Ongoing Events
Elements of Composition
Bik Van der Pol
Walking Tours
Bik Van der Pol’s two-part commission consists of a massive text piece—the phrase “As Above, So Below” painted on the surface of a parking lot adjacent to the Historic Essex Street Market and designed to be read from above—as well as a series of walking tours that lead visitors around the Lower East Side to consider the past, present, and future of the built environment in three dimensions. Walking tours depart the Bik Van der Pol project room in the historic Essex Street Market daily at 2pm and 6pm (with some exceptions); please sign up at the information desk or email reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
For complete tour schedule and info visit: www.bikvanderpol.net
Time/Food
Time/Bank (Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle)
Time/Food is a temporary eatery that operates on the Time/Bank economic system—a platform where individuals can pool time and skills, bypassing money as a means of value—allowing visitors to pay for their lunch in exchange for time credits and time currency earned by helping others in the Time/Bank community. The restaurant will offer a changing daily menu of meals prepared using recipes provided by a group of artists who like to cook, including Martha Rosler, AA Bronson, Liam Gillick, Mariana Silva, Anton Vidokle, Judi Werthein, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Julieta Aranda, W.A.G.E., Carlos Motta, and many more. Lunch is served Thursdays-Sundays from 1:00–3:00pm at the Abrons Arts Center.
To open a Time/Bank account, go to www.e-flux.com/timebank
MARKET
Temporary Services
To investigate the intersection of art, labor, economics, and the production of social experiences, Temporary Services has invited organizations and businesses from the Lower East Side to operate stalls in a section of the Essex Street Market building, returning the space to its original function as a marketplace, but one that is free to use, non-competitive, and particularly diverse in its offerings.
For a schedule and list of participating organizations and individuals, please visit: temporaryservices.org/MARKET.
Friday, September 23
The Creative Time Summit: Living as Form
10:00am–6:30pm
NYU Skirball Center
The Creative Time Summit is an annual conference that brings together cultural producers to discuss how their work engages pressing issues affecting our world, and features the bestowal of the third annual Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. For more information, please visit creativetime.org/summit.
Saturday, September 24
Physique of Consciousness
MadeIn Company
Presented by Long March Project
11:00am–12:00pm
Sara D. Roosevelt Park
Chrystie Street near Broome
Visitors are invited to participate in Physique of Consciousness, a project presented by Shanghai-based cultural collective MadeIn Company consisting of a 30—minute fitness routine composed of movements derived from a variety of cultural and religious ceremonies and designed to unite one’s body, soul, emotions, and spiritual history.
“Reflections on the Economy Inspired by an Elegant Toilet”
Guest Speaker: Doug Henwood (editor and publisher of Left Business Observer)
12:00–1:00pm
Olympic Restaurant
Doug Henwood will give a talk on the recession in light of SUPERFLEX’s Power Toilets/JPMorgan Chase—a life-sized, detailed, and functional replica of a JPMorgan Chase executives’ restroom installed inside the Olympic Restaurant. Guests are also invited to partake in the Living as Form menu specials inspired by the economic crisis.
1:1 Barter Advisor
OurGoods
12:00–8:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Meet with an OurGoods “barter advisor” for 10–30 minutes. These one on one consultations aim to connect creative people to other artists, designers, and craftspeople who want to trade skills, spaces, or objects in an atmosphere of mutual respect. To schedule an appointment now, email caroline@ourgoods.org.
Living as Form Talk: “Local Action”
Cybermohalla Ensemble (moderator)
Alternate ROOTS
Alan W. Moore
Katerina ŠedÁ
1:00–2:00pm
Abrons Arts Center
What does it mean to work locally? This conversation unpacks the concept of “the local” (and, by extension, “the global”) as it relates to socially engaged practices of various disciplines.
“SPURA Soundwalk”
Led by Todd Shalom (founder and director of Elastic City)
2:00–3:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
For SPURA Soundwalk, Todd Shalom will lead participants in an active listening walk of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA). Drawing upon techniques from Acoustic Ecology and visual poetry, participants will listen to the unfolding soundscape and engage in a series of poetic exercises to become more attuned to the neighborhood’s past and present. The walk will last 75 minutes and holds 12 people. To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Living as Form Talk: “Accountability and Socially Engaged Art”
Shannon Jackson (moderator)
Appalshop
Urban Bush Women
WochenKlausur
3:00–4:00pm
Abrons Arts Center
Socially engaged projects often tie cultural producers to the communities with whom they work in a complex collaborative relationship. This talk explores the ethical responsibilities producers have, both during and after their projects are completed.
