A tremendous THANK YOU to all the lovely people who came out to 15 Years of Pushin It on Sunday June 9.
It was a beautiful raucous delicious party, celebrating 15 years of Culture Push-ing. It was the first live party we’ve had in 5 years, and our community showed up and showed OUT and we are so grateful.
It was the first time we’ve showcased our wonderful performing artists as part of our annual celebration, and it was a raging success.
Executive Director Clarinda Mac Low and Disability Arts Activist moira williams address the crowd
Our new friends the Incredible Drunkertons blew the roof off the house, and managed to make calling a raffle into its own special show.
The Incredible Drunkertons perform
The Incredible Drunkertons Making raffle-calling into an art form
So many thanks to the folks at the Francis Kite Club for their generosity and kindness (go hang out there–you’ll be glad you did), to Ayat East Village for delicious food, and to all the artists who donated their gorgeous work to the nail-biting raffle: Damali Abrams, aricoco, Jane Dickson, Denae Howard, Constantine Jones, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Laura Nova, Nasrah Omar, Elizabeth Joy Pillsbury, Katherine Toukhy, and Elaine Young.
We had such an amazing time, but we didn’t quite reach our goal. If you couldn’t make it to the party, but you still want to support the work of Culture Push, please consider donating–your funds will go directly to supporting our Symposium, currently in progress, and all the other important work we’re nurturing now.
6/7 Dragcycle brought the art of Drag into everyday life, in a celebratory, accessible form on a roving bicycle stage.
6/8 Shaolin Art Party celebrated community-driven art from across Staten Island
6/9 Sick Music brought communal explorations of connection and solidarity between sick musicians.
All photographs for the Culture Push Benefit & Show Don’t Tell Symposium 2024 are the work of D.J. Nemat-Nasser.
📆 If this felt like your vibe, we have more events! Please join us! 👇
ALL OUR EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Registration is recommended for all events, but not required. If you require special accommodation for any of our events, please contact us at cp@culturepush.org
Bench Chat
Join in the conversation about community safety and abolition taking place on abolitionist benches in Brooklyn NY at or near Recess Art.
Thursday, June 13 · 7pm - 9pm EDT Recess, 46 Washington Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11205
A chat about community safety and abolition taking place on abolitionist benches at or near Recess Art with Sara Zielinski and the Recess Assembly Fellows.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sara Zielinski (Culture Push 2023 Fellow) is an artist and activist based in Brooklyn. She often combines several techniques to create immersive environments. Zielinski has organized projects with artists in Chicago and New York and interviewed artists for The Huffington Post from 2015 to 2017. Zielinski is a recipient of a 2023 Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practice, a 2023 ArtTable Fellowship, and a 2024 NYSCA Artist Grant.
The Beginning of Swimming Season at the End of the World
Join us for a participatory archival activation that is part of a public art project about swimming, flooding, and water relationships.
Friday, June 14 · 1pm - 6pm EDT Saturday, June 15 · 12pm - 5pm EDT @ Interference Archive, 314 7th Street Brooklyn, NY 11215
Sunday, June 16 · 2 - 6pm EDT @ Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club Boathouse 165 2nd Street Brooklyn, NY 11231
Join Nora Almeida for a participatory archival activation that is part of a research and public art project about swimming, flooding, and water relationships called Open Water. Learn about water experiences and practices, urban swimming, and coastal ecology. Share your own water stories, feelings, fears, and memories. The participatory archival activation is created for the 2024 Culture Push symposium.
Event Dates + Times June 14th 1pm - 6pm at Interference Archive June 15th 12pm - 5pm at Interference Archive June 16th 2pm - 6pm at Gowanus Dredgers
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nora Almeida(Culture Push Climate Justice Fellow 2023) is an urban swimmer, writer, performance artist, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn / Lenapehoking. Her art explores intersections of archiving, environmental investigation, and spatial disruption. Recent public artworks—Last Street End in Gowanus (2021), Land Use Intervention Library (2022), and Open Water (ongoing)—focus on relationships between people and environmentally disturbed, post-industrial waterfront spaces.
Aunty's flood sensor is going off because all our favorite chai shops in the neighborhood are underwater!
Saturday, June 15 · 10am - 12pm EDT Jamaica Bay North Channel West Canoe Launch, North Channel West Canoe Launch Queens, NY 11693
Flood Sensor Aunty is a comedic public theater project about disaster preparedness, starring an anthropomorphic flood sensor making a career pivot to arthouse film and her friends. Designed as public education with and for brown aunties around Hillside Avenue and Jericho Turnpike, this will take place across late night chai and gossip spots, Come for a community conversation about the intersections between art and disaster / emergency preparedness. What information do you wish you knew before a disaster (like flooding, power outages, severe rainstorms). What are physical materials that you wish that the city provided you for free? What are strategies for emotional preparedness? And more broadly, can art serve as a tool in mitigating the material impacts of climate change? The gathering will take place on Jamaica Bay, at the North Channel Bay Canoe Launch on Broad Channel.
Sabina Sethi Unni (Culture Push Fellow 2023) is a public theater artist, director, performer, composer and writer obsessed with creating performances in unusual open spaces: from vacant lots, to open streets, to the beach, to early childcare centers, to community gardens, to public parks, to piers, to online. For more www.sabinasethiunni.com.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Self-mythology + Dreaming Workshop
Join us for a deep dive into self-mythology, dreaming and collective imagining at The Stories We Tell Ourselves workshop!
Saturday, June 15 · 2 - 5pm EDT Bailey's Cafe, 324 Malcolm X Boulevard Brooklyn, NY 11233
When we think of myth, we think polytheistic gods, creation stories, punished mortals, and fantastical beasts. Much like these mythological stories, self-mythology (also referred to as personal mythology) are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the world, and our place in it. The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Self-mythology Dream + Workshop will be where we come together to be the authors of ourselves through collective imagining and dreaming.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Six (Culture Push Fellow 2023) is a multi-medium designer, artist, and writer based in Brooklyn, NY. They often explores themes including the concept of self, phenomenology, epistemology, collective imaginaries, and futurity. Interrogating established "realities" against alternative potentialities, their work challenges accepted knowledge, embraces contradictions, and subverts expectations. They encourage individuals to question everything and to seek themselves as valuable sources of knowledge. Six aspires to continuously be the dreamer and the dream, and in doing so, inspire others to be the same.
In collaboration with movement artist Coco Villa, Nifemi Ogunro leads a movement/building workshop. Participants build 1 object together!
Monday, June 17 · 6 - 8:30pm EDT Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard Queens, NY 11106
In collaboration with movement artist Coco Villa, Nifemi Ogunro will lead a movement/building workshop. Nifemi shares their project process, then Coco leads the movement portion of the workshop with attention to the forms our bodies create. We end by drawing and building a singular object together. Please know that the workshop is recorded.
ABOUT THE ARTIST - Nifemi Ogunro
Toeing the line between utility and style, Brooklyn based designer Nifemi Ogunro approaches their design process with equal consideration for the bodies that rest on objects and the forms of the objects themselves. Wood being the medium that they primarily approach their art and furniture making practice, Ogunro uses photography, film, performance and movement as sources of inspiration and application for their work. They define their work as functional- sculptures. One of Wallpaper Magazine's 300 people to know, works included in various publications, a piece that lives in the permanent collection of the Denver Art Museum to groups of works that can be seen in moments of the television show Everything’s Trash, Ogunro’s practice spans across mediums and is meant to be shared.
Design is an intimate process and Ogunro uses their work as a reminder and a celebration of how much beauty the objects we associate with the mundane hold.
