Featured Event
Downtown Artists: Neighborhood Tour
11/16/2024
11AM
A Performative Conference in Nine Acts
Cover Image:
A human castle rises during the European Balloon Festival in Igualada, Spain, 2014. Photo Credit: Marc Vila
Guests are welcome to come and go at any time. Tickets and seating are available on a first-come, first-served basis, as capacity allows. Start times are approximate. There will be three intermissions. Tickets are $20.
On its second day, IDEAS CITY will set out to upend the accepted definition of the conference. In A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, the invisible undercurrents of urban life will come alive through spoken word, dance battles, hot-air balloon performances, and immersive video and sound installations. The day’s events will end just before the break of dawn.
7:30–7:50 PM
ACT 1. Jordi Enrich Jorba
Nomadic Place
From the bowels of an inoperative hot-air balloon, artist Jordi Enrich Jorba will summon a work of temporary architecture within which the following acts will unfold.
7:50–7:55 PM
Welcome by Master of Ceremonies
Bob Holman, Poet and Proprietor of Bowery Poetry Club
7:55–8:10 PM
Deflation performance of Nomadic Place by Jordi Enrich Jorba
8:10–8:40 PM
ACT 2. United States Department of Arts and Culture
People’s State of the Union: “2015 Poetic Address to the Nation”
Inspired by stories shared at hundreds of People’s State of the Union events nationwide, poets will perform the “2015 Poetic Address to the Nation.”
8:40–9 PM
ACT 3. Penny Arcade
Longing Lasts Longer
Penny Arcade’s Longing Lasts Longer is a passionate rumination on love, longing, and the loss of New York’s cultural identity, set to a rollicking live-mixed soundscape.
9–9:25 PM
ACT 4. BattleFest, Curated by Kareem Baptiste
The home of the most exciting Extreme Street Dancing competitions around the nation, BattleFest will bring amazing one-on-one dance battles to IDEAS CITY.
9:25–9:40 PM
Intermission
9:40–10 PM
ACT 5. Joshua Frankel
Plan of the City
Plan of the City is an animated film about the architecture of New York City blasting off into outer space and resettling on Mars.
10–10:30 PM
ACT 6. Daniel Lima, Featuring Eugênio Lima, Roberta Estrela D’Alva, Fernando Coster, Felipe Teixeira, and Élida Lima
Presented by Invisíveis Produções
HARLEM: CULTURAL CAPITAL
Daniel Lima will present an audiovisual experience set to a live score and featuring interviews with residents from cities across the world threatened by displacement. Supported by Sesc São Paulo.
10:30–10:45 PM
Intermission
10:45–11 PM
ACT 7. Danny Hoch
Excerpt from Taking Over
Taking on the character of a taxi dispatcher, Danny Hoch will perform an excerpt from his heartbreaking and raucously funny play about gentrification and feelings of displacement in New York.
11–11:30 PM
ACT 8. Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, DJ Rupture, and Michael Henry Adams
Last Dance
Last Dance is a performance about the Harlem Renaissance Ballroom, which was demolished this past March. It will feature music from DJ Rupture and a text co-authored by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts and Michael Henry Adams.
11:30 PM–12 AM
Intermission
12–3 AM
ACT 9. Ursula Scherrer with Brian Chase and Kato Hideki
afloat
In an immersive performance of floating sounds and images, the visible will become invisible, the invisible will become visible. The audience is invited to sit, lie down, come, and go. Supported by Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
Projections during intermissions provided by
ARTPORT_making waves
COOL STORIES FOR WHEN THE PLANET GETS HOT, IV
COOL STORIES IV is the fourth edition by ARTPORT_making waves of short art videos and animations addressing climate change. This edition focuses on food production and consumption.
Asians in New York (Lorin Roser and Nina Kuo)
CorbuRuption
CorbuRuption will use I Ching–inspired animations and 3-D simulation generatrices to recompose past architectural styles of New York City, bringing our attention to the ways architectural shifts mirror the physical transitions within our city.
Production by:
Event Sponsor:
The second day of the Festival will animate a basilica and a gym with dance battles, poetry slams, urban-design pitches, sound and video environments, hot-air balloons, games, and mobile art spaces. It’ll be a whirlwind of engagement and provocation that illuminates the invisible forces in our cities. RSVP to attend IDEAS CITY Keynote. Purchase a ticket to attend the A Performative Conference in Nine Acts.
About IDEAS CITY
IDEAS CITY is a major collaborative initiative between hundreds of arts, education, and civic organizations centered on the belief that culture is fundamentally vital to urban growth and innovation. This keynote address will anchor three days of conferences, debates, performances, activities on the street, and artistic interventions that will transform the Bowery neighborhood in downtown Manhattan into a multi-platform incubator that will examine urban issues, propose solutions, and seed concrete actions. The Festival will take place May 28–30, 2015, and this year’s theme—The Invisible City—will explore questions of transparency and surveillance, citizenship and representation, expression and suppression, and the enduring quest for visibility.
