Planet Justice
Are you here for it?*
About the Festival
The 2023 edition of Live Ideas, Planet Justice: Are you here for it*?, explores the idea that climate justice is rooted in social justice, anticolonialism, global collaboration, human rights, and the rights of nature to thrive. An antidote to the doom and gloom of the climate crisis, the festival offers five days of art and action with performances, interactive installations, workshops, an outdoor festival, symposium, and more. It is co-curated with Slow Factory, a nonprofit organization working at the intersection of climate justice and human rights for collective liberation by changing narratives, systems, and culture.
*Social and environmental justice for collective liberation. Racial justice and human rights for all living beings on Mother Earth.
Enjoy this presentation and your experience at Live Arts? Please consider making a donation so we can continue to support artists like this and their critical work!
Donate at newyorklivearts.org/support/donate
We acknowledge that New York Live Arts is located in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. We offer our gratitude and care for its land and waters, and we acknowledge and pay respect to Lenape peoples, and to all Indigenous people, past, present and future, here and everywhere.
Schedule
Beyond the drumroll, a wake up call
Installation & Opening Party
May 17, 6PM // Lobby // Free
On view daily May 17 - 31
Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha
Altamira 2042 // US PREMIERE
May 17, 18 & 20, 730PM // Theater // Tickets start at $25
Daina Ashbee
Hello, Buffalo // WORLD PREMIERE
May 18 & 19, 8PM // Studio // Tickets start at $25
Post-Show Reception
hosted by Quebec Government Office
May 18, 9PM // Lobby // Free
Study Hall
May 19, 230-630PM // Theater // Tickets start at $25
Outdoor Party Performances & Activities
May 20, 1-6pm // 19th street between 7th and 8th ave // Free
Dynasty Handbag
Titanic Depression // OFF-SITE // WORLD PREMIERE
May 20 & 21, 830PM // Co-presented off-site at Pioneer Works // Tickets start at $30
Study Hall
May 19, 230-630PM
Land Acknowledgement & Spoken Words
Paloma Rae (5 min)
Welcoming by Bill T Jones (5 min)
Introduction by Céline Semaan (10 min)
Opening Keynote / Vandana Shiva (45 min)
Panel 1 / Making the Revolution Irresistible (Film: aja monet’s film intro — 2 min)
Examining the artist’s role in shifting culture and building power (45min)
Maytha Alhassen
Rachel Cargle
Wawa Gatheru
Elena Gonzales
Ijeoma Oluo
Moderated by Céline Semaan
Short Presentations 2 / Changing Everything
Looking at change from a psychological, spiritual & scientific perspective (45min)
Changing Everything from an Accessibility Perspective — Jen White-Johnson — 10 min
Seeding justice — Vivien Sansour — 10 min
As Above So Below —Xin Liu —10 min
From the Amazon to the World —Zaya Ribeiro — 10 min
Closing Discussion
Xiuhtezcatl in conversation with Céline Semaan
BIOGRAPHIES
Jen White-Johnson is a disabled and Neurodivergent Afro-Latina, art activist and design educator whose visual work aims to uplift disability justice narratives in design. Jen uses visual art to explore the intersection of content and caregiving, emphasizing redesigning ableist visual culture. Her creative practice shines best when she can infuse design justice, disability justice, and art activism to center Afro-Latine and Neurodivergent creativity, care work, and joy as essential acts of resistance. Jen lives with Graves disease and ADHD, and her heart-centered and electric approach to disability advocacy bolsters these movements with invaluable currencies: influential, dynamic art and media that all at once educates, bridges divergent worlds, and builds a future that mirrors her Autistic son’s experience.
Born and raised in an Indigenous community in the remote Brazilian Amazon, Zaya Guarani (b. 2001) belongs to a line of strong women who have led their communities as both shamans and spiritual guides. Continuing her ancestral
tradition of political and spiritual engagement, Zaya has chosen to dedicate her platform as an internationally renowned model to the ongoing global struggle for Indigenous rights and climate justice.
A member of the powerful Kamurape and Guarani Mbya ethnicities, Zaya initially infused her traditional Indigenous upbringing with a german school education after earning a scholarship in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 16. Shortly thereafter, Zaya was spotted by Dayana Molina, a prominent Brazilian Indigenous rights advocate, stylist, and columnist, with whom Zaya would found the first Indigenous Creative Collective (featured in Vogue Brazil and Elle Brazil) dedicated to Indigenous representation in the fashion world.
Zaya has recently been embraced as an advisor board member at Slow Factory Institute.
