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Held at the CUNY Graduate Center, Day 1 will bring together PIT-UN designees and grantees for a full day of thematic workshops centered on PIT-UN initiatives and goals, with the aim of strengthening the network by measuring impact and ensuring equity, sustainability and the growth of PIT across all member colleges and universities.
Additionally, the day will feature plenary sessions with a keynote speaker, a celebration of the year’s Network Challenge grantees, an event for press, and special events for PIT-UN presidents and provosts. An evening cocktail reception will follow.
CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Avenue/34th Street & Fifth Avenue)
The UNConvening, Staten Island
The Day 2 UNConvening is organized by the College of Staten Island St. George and hosted at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Staten Island.
Day 2 will apply public interest technology to cultivating solutions related to racial equity, climate justice, and food justice. Special opportunities will emerge for engagement around the restoration, recovery, and sustainability of vulnerable communities and landforms. Our event will be organized as an “unconference,” using organizing strategies related to Open Space Technology. The structure and guidance toward engagement in Day 2 will evolve in the time that leads up to the event.
Attendees will be invited to participate in immersive and interactive activities, including workshops, exhibits, demonstrations, and tours. Day 2 will highlight the work and perspectives of local students, scholars, artists and community activists.
Day 2 will engage local community partners and highlight PIT@CUNY as defined by a commitment to social justice, racial equity, and community empowerment. We will maintain antiracist principles at the heart of our event. With an aim to make the most of the cultural space, our hosts at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden will offer exclusive programming that showcases the venue’s beauty through various engagements where attendees can explore relationships between humans and nonhumans, technologies and natural environments, and academia, activism and art.
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Discussion Leaders
Andrea Guifarro, PIT@CSI Student, College of Staten Island/CUNY BA
Students interested/involved in PIT at our member institutions are encouraged to join our student Discord for exclusive virtual access to this session.
Join the artist Tattfoo Tan on a reflective walk to the cemetery of historical Sailors’ Snug Harbor to experience how we can remain connected to our environments and histories in a tech-saturated world. Participants will walk silently to the location and share their reflections on the way back. Comfortable clothes and walking shoes are highly recommended. The 1.5-mile walk will be at an easy pace, but participants should expect some uneven paths and some slightly challenging terrain.
Discussion Leaders
Join artists, scholars, and activists to discuss not just the future of work but also the future of the worker. How do we monetize labor in non-exploitive ways? Can NFTs and cryptocurrency empower artists to have more control over how their art is distributed? As workplaces become a hybridization of humans and machines, how do we organize for health and safety on the job?
Discussion Leaders
Using food justice as a focus, local activists from the Forest Avenue COMEunity Fridge will lead a discussion on how to best elevate localized community-driven mutual aid projects.
Discussion Leaders
Dr. Julie Ju-Youn Kim AIA, Associate Professor (with tenure) and the Director/Founder of Flourishing Communities Collaborative, Georgia Tech
A civil engineer, an architect, a nonprofit subject matter expert, and a scholar in digital innovation for decolonized sustainability will lead a discussion around the sustainability of “homes” in times of great disasters. How can the impact of these disasters be reduced? How can we engage with efforts that expand equity for those who lack resources? In what ways can technology enhance adaptation to crises and assist in times of increased mobility and fragile/threatened infrastructure?
In this guided tour, we will explore the historical, architectural, and design innovations of the landmarked 19th century Main Hall building, which served as the main dormitory for the residents of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, while also recontextualizing these histories through the lens of contemporary art. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with the current exhibitions, Kathy Westwater, “PARK Ephemera”; Julia Forrest, “Transcendence”; and Jaclyn Burke, Ify Chiejina, Jodi Dareal, Debbie Roxx, and Arrianna Santiago, “Here We Are: Young, Black, and Indigenous Women in the Art World.” During this tour, we will also consider the untold and/or underrepresented cultural stories that surface through interdisciplinary, curatorial practices that center care, collaboration, and community. This tour will be led by Melissa West, Vice President of Curation, Visual and Performing Arts, and Shawnakay Salmon, Arts Production and Gallery Manager.
