Keynote speech – Poet Laureate Rashad Wright
Tak dhina dhin – a performance by Surati and Rimli Roy
This conversation will bring together artists whose work engages with community, identity and connectivity across global diasporas and within cities rich with cultural diversity. How do conversations around our shared vulnerabilities reveal the threads that root us despite our various routes of arrival?
Cities force us to adapt. Conditions are always changing: buildings get demolished, new buildings rise up, and highways expand. Jersey City is facing expansion of the Turnpike which already covers and divides the city with overpasses. While large infrastructural projects like this are highly planned and calculated, the left-over spaces they generate are often unplanned and inhospitable. They are opportunities for communities to respond with creativity.
Larissa Belcic of the arts collective Nocturnal Medicine will engage in conversation with Dense Magazine about how we can reimagine overlooked urban space as places of community building, healing, rejuvenation, and speculation. Incorporating input from a community research project conducted by Dense Magazine, the conversation will be lively and fluid, ranging from murals to raves and everything in between.
How can art be transformative for individuals, groups, and society? What are ways to move beyond discourse and towards practice? And what, if anything, does karaoke have to do with this?!
Department of Transformation’s Prem Krishnamurthy and artists Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi explore these and other questions in an experimental, participatory event that unfolds over several hours. The multipurpose space at Hudson County Community College transforms to allow for different formats: interactive talk, sound healing bath, soil-making workshop, and experimental vocal practice—plus some karaoke! Through conversation, mindfulness, small-group activity, singing, and more, the program intends to open up a dialogue around polyvocal ways of working in and on the world.
Oliver Beer, a London and Paris-based artist whose work aims at revealing the hidden properties and musicality of objects, bodies, and architectural sites, will be in conversation with editor and journalist Raphaël Bourgois. Beer will present some of his recent videos and installations, and discuss his approach to making art. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A
The Hudson County Community College Foundation Art Collection has over 1940 artworks. All 9 campus buildings have permanent art installations on every floor in thematic groups in the public areas, making the entire college an educational art museum. The collection includes painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, limited-edition prints, and more! The Collection reveals aspects of America’s and New Jersey’s rich artistic and cultural heritage from the Hudson River School period to today. Among the noted New Jersey artists whose works are in the Collection are Faith Ringgold, Willie Cole, and Chakaia Booker. Other noted artists include Auguste Renoir, John Cage, and Yoko Ono, among many others. For more information, go to: Foundation Art Collection (hccc.edu)
Femme Digital is an exhibition celebrating the talents of contemporary female-identifying and non-binary artists creating animation, documentaries, and digital works of art. Dineen Hull Gallery proudly hosts works by multi-media creatives Anna Ehrsam, Deborah Jack, Donna Kessinger, LoVid, Stevfni.XYZ, Tricia McLaughlin and Vandana Jain. Through the use of screens, these femmetastic artists bring the tech heat to the Benjamin J. Dineen III and Dennis C. Hull Gallery. The exhibition opened on January 30 and will remain on view until March 29th, 2024.
Also on display on the 6th floor of the Gabert Library: Honoring 60 Years of Voting Rights and Civil Rights, curated by HCCC students and faculty: Sergio Herrara-Nunez Rios, Anthony Cavaliere, Rafy Garcia Alvarado, Tyshara Bonaparte, Tashonia Roney, and Prof. Dorothy Anderson. Some of the curators will be on site to provide more information about the exhibit.
A Yard Concept Reading Circle is a communal experience designed to bridge the academic and public sphere through the engagement of important works of culture by philosophers, sociologists, and cultural theorists.
The experience developed by writer Tiana Webb Evans is a social practice aimed at fostering critical consciousness. Reading Circle 09 invites an artist Lindsey Brittain, design theorist Dario Calmese, and architect Tei Carpenter to engage Gaston Bachelard’s seminal work Poetics of Space.
A conversation with the fiction writers Akhil Sharma, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and Deborah Treisman about immigration, cultural identity, and finding oneself in different places, in life and in literature.