As part of her program of cultural engagement, Zaya delivered the closing remarks at the 2022 Venice Film Festival’s Masterclass of The Territory, an award-winning
documentary filmed near Zaya’s community in Rondônia, Brazil. Fortified by distinguished mentors in global fashion and entertainment Zaya has a unique opportunity to elevate her community’s message and influence the cultural sector.
Vivien Sansour is an artist, researcher, and writer. She uses installations, images, sketches, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for seed conservation and the protection of agrobiodiversity as a cultural/ political act. Vivien founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library in 2014 where she worked with farmers in Palestine and around the world. As an extension of this project she created The Traveling Kitchen, a social engagement project aimed at bringing to the forefront conversations about climate crisis, food politics, and the imagining of new worlds. Her work as an artist has been showcased internationally, in places such as The Chicago Architecture Biennale, Victoria and Albert Museum, Dutch Design Week, Berlinale, Istanbul Biennale, Fotoindustria, and the Venice Art Biennale. As a writer,
Vivien has written for magazines such as E-fluxx, Mold Magazine, and The Forward where she was featured as a food columnist. An enthusiastic cook, Vivien works to bring threatened varieties “back to the dinner table to become part of our living culture rather than a relic of the past.” This work has led her to collaborate with awardwinning chefs, including Anthony Bourdain and Sammi Tamimi.
A former Harvard University Fellow, Vivien is currently the Distinguished Artistic Fellow at Bard College where she premiered her art performance, “The Belly is A Garden” at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts and the Bard farm. As part of her fellowship Vivien is teaching in the Experimental Humanities department where she is developing a course on human and nature design in the Hudson Valley entitled, “The Belly is A Garden”- El Batin Bustan 20222023.
Xin Liu (b. 1991, Xinjiang/China) is an artist and engineer. Xin is the Arts Curator in the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT Media Lab and an artist-in-residence at SETI Institute. She creates experiences/experiments to take measurements in our personal,
social, and technological spaces in a post-metaphysical world: between gravity and homeland, sorrow and the composition of tears, gene sequencing, and astrology. Her recent research and interest center around the verticality of space, extraterrestrial explorations, and cosmic metabolism. She is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including Porches Chinese Young Artist of the Year 2021, Forbes 30 under 30 Asia, X Museum Triennial Award, the Van Lier Fellowship from the Museum of Arts and Design, Sundance New Frontier Story Lab, SXSW Interactive Innovation Award, Core 77 Interaction Design Award, Fast Company Innovation by Design Award, among others. Xin’s transdisciplinary work is widely covered by international media including NY Times, Nature, Wallpaper, VICE, Scientific American and Artforum.
aja monet is a blues surrealist poet and cultural worker. In 2007, she won the legendary Nuyorican Poet’ s Cafe Grand slam poetry award title. she follows in the long legacy and tradition of poets participating and assembling in social movements. aja monet has
collaborated across mediums and disciplines helping to shape and shift culture working with many internationally established artists, scholars, activists, and organizers. Her first full collection of poems entitled, “my mother was a freedom fighter” is a testament to all mothers, women, and girls who struggle to live, love, and move freely in the world. Her poems explore migration, spirituality, and femininity. In 2018, her book was nominated for a NAACP Image Award for Poetry and in 2019 she was awarded the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry.
aja monet also serves as the Artistic Creative Director for V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls. In 2022, she created an audio play called, VOICES, showcasing the stories and experiences of Black women across the diaspora and the African continent. As well, she is currently working on her next full collection of poems and her debut poetry album to be released in 2023.
Elena Ketelsen González is a writer and curator based in Queens, New York. Currently, she
is an Assistant Curator at MoMA
PS1, where she has worked to organize activations of Homeroom, a space that amplifies the work of collectives, organizations, and artists that are connected to PS1’s program. These collaborations have included Nuevayorkinos: Essential and Excluded (2021) with the filmmaker and archivist Djali Brown-Cepeda, Black Trans Liberation: Remembrance and Mourning (2021) with Qween Jean, and The Revolution is a School (2022) with Slow Factory. Previously, she held programming positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of the City of New York, among others. She frequently presents and lectures at universities and other institutions.