Landfill
An event by Ted Purves and Elyse Mallouk
4:00–5:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Landfill (thelandfill.org) is an online archive and quarterly subscription service that studies socially engaged artworks by collecting, inventorying, and redistributing the various pieces of ephemera—flyers, newspapers, notices, etc.—that they generate. Join Ted Purves, founder of the California College of the Arts MFA Area for Social Practice, as he and Elyse Mallouk, along with guest members of the Landfill team, survey ephemera collected from the Living as Form exhibition and other current projects. An issue of the Landfill Journal will be available for assembly and distribution before and after the event.
Living as Form Talk: “Build Your Own Society”
Neue Slowenische Kunst ( NSK )
Andreas Siekmann
5:00–6:00pm
Abrons Arts Center
This talk explores the motivations and methodologies for creating alternative societies or social structures.
“On Imaginary Ground” Walking Tour
Led by Michelle Hyun (independent curator, Chicago) and Natasha Marie Llorens (independent writer/curator, New York)
6:00–7:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Understanding that the imaginary both animates and grounds, we will visit various sites of inhabitation and try to render, through conversation and walking, what is invisible to these sites. We will reflect on the role of the Living as Form exhibition space and project itself as one site of inhabitation. "The supposed flatness of inhabited space dissolves into a heterogeneity that is connected, momentarily and fragmentarily, only by a success of steps. The intactness [la totalité pleine] developers of the laid-out space had proposed now disappears...What has become of totality? How has it faded away?" (J.F. Augoyard, Step by Step)
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Illumination and Pilgrimage Offering
Carolina Caycedo and others
6:15–7:30pm
Lower East Side Preparatory High School
This event, designed by Carolina Caycedo in collaboration with members of local religious and spiritual groups as part of their multifaceted project Offerings, is a candlelight ceremony at a spiritually inclusive public shrine composed of hundreds of customized, screen-printed, glass votive candles. Illumination and Pilgrimage Offering collaborators include: Anthony Donovan from the Local Faith Communities; Yajna Purusa and the Bhakti Center; Hooshmand Sheshbaradaran and Kate Digby from the New York Baha’i community; and Martha Polin, Principal of the Lower East Side Preparatory High School.
Living as Form Opening Reception
7:30–10:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
“The Brutalist School”
AKA Hsi-Chang Lin Presented by Megawords
8:00–8:45pm
Historic Essex Street Market
The Brutalist School will use audio clips of people from around the world discussing their global concerns (Libyan government in a post-Gadhafi world, the banking situation in America, freak-outs over the Euro) to create the stems of beats, and improvise a musical score that accents those frustrations and end in a sense of sonic resolution.
www.facebook.com/hsichanglinmusic
Sunday, September 25
Living as Form Talk: “A Deleuzian Take on Social Practice”
Maria Lind
Gerald Raunig
11:00am-12:00
Abrons Arts Center
Living as Form Talk: “Living Design”
Common Room (moderator)
Superflex
Jeanne van Heeswijk
1:00–2:00pm
Abrons Arts Center
This conversation features a dialogue about the ever-changing relationship between design and everyday life, from politics to social organization.
Time/Food with Guest Chef Rirkrit Tiravanija
Time/Bank (Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle)
2:00–3:00pmAbrons Arts Center
Time/Food is a temporary eatery that operates on the Time/Bank economic system—a platform where individuals can pool time and skills, bypassing money as a means of value—allowing visitors to pay for their meals through the alternative currency of time spent performing a skill, service, or trade. Artist Rirkrit Tiravanija will be the guest chef for this special lunch event.
“Silence in the Postcard City” Walking Tour
Led by Pablo Gomez Uribe & Reena Katz (MFA Candidates at the School for Art, Media and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design)
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Over 40 years ago, New York City was granted an area bounded by Essex, Delancey, Grand and Willett Streets. Currently known as SPURA, it is the largest area of the city that remains without urban development. This particular place, full of hope, memories and meanings, is a critical part of the living history of the Lower East Side. Pablo Gomez Uribe (Colombia) and Reena Katz (Canada) will guide a silent performative tour through the proposed SPURA site, encouraging walkers to experience the place through the sounds of its current environment and the missing images of events that occurred in the past.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Elements of Composition” Walking Tour
Led by Bik Van der Pol
3:00–4:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Bik Van der Pol’s two-part commission consists of a massive text piece—the phrase “As Above, So Below” painted on the surface of a parking lot adjacent to the Essex Street Market and designed to be read from above—as well as a series of walking tours that lead visitors around the Lower East Side to consider the past, present, and future of the built environment in three dimensions.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Living as Form Talk: “Manifestations of Resistance”
Nato Thompson (moderator)
Ultra-red
Dan S. Wang
Women on Waves
4:00–5:00pm
Abrons Arts Center
What is the role of culture in social struggles, war, and protest? A panel of cultural producers and activists explore how artistic methodologies can be used towards the production of social change, and how forms of activism, in turn, can become part of one’s personal cultural practice.