Opening Ceremony led by Segunda Quibamba
Listen to podcast: https://bit.ly/segundaquibamba
Listen to podcast: https://bit.ly/Andaluz_iNTeLL
Efren Andaluz III, better known as Andaluz The Artist, was born on October 8, 1986 in Queens, NY. Growing up in the cultural melting pot of Richmond Hill Queens he was introduced to an array of beliefs, backgrounds and multi-cultured people. Being half Dominican and half Ecuadorian his latino upbringing focused on family and work ethic. A major part of
growing up in the boom bap borough of Queens was the influence of Hip-Hop culture. This love for Hip-Hop was heightened by the fact that Efren grew fond of the graffiti tagged walls in his neighborhood. Graffiti, one of the four elements of Hip-Hop, would play a major part in his future art style. Andaluz The Artist has created murals and art pieces honoring many figures, heroes and cultural icons. He will create an original piece during our event to capture the themes of our work together and to help us set an agenda for the future.
PIT@CSI Student, Samantha Wilkinson has created an immersive art piece called “The Black Box” to represent the mystery of artificial intelligence. Participants will view a co-creative process that attempts to reveal the unseen in machine learning and the production of collective knowledges that embody the unknown and unexplainable, something that is familiar to artists and the artistic process. These pieces represent the themes of the UNConvening and be enhanced or changed by all those that interact with the objects and space.
Visit the lobby of Building P to explore exciting PIT@CSI student-led exhibits related to the themes of our gathering. Explore local projects related to community food justice. Engage with an opportunity to take a comprehensive risk index to contemplate your risk related to disaster threats (in partnership with Miami Dade College). Discover a unique student project related to the discovery of African Burial Grounds and the use of QR codes to support youth engagement in public history.
iNTeLL: Born and raised on Staten Island, the eldest son of U-God, from the Wu-Tang Clan, had an upbringing that was far from normal. iNTeLL, of 2nd Generation Wu, is an international artist who has traveled to Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and elsewhere, touring and spreading the message of raw hip-hop and keen lyricism. With an educational background in filmography and a love for songwriting and production, this student of the art stays broadening his spectrum as a self-sufficient enterprise for hip-hop and entertainment.
2nd Generation Wu carries on their parents’ legacy. iNTeLL brings a classic approach with magnanimous rhyme schemes and poignant delivery, weaving you into the curves of each word of his sound. He is a true entertainer spewing passion with every move and is an act you definitely won’t want to miss.
Moondance is a meditation that travels the cosmic realms in order to achieve deep relaxation. Inspired by the Black oystermen of Sandy Ground, within the meditation the oyster becomes a portal into the divine feminine illuminating the cyclical nature of life. For the duration of the meditation you will be invited to sit, or lay down, whichever is the most comfortable position, so please bring items that will help you relax.
Ingrid LaFleur has enlisted artist Jasmine Murrell to embellish her costume and the Brooklyn-based dance company Renegade Performance Group will be accompanying LaFleur during her meditation.
Jasmine Murrell is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary visual artist who employs different mediums to create sculptures, installations, photography, performance, land art, and films that blur the line between history and mythology. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the African-American Museum of Art, and the International Museum of Photography. Murrell has been a resident artist at the Bronx Museum AIM fellowship program, Baxter St. Gallery workspace, BRIClab contemporary art residency, and Block Gallery workspace. Her work has been included in the book MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, and in The New York Times, Ebony, Time, Hyperallergic, and several other publications.
Renegade Performance Group (RPG) is a Brooklyn-based dance company founded in 2007 by artistic director André M. Zachery. RPG creates innovative artistic projects grounded in Black and African Diaspora aesthetics and expressions through theatrical, immersive and site-specific performance as well as film, multimedia and technology. Under RPG, André collaborates with artists of all genres on projects that stretch performance presentation to engage a new generation of audiences through performance, media, and culture. For this collaboration with Ingrid LaFleur, RPG will perform an excerpt of a work-in-progress entitled Respiration.