Dr. Vandana Shiva, a worldrenowned environmental thinker, activist, feminist, philosopher of science, writer and science policy advocat, is the founder of Navdanya Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (India) and President of Navdanya International. Trained as a Physicist at the University of Punjab, she completed her Ph.D. on the ‘Hidden Variables and Nonlocality in Quantum Theory’ from
the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She later shifted to interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India. In 1982 she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), an independent research institute that addresses the most significant problems of ecology of our times, and two years later, Navdanya (‘nine seeds’) the movement in defense of biodiversity and small farmers. In 2011 she founded Navdanya International in Italy and is Chairman of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, co-founded with the then President of the Region of Tuscany. Recipient of many awards, including in 1993 the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, and named among the top five “Most Important People in Asia” by AsiaWeek in 2001. Shes is a prolific writer and author of numerous books and serves on the board of the International Forum on Globalization, and member of the executive committee of the World Future Council.
Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, speaker and internet yeller. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race and most recently, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. Her work on race has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post, among many other publications. She was named to the 2021 TIME 100 Next list and has twice been named to the Root 100. She received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Rachel Cargle is an Akron, Ohio born writer, entrepreneur and philanthropic innovation. Her work and upcoming book with Penguin Random House, centers the reimagining of womanhood, solidarity and self and how we are in relationship with ourselves and one another. In 2018 she founded The Loveland Foundation, Inc., a non-profit offering free therapy to Black women and girls. Her umbrella company, The Loveland Group houses a collection of Rachel’s social
ventures including The Great Unlearn, a self-paced, donationbased learning community, The Great Unlearn for Young Learners – an online learning space for young folks launching in 2022, and Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre – an innovative literacy space designed to amplify, celebrate and honor the work of writers who are often excluded from traditional cultural, social and academic canons.
Rachel is a regular contributor to Cultured magazine, Atmos magazine and The Cut, and has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar and The New Yorker. Rachel lives & loves in Brooklyn, New York.
Wanjiku “Wawa” Gatheru is a climate storyteller passionate about making the climate movement relevant and accessible to everyone. Harnessing her background as a Rhodes Scholar and youth climate activist, Wawa works to bring climate justice to the mainstream. Her goal is to be an effective communicator that helps inspire a generation of “unlikely” environmentalists.
Outdoor Party
May 20, 1-6PM
Outdoor Festival with performances by:
Mykki Blanco
Xiuhtezcatl
Pierre Kwenders
DJ Ushka
Fogo Azul NYC Drum Parade
In the Water created by Collis Browne and performed by Phyllis Kee, Danielle Marshall, Rita Harvey, Marie Lloyd Paspe, Jhetti Lashley, Noah Hoffeld and Collis Browne, with special appearance by Fogo Azul.
Workshops by:
Olivia Rose
Makayla Wray
Slow Factory’s Experimental Farmers Market with:
Sky High Farms
Smallhold
BIOGRAPHIES
Ushka is a Sri Lankan-born, Brooklyn-based deejay traversing genres across electronic club & bass music. She deejays from the perspective of a dancer, blending a wide range of global club music from South Asian rhythms to afrobeat, queer club music to dembow, dancehall to soca, and more. She has performed across the U.S, Mexico, and Canadaincluding at institutions such as Brooklyn Museum, Lincoln Center, MoMA PS1, American Museum of Natural History, Rubin Museum, The Shed, Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, and Montreal’s Fondation Phi, and NYC’s SummerStage.
Ushka has been a staple in NYC’s queer nightlife, having run the iBomba party for six years and djing parties such as Papi Juice, Gush, Ragga, Bubble-T, Yellow Jackets Collective’s Lunar New Year, Moonshine, Basement
Bhangra and more. When she’s not djing, she’s an immigrant rights and climate justice advocate. You can follow her on twitter or instagram at @ty_ushka.
Singing and rapping in Lingala, French, English, Tshiluba, and Kikongo, Pierre Kwenders similarly
weaves his stories across the boundaries of language and geography. José Louis and the Paradox of Love is a culmination of personal growth and the musical dexterity he has honed over the years, converging his strong songwriting capabilities with the bravado he possesses as a DJ. The album, which was awarded the prestigious Polaris Music Prize, explores an ongoing search to grasp the universal complexities of romance, sometimes through the lens of Kwenders’ own intimate experiences.
Mykki Blanco: Finding fame
first as a fearless noise rap poet, he published a book From The Silence Of Duchamp To The Noise
Of Boys. Then what started as a video art project about a “teenage drag rapper” transformed into two years of Blanco living as a transgender woman in his personal life. Though eventually not transitioning, Mykki Blanco graduated in real life as well as artistically into the non-binary, gender-queer, post-homo-hop musical artist that we see before us today. Needless to say, it’s impossible to pigeonhole Blanco,
and his unique and beautiful sound is no exception.