Barter 101
OurGoods
Workshop
4:00–5:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
This workshop is an introduction to the problems and possibilities of exchange.
“On Imaginary Ground” Walking Tour
Led by Michelle Hyun (independent curator, Chicago) and Natasha Marie Llorens (independent writer/curator, New York)
6:00–7:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Understanding that the imaginary both animates and grounds, we will visit various sites of inhabitation and try to render, through conversation and walking, what is invisible to these sites. We will reflect on the role of the Living as Form exhibition space and project itself as one site of inhabitation. "The supposed flatness of inhabited space dissolves into a heterogeneity that is connected, momentarily and fragmentarily, only by a success of steps. The intactness [la totalité pleine] developers of the laid-out space had proposed now disappears…What has become of totality? How has it faded away?" (J.F. Augoyard, Step by Step)
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Labor Rights and Immigration Offering
Carolina Caycedo and others
6:15–7:30pm
St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery
This event, designed by Carolina Caycedo in collaboration with members of local religious and spiritual groups as part of their multifaceted project Offerings, is a candlelight ceremony at a spiritually inclusive public shrine composed of hundreds of customized, screen-printed, glass votive candles. Labor Rights and Immigration Offering collaborators include: Rabbi Michael Feinberg and the Greater New York Labor-Religion Coalition; Reverend Adriene Thorne from the Middle Collegiate Church; Middle Church Jerriese Johnson Gospel Choir (MCJJGC) directed by John Del Cueto; Amy Stein Milford; and St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.
Kill Screen presents:
Copenhagen Game Collective’s Johan Sebastian Joust
Megawords
4:30-5:00pm and 6:30-7:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Johann Sebastian Joust is a no-graphics, music-based, physical jousting game for two to six players, designed for motion controllers (i.e. PlayStation Move) and smart phones. The goal is to keep your accelerometer sufficiently still and be the last player remaining. Try to jostle your opponents’ controllers while protecting your own!
www.copenhagengamecollective.org/johann-sebastian-joust
Thursday, September 29
“Common Circular” Walking Tour
Led by Todd Rouhe (Registered Architect and Assistant Adjunct Professor of Architecture in the Barnard and Columbia Colleges Architecture Program)
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour will cover landmarks, significant public spaces, dwelling types and political struggles on the Lower East Side within the boundaries of Delancey Street, Orchard Street, Division Street and East Broadway. The tour route will form an interwoven loop focusing on the everyday life of the local neighborhood with distant views to utopian visions and dystopian realties growing on the horizon.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Twilight of the Goods: What happened to Orchard Street's Bargain District?” Walking Tour
Led by Amy & Larry Zimmer (journalist & proprietor, longtime residents of LES)
6:00–7:15pm
Larry and Amy Zimmer remember Sundays on the Lower East Side in the 1980s when people still lined up to shop at the Jewish-owned bargain clothing shops. The siblings' family ran one of those shops, which closed down in 1998 after more than 80 years. Larry worked at the family business on Orchard Street, H. Eckstein' & Sons, from the age of 12 (child labor laws be damned) through grad school when he would drive to work and park his car in one of the SPURA lots. Their tour will be a multi-generational odyssey through the ever-changing neighborhood where they both lived on Ludlow Street until recently moving to Brooklyn. It will focus on the disappearing culture of the Jewish merchants that once thrived in the area and who, like their grandfather, fought to keep it when Robert Moses threatened to tear through it to build the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Please Read (if at all possible): The Girl Project” Book Signing
Kate Engelbrecht
6:30–7:15pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Kate Engelbrecht will be signing copies of her new book, "Please Read (if at all possible): The Girl Project," which looks at female adolescence through the eyes of teenage girls. The book is available now through Rizzoli Publications.
Friday, September 30
“Twilight of the Goods: What happened to Orchard Street's Bargain District?” Walking Tour
Led by Amy & Larry Zimmer (journalist & proprietor, longtime residents of LES)
2:00–3:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Larry and Amy Zimmer remember Sundays on the Lower East Side in the 1980s when people still lined up to shop at the Jewish-owned bargain clothing shops. The siblings' family ran one of those shops, which closed down in 1998 after more than 80 years. Larry worked at the family business on Orchard Street, H. Eckstein' & Sons, from the age of 12 (child labor laws be damned) through grad school when he would drive to work and park his car in one of the SPURA lots. Their tour will be a multi-generational odyssey through the ever-changing neighborhood where they both lived on Ludlow Street until recently moving to Brooklyn. It will focus on the disappearing culture of the Jewish merchants that once thrived in the area and who, like their grandfather, fought to keep it when Robert Moses threatened to tear through it to build the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Kill Screen presents:
Copenhagen Game Collective’s Johan Sebastian Joust
Megawords
4:30–5:00pm and 6:30–7:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Johann Sebastian Joust is a no-graphics, music-based, physical jousting game for two to six players, designed for motion controllers (i.e. PlayStation Move) and smart phones. The goal is to keep your accelerometer sufficiently still and be the last player remaining. Try to jostle your opponents’ controllers while protecting your own!
