spat out, never whole, constantly going through this grinding and molding process again and again.

What does the internal Black humanity, our existence, resemble as a portrait?

How do we weigh the joy needed and deserved against the pain and trauma we must manage?

aCCeSsions Issue Four Launch Event

Saturday, May 19, 2018
6:30–8:30 PM

A.I.R. is pleased to host the launch of issue four of aCCeSsions: the graduate student-led online journal of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard). To celebrate the latest issue, artist Peggy Ahwesh will screen a selection of her films, followed by a conversation between Ahwesh and artist Lucy Raven.

Issue four of aCCeSsions present new works by artists, poets, and writers, whose work explores interpersonal contact through various means including translation, conversation, reuse, and dedication. The issue features newly commissioned and translated work by manuel arturo abreu, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Anne Boyer, Jesse Darling, Tamara Díaz Bringas, Elisabeth Lebovici, Tavi Meraud, and Ian Wilson.

The launch event and screening program extends the concerns of the issue, featuring films and audio works by Ahwesh that stem from her personal and professional relationships. Continuing from the issues engagement with mediation, Ahwesh marks a specific relationship to media culture and materiality in her work, which will be explored in the screening and following conversation with Lucy Raven.

About aCCeSsions
aCCeSsions is the graduate student-led online journal of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. The second year graduate students comprise the editorial board of Accessions. Together, they employ a collaborative approach to commissioning, editing, and curating new transdisciplinary writing and artworks for online space. aCCeSsions represents a culmination of each graduating class’ collaborative interests and concerns. The platform is a space in which graduate students may test the limits of curatorial practice over the course of an annual publication cycle. Past issues of aCCeSsions are available in the “Archive” section of the website. The website and each issue of the journal has been designed by Other Means in close collaboration with each graduating class at CCS Bard.

www.accessions.org

Gendered Technocultures

Faith Holland, 'Queer Connections', courtesy of TRANSFER

Moderated by Ali Wong
Monday, May 14, 2018
6:00 - 8:00 PM

Technology is a field that is particularly dominated, designed and defined by men from early computers clubs to hacker and gamer cultures to Silicon Valley. This talk brings two women working in the field of art and technology and the issues prevalent in both online and offline spaces, and the ways in which artists are addressing the gender bias implicit in technology and its cultures. We welcome you to join and contribute to this round-table discussion. 

Speakers:

Ashley Lee Wong is a curator and researcher based in Hong Kong and London. She is co-founder of the digital studio MetaObjects that facilitates digital production with artists and cultural partners. She has worked as Head of Programmes of Sedition, the leading online platform for artists to distribute their works as digital limited editions for screens. She is currently a PhD Candidate at the School of Creative Media at the City University of Hong Kong. 
http://metaobjects.org/

Kelani Nichole is founder and owner of TRANSFER, a gallery in Brooklyn that supports artists working with computer-based practices through solo exhibitions and experimenting with new formats for installation. She is the Director of The Current, a non-profit collecting museum presenting a model for a cooperative collection of works that explore technology's impact on the human condition. She is also a design strategist and consultant with 12 years of experience working with clients to create digital products. 
http://transfergallery.com