Amassing a vast online following with a savvy and savage social media output, Mykki is hailed online as a digital warrior princess who rules across the underground music scene with mixtapes like Gay Dog Food, cult hits like “Kingpinning”, and sensational videos like “Coke White”, “Starlight”, “The Initiation”, “Wavvy”, and “Haze Boogie Life”. Blanco’s output to date has been hailed as razor sharp, ahead of its time and sometimes deliciously far out. Mykki Blanco’s referential framework is both archival and futuristic: a myriad of culture references, spiritual anecdotes, designer labels, makeup brands, hippie jargon, Fendi here and Snapchat there – all perfectly reflecting the creative dialogue and digital landscape we live in.
Collis Browne has played and produced almost every conceivable genre of music from free jazz to experimental ambient to soul to psychedelic folk to techno, and pop of all affections. He/they have performed on 4 continents in places as diverse as the MoMA PS1 in New York, the prestigious Museum of Islamic
Art in Qatar, Beirut Art Centre in Lebanon, and the PHI Centre in Montreal; as well as having a successful tech career and leading the internationally recognized environmental justice nonprofit Slow Factory.
Fogo Azul NYC is the byproduct of Batala New York . In June of 2016, Batala New York had a schism and from those ashes emerged Fogo Azul NYC. As of 2022, Fogo Azul NYC has expanded to become New York City’s most powerful women, trans, non-binary and gender nonconforming community musical group.
LIVE ARTS CONTRIBUTORS
New York Live Arts is deeply grateful to all the individuals listed below for their vital gifts to New York Live Arts over the last year:
$1MM and higher
Slobodan Randjelović & Jon Stryker
$500,000-$999,999
Anonymous
$100,000-$499,999
Anonymous
Eleanor Friedman
Ruth & Stephen Hendel
Alex Katz Foundation
Ellen M. Poss
Jane Bovingdon Semel & Terry Semel | Semel Charitable Foundation
$50,000 - $99,999
Jody & John Arnhold | Arnhold Foundation
Lorraine Gallard & Richard Levy
Helen & Peter Haje
Suzanne Karpas
Barbara & Alan D. Marks
Matthew Putman
$25,000 - $49,999
Ylva Cavalli-Björkman & Willard Ahdritz
David Dechman & Michel Mercure
Zoe Eskin
Adam Flatto
Agnes Gund
Michael P.N.A. Hormel in memory of Linda Grass Shapiro
Charla Jones
Colleen Keegan
Darnell L. Moore
Amy Newman & Bud Shulman
Alanna Rutherford
Jennifer & Jonathan Soros
Starry Night Fund at The Chicago Community Foundation
Diana Wege | Wege Foundation
$10,000 - $24,999
Caroline & Paul Cronson
Claire Danes & Hugh Dancy
Alexes Hazen
Julie Orlando
Andrea Rosen
Nina & Gabriel Stricker
Pat Stryker
$5,000 - $9,999
Patricia Blanchet | Ed Bradley Family Foundation
Paula Cooper & Jack Macrae
Joan Davidson
Anne Delaney
Laura & Richard Hunt
Glenn Ligon
Jeffrey B. & Wendy Liszt
Robert Longo
Margaret Morton
Jeffrey Schneider
Melissa Schiff Soros
Cindy Sherman
Catharine R. Stimpson
Kristalina & Jack Taylor
Billie Tsien & Tod Williams
Steve Wilson
$1,000 - $4,999
Derrick Adams
Rosio Alvarez & Jennifer Brody
Anonymous
Alberta Arthurs
The Brant Foundation, Inc.