www.copenhagengamecollective.org/johann-sebastian-joust
“Occupying the Lower East Side, Occupying Wall Street” Walking Tour
Led by Gabriela Rendon & Miguel Robles-Duran (urbanists & co-founders of "Cohabitation Strategies")
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
The tour will take a cross section of the most significant neoliberal urban development and discuss its imminent logic as we transverse the links in the lower Manhattan corridor between the Lower East Side and Wall Street. The tour will end at Liberty Square to join NYC call for an American revolution.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“The Broome's End” Walking Tour
Led by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (founder of Normal Architecture Office and Assistant Professor at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art & Architecture)
7:45pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
“I would like to propose a tour that follows the same route that I walk coming back home from work in the evening. Three times a week I emerge from the F train station Essex/Delancey at around 9 pm at the Lower East Side. I first pass by the Essex market. Then I take the left turn at Broome Street towards East. In about ten minutes I am at home which is almost at the very end of Broome street. During those ten minutes I pass an urban landscape of fences, car-parks, social housing, scaffolding, police and fire-station, large co-ops, community gardens, experimental compost site, playgrounds and parks and other spaces that I know very little about. It would be great if the participants in this tour bring their own knowledge about this area, rumors, even conspiracies. We will walk for about 10-15 minutes and exchange our knowledge about the area among ourselves.”
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Saturday, October 1
Physique of Consciousness
MadeIn Company
Presented by Long March Project
11:00am–12:00pm
Sara D. Roosevelt Park
Chrystie Street near Broome
Visitors are invited to participate in Physique of Consciousness, a project presented by Shanghai-based cultural collective MadeIn Company consisting of a 30-minute fitness routine composed of movements derived from a variety of cultural and religious ceremonies and designed to unite one’s body, soul, emotions, and spiritual history.
“Underground Service Alert” Walking Tour
Led by Damon Rich (artist, designer, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), and urban designer for the City of Newark)
DUE TO WEATHER, THIS TOUR HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED TO OCTOBER 15, 2:00 – 4:15PM
In the city, the most vital materials flow below the ground and out of sight. In advance of construction, warnings are spray-chalked onto sidewalks to help diggers avoid busting into water pipes or gas lines. This tour will provide an Underground Service Alert about the power relationships that shaped one piece of Manhattan known as SPURA, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Artist Access Barter Exchange Program for Healthcare
OurGoods
Information Session
4:00–6:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
The Artist Access program, based out of Woodhull Medical Center in Brooklyn, services artists (musicians, actors, dancers, filmmakers, creative writers and anyone in a creative field). The artists exchange their creativity within the hospital and bank credits for their work. They can then use these credits to pay for any service offered within the hospital, including doctor and dentists visits, ER visits, prescriptions, operations, mental healthcare and X-rays. Come to learn more about the program, register and get involved. RSVP to info@ourgoods.org.
“All Yesterday's Parties: A Speculative Geo-History” Walking Tour
Led by Minna Ninova (cartographer, graphic designer and urban policy researcher)
DUE TO WEATHER, THIS TOUR HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED TO OCTOBER 15, 6:00 – 7:15PM
This tour acknowledges that the Lower East Side has lately become a late-night party spectacle of Meatpacking proportions. However, it also acknowledges the neighborhood's alternative history as a place of progressive politics, literature, music, and yeah, ok, booze. Therefore, this tour humbly proposes a journey into the old, grungy past of the Essex Street Market neighborhood in search of everything from political parties to tea parties (*cough* speakeasies), from downtown lit scene gatherings to uptempo punk rock venues. Our inspiration will be long-gone flyers, discarded maps, and fuzzy photographs. We'll crash all yesterday's parties and speculate about tomorrow's. Whiskey shots not included.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Economics as Form
OurGoods
Lecture & Workshop
6:00–8:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
OurGoods hosts a conversation on market principles—led by Amy Whitaker, Professor of Creative Economics at California College of the Arts, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design—followed by 15-minute one-on-one conversations to help visitors apply business principles creatively to their practices.