Jill Brienza
Catherine & Paul Buttenwieser
Reggie Browne
Carmine Boccuzzi
Rose C. Cali in Memory of John J. Cali
Jeannie Colbert
Joan Davidson
Lil & Jim DeMarse
Beth Rudin DeWoody
Dobkin Family Foundation
Margaret Doyle
Terence Dougherty & Pierre Duleyrie
Gina Duncan
Nancy & Stephen Gabriel
Mimi Garrard
Michael & Deborah Goldberg
Thomas & Barbara Gottschalk
Deborah Hellman & Derek Brown
Tom Hennes
Jenny Holzer
Scott Hudziak
Joanie Johnson
Judy Johnson
The Joyce Theater Foundation
Emil Kang
Amir Karby
Hedy Klineman
Oscar Mack
Nancy Meyer & Marc Weiss
Susan Micari
Linda Murray
Wangechi Mutu
Samira Nasr
Richard Plepler
Randy Polumbo | Plant Construction
Margaret Selby
Jeffrey Seller
Céline Semaan & Colin Vernon
Caroline Shapiro & Peter Frey
Shinique Smith
Temple St. Clair & Paul Engler
The Susan Stein Shiva Foundation
Mickalene Thomas
Robyn Trani
JP Versace
James J. Williams, III
Jacqueline Woodson
Timothy Wu & Eric Murphy
$500 - $999
Stewart Adelson
Mary Ann Ashley
Arthur Aviles
Carol Bryce-Buchanan
John Fitzgibbon
William Floyd
Jeremy Henderson
Karen B. Hopkins
Brinton T. & Francis C. Parson, Jr
Robert Ross
John Sansone
Ellynne Skove
Deborah Swiderski
Wade Turnbull
Gilbert Williams
Gifts and commitments between 7/1/2021-6/30/2022
Support for New York Live Arts is provided by the Arnhold Foundation, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ed Bradley Family Foundation, The Brant Foundation, Inc., Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Dance/ NYC, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, Alex Katz Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Alice Lawrence Foundation, Samuel M. Levy Family Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts, NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund in the New York Community Trust, One World Fund, The Poss Family Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Jerome Robbins Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, San Francisco Foundation The Semel Charitable Foundation, Scherman Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Tides Foundation
Corporate support for New York Live Arts includes Con Edison, Google, Tito’s Handmade Vodka.
Public support for New York Live Arts is from Humanities New York, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Correction, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts.
STAFF & BOARD
Artistic Leadership
Bill T. Jones
Artistic Director
Janet Wong
Associate Artistic Director
Programming, Producing & Engagement
Kyle Maude
Producing Director
Hannah Emerson Jernigan
Producer
Jessica Prince
Producing Associate
Production
Chanel Pinnock
Production Manager
Megan Dechaine
Production Stage Manager
Leo Janks
Lighting Manager
James Bennett
A/V Manager
Tricia Navigato
Interim Assistant Production Manager
Creative Director
Bjorn G. Amelan
Community Engagement & Education
Bianca Bailey
Community Engagement & Education Manager
Communications
Tyler Ashley Director of Communications
Augustus Cook
Digital Marketing Manager
Hannah Seiden
Communications Manager
Taylor Adams
Front of House Assistant
Liliana Dirks-Goodman
Graphic Designer
Pentagram
Pro-Bono Branding
Randjelović/Stryker Resident
Commissioned Artist
Miguel Gutierrez
Executive Leadership
Kim Cullen Executive Director & CEO
Ali Burke Chief of Staff
Development
Dave Archuletta Chief Development Officer
John Jahnke Institutional Giving Manager
Zykeya McLeod Development Assistant
Finance
Nupur Dey Director of Finance
Manathus Dey Finance Associate
Operations
Gregory English Operations Manager
Marcus Retegues Facilities Coordinator
Adalid Nunez-Mendoza Custodial Assistant
Human Resources
ADP TotalSource
Legal Services
Lowenstein Sandler, PC Pro-Bono Counsel
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
Barrington Hinds, Jada Jenai, Shane Larson, s. Lumbert, Danielle Marshall, Nayaa Opong, Marie Paspe, Jacoby Pruitt, Huiwang Zhang
Front of House Staff
Julia Antinozzi, Paulina Meneses, Johnny Mathews, Hannah Nii, Cristina Moya-Palacios, Salma Kiuhan, Alondra Balbuena, Rafaela Oliviera, Makenna Finch, Anna Ticknor, Jingjing Han, Jessy Crist, Marlon Santana, Mieke Matteson, Demetris Charalambous
Board of Directors
Stephen Hendel Co-Chair
Richard H. Levy Co-Chair
Helen Haje Vice Chair
Slobodan RandjeloviĆ Vice Chair
Alan Marks Treasurer
Bill T. Jones
Artistic Director Ex-Officio
Kim Cullen
Chief Executive Officer Ex-Officio
Bjorn Amelan
Willard Ahdritz
Sarah Arison
Aimee Meredith Cox
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Charla Jones
Colleen Keegan
Darnell L. Moore
Amy Newman
Randy Polumbo
Ellen M. Poss
Matthew Putman
Jane Bovingdon Semel
Ruby Shang
Catharine R. Stimpson
Board Emeritus
Derek Brown
Terence Dougherty
Eleanor Friedman Advisory Council
Margaret Doyle, Chair
Alberta Arthurs
Beverly D’Anne
Lisa Frigand
Jenette Kahn
Susan Micari
Alton Murray
Lorraine Gallard
Lois Greenfield
Martha Sherman
New York Live Arts @NewYorkLiveArts @nylivearts