The International Soup Network Dinner
Communal Dinner for 100
Tickets available for purchase in advance
8:30–11:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
The International Soup Network is a grassroots model for funding small-to-medium-sized creative projects through community meals, with initiatives in over 40 international cities. In this large communal dinner inside the Living as Form exhibition, a group of people come together to share a meal sold for an affordable price. All the income from this meal will be given as a grant to support a creative project, and everyone who purchases the meal gets one vote to determine who receives the grant. Visit sundaysoup.org/soup-network for more information, and click here to purchase tickets.
Sunday, October 2
“Silence in the Postcard City” Walking Tour
Led by Pablo Gomez Uribe & Reena Katz (MFA Candidates at the School for Art, Media and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design)
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Over 40 years ago, New York City was granted an area bounded by Essex, Delancey, Grand and Willett Streets. Currently known as SPURA, it is the largest area of the city that remains without urban development. This particular place, full of hope, memories and meanings, is a critical part of the living history of the Lower East Side. Pablo Gomez Uribe (Colombia) and Reena Katz (Canada) will guide a silent performative tour through the proposed SPURA site, encouraging walkers to experience the place through the sounds of its current environment and the missing images of events that occurred in the past.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Barter 101
OurGoods
Workshop
3:00–4:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
This workshop is an introduction to the problems and possibilities of exchange.
Expert Sessions
The International Soup Network
12:00–5:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Six experts on food and micro-funding—including artist and chef Athena Kokoronis, Jose Serrano-McClain from Trust Art, and a representative of Slow Food NYC—will each give hourly 10 minute talks, followed by a 45 minute Q&A session.
Swarm Intelligence
OurGoods
Workshop led by Nsumi
6:00–8:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
This is a workshop on cooperation techniques (biological swarming, social biomimicry) used by social animals and insect communities such as bird flocks, fish schools, bees and ants, animal herds, people, and even bacteria, molds and molecular motors.
“Elements of Composition” Walking Tour
Led by Dave Subren (LES resident & housing rights activist)
6:00–7:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Dave Subren will generously elaborate on the history of the L.E.S. and his vision for the S.P.U.R.A. site. He will emphasize on his version of the future for the area from various papers like "Form based Coding (F.B.C.'s)", "Zoning Variance", "Mix-use Housing", "Inclusionary Subsidized Housing" and "Community Land Trust". Time permitting, he may even address the arcane theory of "spatial deconcentration and planned shrinkage" and its implication and relevancy to the L.E.S. and other U.S. cities. The term was first outlined in the Kerner Commission Report in 1968. The Kerner commission, formally know as the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders, was convened by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the wide spread urban rioting of the late 1960's, in order to examine the cause of the urban riots and developing strategies to control or prevent future unrest. The theory of spatial deconcentration is based on a military strategy for establishing control over urban areas.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Thursday, October 4
“Bureaucratizing Participation” Walking Tour
Led by Jose Esparza (M.S. candidate in Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation)
6:00–7:30pm
NOTE: This tour takes place outside of exhibition hours. Tours depart instead from the parking lot outside the Essex Street Market, along Bik Van der Pol’s “Elements of Composition [As above, So below]” text piece. Parking Lot entrance is on Broome St., between Norfolk St. and Suffolk St. The destination of the tour will be the Community Board 3 Office, 59 East 4th Street.
Community organizing has long been a format for urban resistance. In the contemporary metropolitan context, civic organizations such as Community Boards have adopted similar grassroots strategies of democratic participation to voice the collective needs and concerns of a specific district to the larger network of city governmental agencies. “Bureaucratizing Participation” questions the efficiency of this format and analyzes its articulation in the bureaucratic setting. The tour will guide attendees to New York City’s Community Board 3’s Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Priorities public hearing. Tour attendee participation is encouraged.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Thursday, October 6
“Elements of Composition” Walking Tour
Led by Dave Subren (LES resident & housing rights activist)
2:00–3:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Dave Subren will generously elaborate on the history of the L.E.S. and his vision for the S.P.U.R.A. site. He will emphasize on his version of the future for the area from various papers like "Form based Coding (F.B.C.'s)", "Zoning Variance", "Mix-use Housing", "Inclusionary Subsidized Housing" and "Community Land Trust". Time permitting, he may even address the arcane theory of "spatial deconcentration and planned shrinkage" and its implication and relevancy to the L.E.S. and other U.S. cities. The term was first outlined in the Kerner Commission Report in 1968. The Kerner commission, formally know as the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders, was convened by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the wide spread urban rioting of the late 1960's, in order to examine the cause of the urban riots and developing strategies to control or prevent future unrest. The theory of spatial deconcentration is based on a military strategy for establishing control over urban areas.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“What if New York City...Adaptations to climate change” Walking Tour
Led by Thaddeus Pawlowski (Associate Urban Designer for the Office of the Chief Urban Designer of the City of New York, Department of City Planning)
4:00–5:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Urban designer Thaddeus Pawlowski will host a walking tour and open conversation about the particular challenges that face New York City in the age of climate change. We will look at aspects of New York’s infrastructure and buildings that may have to adapt to meet the rising waters, more frequent and dangerous storms, and rising temperatures that we can expect in the upcoming years. We’ll also consider how current building trends will fare under future environmental conditions. We will start in the Lower East Side and work our way through several of the city’s waterfront neighborhoods, looking for clues to our continued resilience.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Friday, October 7
“Common Circular” Walking Tour
Led by Todd Rouhe (Registered Architect and Assistant Adjunct Professor of Architecture in the Barnard and Columbia Colleges Architecture Program)
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour will cover landmarks, significant public spaces, dwelling types and political struggles on the Lower East Side within the boundaries of Delancey Street, Orchard Street, Division Street and East Broadway. The tour route will form an interwoven loop focusing on the everyday life of the local neighborhood with distant views to utopian visions and dystopian realties growing on the horizon.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Occupying the Lower East Side, Occupying Wall Street” Walking Tour
Led by Gabriela Rendon & Miguel Robles-Duran (urbanists & co-founders of “Cohabitation Strategies”)
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
The tour will take a cross section of the most significant neoliberal urban development and discuss its imminent logic as we transverse the links in the lower Manhattan corridor between the Lower East Side and Wall Street. The tour will end at Liberty Square to join NYC call for an American revolution.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Saturday, October 8
“Layered City / Layered SPURA” Walking Tour
Led by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani (urbanist, photographer and curator) & The New School
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
More than forty years ago, New York City took ownership of a large area on the Lower East Side for “slum clearance” and urban renewal. You might know it as the area around the Essex Street Market (where Living as Form is being held), or as the parking lots on Delancey Street, or you may know someone who once lived there. This is SPURA, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. Since 2008, Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani and the City Studio have been working on a long-term project about the everyday experience of housing, urban renewal and urban change at SPURA. Our goal is to translate our research into images, exhibitions and audio projects to help people with different points of view come together in conversation about SPURA’s past, present and future. Join us on a walk to explore the many ways of seeing the layers of SPURA.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Music by Justin Tripp and food by Megawords
Megawords
6:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Justin Tripp is a NYC based musician, former member of Aspera and currently plays for the Favourite Sons.
What is the Solidarity Economy?
OurGoods
Workshop
6:00–7:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
This workshop, led by Cheyenna Weber, is an introduction to the framework that includes co-ops, credit unions, CSAs, alternative economies, land trusts, and other initiatives that foster grassroots economic justice.
“Unrealized” Walking Tour
Led by Hester Goodwin (MA candidate in Public History at NYU)
6:00–7:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Frequently characterized by battles over the value of its built environment, the Lower East Side is haunted by visions of urban renewal and development projects never realized, sites that look like any other in the neighborhood, but which bear the imprint of both possibility and condemnation. Years and decades after the fact, this past continues to shape the community and physical landscape of the Lower East Side. “Unrealized” will use these sites to explore the value of land and space, and the tension between preservation and progress, by envisioning what could have been and never was.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Sunday, October 9
“FENCES, WALLS, CLEARING” Walking Tour
Led by Alec Appelbaum (writer)
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour shows the many collisions of wealth and use that surround the SPURA site. We will look for sites with latent real estate value, and we will puzzle out walls and dead ends. Heading east along Broome Street, north along Pitt, west along Houston, south along Attorney, west along Delancey and south along Essex, we will move between schools and lofts, a public pool and private cabanas, a police post and trinket stores. We get to a little garden beside the oldest playground in the United States and turn around at another wall. As we walk, speak up about what makes this neighborhood attractive. Then speak about what imparts its historic value. Then look sharp—you’re about to walk into another wall. What value hides inside those walls—and what value arises from the walls’ being there? People who enjoy thinking about economics and real estate—either as practitioners or reformists—will get a kick out of this tour. So will newcomers to property-speak. Children are especially welcome, as we will pass playgrounds and schools.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Barter 101
OurGoods
Workshop
6:00–8:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
This workshop is an introduction to the problems and possibilities of exchange.
“Elements of Composition” Walking Tour
Led by Dave Subren (LES resident & housing rights activist)
6:00–7:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Dave Subren will generously elaborate on the history of the L.E.S. and his vision for the S.P.U.R.A. site. He will emphasize on his version of the future for the area from various papers like "Form based Coding (F.B.C.'s)", "Zoning Variance", "Mix-use Housing", "Inclusionary Subsidized Housing" and "Community Land Trust". Time permitting, he may even address the arcane theory of "spatial deconcentration and planned shrinkage" and its implication and relevancy to the L.E.S. and other U.S. cities. The term was first outlined in the Kerner Commission Report in 1968. The Kerner commission, formally know as the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders, was convened by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the wide spread urban rioting of the late 1960's, in order to examine the cause of the urban riots and developing strategies to control or prevent future unrest. The theory of spatial deconcentration is based on a military strategy for establishing control over urban areas.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Thursday, October 13
“Elements of Composition” Walking Tour
Led by Dave Subren (LES resident & housing rights activist)
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Dave Subren will generously elaborate on the history of the L.E.S. and his vision for the S.P.U.R.A. site. He will emphasize on his version of the future for the area from various papers like "Form based Coding (F.B.C.'s)", "Zoning Variance", "Mix-use Housing", "Inclusionary Subsidized Housing" and "Community Land Trust". Time permitting, he may even address the arcane theory of "spatial deconcentration and planned shrinkage" and its implication and relevancy to the L.E.S. and other U.S. cities. The term was first outlined in the Kerner Commission Report in 1968. The Kerner commission, formally know as the National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders, was convened by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the wake of the wide spread urban rioting of the late 1960's, in order to examine the cause of the urban riots and developing strategies to control or prevent future unrest. The theory of spatial deconcentration is based on a military strategy for establishing control over urban areas.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“What if New York City...Adaptations to climate change” Walking Tour
Led by Thaddeus Pawlowski (Associate Urban Designer for the Office of the Chief Urban Designer of the City of New York, Department of City Planning)
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Urban designer Thaddeus Pawlowski will host a walking tour and open conversation about the particular challenges that face New York City in the age of climate change. We will look at aspects of New York’s infrastructure and buildings that may have to adapt to meet the rising waters, more frequent and dangerous storms, and rising temperatures that we can expect in the upcoming years. We’ll also consider how current building trends will fare under future environmental conditions. We will start in the Lower East Side and work our way through several of the city’s waterfront neighborhoods, looking for clues to our continued resilience.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Friday, October 14
SPURA Soundwalk
Led by Todd Shalom (founder and director of Elastic City)
2:00–3:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
For SPURA Soundwalk, Todd Shalom will lead participants in an active listening walk of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area (SPURA). Drawing upon techniques from Acoustic Ecology and visual poetry, participants will listen to the unfolding soundscape and engage in a series of poetic exercises to become more attuned to the neighborhood’s past and present. The walk will last 75 minutes and holds 12 people.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Free Movement Specialists, Inc.
Presented by Megawords
2:00pm, 4:00pm, 6:00pm (20 minute performance)
Historic Essex Street Market
"Elements of Composition" Walking Tour
Led by Quilian Riano (co-founder of DSGN AGNC)
6:00pm–7:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Tour description forthcoming.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
"The Broome's End" Walking Tour
Led by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss (founder of Normal Architecture Office and Assistant Professor at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art & Architecture)
7:45pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
"I would like to propose a tour that follows the same route that I walk coming back home from work in the evening. Three times a week I emerge from the F train station Essex/Delancey at around 9 pm at the Lower East Side. I first pass by the Essex market. Then I take the left turn at Broome Street towards East. In about ten minutes I am at home which is almost at the very end of Broome street. During those ten minutes I pass an urban landscape of fences, car-parks, social housing, scaffolding, police and fire-station, large co-ops, community gardens, experimental compost site, playgrounds and parks and other spaces that I know very little about. It would be great if the participants in this tour bring their own knowledge about this area, rumors, even conspiracies. We will walk for about 10-15 minutes and exchange our knowledge about the area among ourselves."
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Saturday, October 15
“Occupying the Lower East Side, Occupying Wall Street” Walking Tour
Led by Gabriela Rendon & Miguel Robles-Duran (urbanists & co-founders of "Cohabitation Strategies")
1:00–2:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
The tour will take a cross section of the most significant neoliberal urban development and discuss its imminent logic as we transverse the links in the lower Manhattan corridor between the Lower East Side and Wall Street. The tour will end at Liberty Square to join NYC call for an American revolution.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“All Yesterday's Parties: A Speculative Geo-History” Walking Tour
Led by Minna Ninova (cartographer, graphic designer and urban policy researcher)
2:00–3:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour acknowledges that the Lower East Side has lately become a late-night party spectacle of Meatpacking proportions. However, it also acknowledges the neighborhood's alternative history as a place of progressive politics, literature, music, and yeah, ok, booze. Therefore, this tour humbly proposes a journey into the old, grungy past of the Essex Street Market neighborhood in search of everything from political parties to tea parties (*cough* speakeasies), from downtown lit scene gatherings to uptempo punk rock venues. Our inspiration will be long-gone flyers, discarded maps, and fuzzy photographs. We'll crash all yesterday's parties and speculate about tomorrow's. Whiskey shots not included.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Underground Service Alert” Walking Tour
Led by Damon Rich (artist, designer, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), and urban designer for the City of Newark)
2:00–4:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
In the city, the most vital materials flow below the ground and out of sight. In advance of construction, warnings are spray-chalked onto sidewalks to help diggers avoid busting into water pipes or gas lines. This tour will provide an Underground Service Alert about the power relationships that shaped one piece of Manhattan known as SPURA, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
Free Movement Specialists, Inc.
Presented by Megawords
2:00pm, 4:00pm, 6:00pm (20 minute performance)
Historic Essex Street Market
“Unrealized” Walking Tour
Led by Hester Goodwin (MA candidate in Public History at NYU)
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
Frequently characterized by battles over the value of its built environment, the Lower East Side is haunted by visions of urban renewal and development projects never realized, sites that look like any other in the neighborhood, but which bear the imprint of both possibility and condemnation. Years and decades after the fact, this past continues to shape the community and physical landscape of the Lower East Side. “Unrealized” will use these sites to explore the value of land and space, and the tension between preservation and progress, by envisioning what could have been and never was.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“All Yesterday's Parties: A Speculative Geo-History” Walking Tour
Led by Minna Ninova (cartographer, graphic designer and urban policy researcher)
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour acknowledges that the Lower East Side has lately become a late-night party spectacle of Meatpacking proportions. However, it also acknowledges the neighborhood's alternative history as a place of progressive politics, literature, music, and yeah, ok, booze. Therefore, this tour humbly proposes a journey into the old, grungy past of the Essex Street Market neighborhood in search of everything from political parties to tea parties (*cough* speakeasies), from downtown lit scene gatherings to uptempo punk rock venues. Our inspiration will be long-gone flyers, discarded maps, and fuzzy photographs. We'll crash all yesterday's parties and speculate about tomorrow's. Whiskey shots not included.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
How much is our work worth to each other?
OurGoods
Workshop
6:00–8:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
This workshop focuses on action-oriented conversations about value and explores multiple approaches to exchange.
Sunday, October 16
Physique of Consciousness
MadeIn Company
Presented by Long March Project
11:00am–12:00pm
Sara D. Roosevelt Park
Chrystie Street near Broome
Visitors are invited to participate in Physique of Consciousness, a project presented by Shanghai-based cultural collective MadeIn Company consisting of a 30-minute fitness routine composed of movements derived from a variety of cultural and religious ceremonies and designed to unite one’s body, soul, emotions, and spiritual history.
“FENCES, WALLS, CLEARING” Walking Tour
Led by Alec Appelbaum (writer)
2:00–3:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour shows the many collisions of wealth and use that surround the SPURA site. We will look for sites with latent real estate value, and we will puzzle out walls and dead ends. Heading east along Broome Street, north along Pitt, west along Houston, south along Attorney, west along Delancey and south along Essex, we will move between schools and lofts, a public pool and private cabanas, a police post and trinket stores. We get to a little garden beside the oldest playground in the United States and turn around at another wall. As we walk, speak up about what makes this neighborhood attractive. Then speak about what imparts its historic value. Then look sharp—you’re about to walk into another wall. What value hides inside those walls—and what value arises from the walls’ being there? People who enjoy thinking about economics and real estate—either as practitioners or reformists—will get a kick out of this tour. So will newcomers to property-speak. Children are especially welcome, as we will pass playgrounds and schools.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Beyond Occupation” Walking Tour
Led by Quilian Riano (DSGN AGNC) and Esther Wang (CAAAV)
4:00–5:15pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This session will look at the spaces used for community organization and activist participation in the area directly adjacent to the Essex Market — New York's Chinatown. The goal is to understand what are the practices for community organization and the role that space, urban infrastructure and architecture plays in those practices. Beyond resistance, these spaces and practices are creating opportunities for long-lasting community political involvement and change.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
“Elements of Composition” Walking Tour
Led by Prem Krishnamurthy (designer, curator, and founding principal of Project Projects)
6:00–7:00pm
Tour departs from the historic Essex Street Market
This tour will take an interior look at invisible and erased histories of property and possession on the Lower East Side.
To RSVP email: reservations@bikvanderpol.net.
1:1 Barter Advisor
OurGoods
12:00–8:00pm
Historic Essex Street Market
Meet with an OurGoods “barter advisor” for 10–30 minutes. These one on one consultations aim to connect creative people to other artists, designers, and craftspeople who want to trade skills, spaces, or objects in an atmosphere of mutual respect. To schedule an appointment, email caroline@ourgoods.org.