The Labor of Art will be an interactive workshop and discussion where participants will be asked to create and write with an emphasis on issues relating to labor, access, and the anxieties of art. We will explore these issues by creating and writing in unconventional and challenging ways. Participants will be asked to share their results, creations, and observations in a follow-up discussion. With the participation of Rahma Hassan, Nataly Calva and Samantha Alvarez.
Writers Helene Stapinski and John Apruzzese, two native Jersey Citizens, discuss the Golden Door that is our hometown. How has immigration changed over the decades, and is Jersey City still a haven for the newcomers arriving on our shores?
They’ll discuss how and why people have come to Jersey City — in the past and today.
How can art be transformative for individuals, groups, and society? What are ways to move beyond discourse and towards practice? And what, if anything, does karaoke have to do with this?!
Department of Transformation’s Prem Krishnamurthy and artists Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi explore these and other questions in an experimental, participatory event that unfolds over several hours. The multipurpose space at Hudson County Community College transforms to allow for different formats: interactive talk, sound healing bath, soil-making workshop, and experimental vocal practice—plus some karaoke! Through conversation, mindfulness, small-group activity, singing, and more, the program intends to open up a dialogue around polyvocal ways of working in and on the world.
A fundamental feature of Jersey City is the extraordinary diversity of its population. As of 2020, 42.5% of its population were foreign-born residents. In 2021, it was ranked the most culturally diverse city in the U.S. This quality profoundly inspires the vision for the upcoming Centre Pompidou x Jersey City.
The discussion “Towards a new global museum” features publisher Lydia Amarouche, curator Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, author Felwine Sarr and CP x JC leadership Charles Aubin . Together, they will explore how museums today are reshaping collection displays and reimagining temporary exhibitions to embrace a broader range of voices, offering insights for the development of a new museum in Journal Square as a vibrant crossroads for diverse audiences.
Prof. Laurie Riccadonna and students Jasmine Arriaza, Joshua Beltran, Jadae Cepeda and Josh Greenbaum present some of the major works in the HCCC Foundation Art Collection. Meet the students, who will answer questions about a selection of works and be ambassadors to the collection.
The Hudson County Community College Foundation Art Collection has over 1940 artworks. All 9 campus buildings have permanent art installations on every floor in thematic groups in the public areas, making the entire college an educational art museum. The collection includes painting, sculpture, photography, drawings, limited-edition prints, and more! The Collection reveals aspects of America’s and New Jersey’s rich artistic and cultural heritage from the Hudson River School period to today. Among the noted New Jersey artists whose works are in the Collection are Faith Ringgold, Willie Cole, and Chakaia Booker. Other noted artists include Auguste Renoir, John Cage, Yoko Ono, among many others. For more information, go to: Foundation Art Collection (hccc.edu)
Many adults in and around Jersey City are curious about riding bikes as transportation, as well as for fun and exercise, but haven’t ridden since they were children, if at all. Using our stationary bike, instructors will show participants the basics of riding, from seat adjustments to shifting gears to braking, all in a safe, indoor environment. They’ll get you ready to roll around the local protected bike lanes and scenic riverfront bikeways in no time. (Kids are welcome too!)
This presentation will focus on the life skills—such as civic responsibility and teamwork—that the group promotes among teens. Through varied activities like site visits, field trips, and volunteering at community gardens and compost sites, participants gain insight into the concept of sustainability and the interconnectedness of food systems, consumption, waste, and climate action in their own communities.
With his most recent publication, Imagining the Future Museum: 21 Dialogues with Architects (Hatje Cantz, 2023), cultural strategist András Szántó captures a moment of change in museum architecture. In this book, Szántó delves into the evolving goals and expanding roles of art museums today and tomorrow as they turn away from grand statements of architectural virtuosity to embrace a more inclusive and accessible identity. This roundtable with Szántó, Centre Pompidou x Jersey City architect Jason Long (OMA) and leadership Charles Aubin and Anna Hiddleston will build on this exploration and discuss how the forthcoming museum in Journal Square can become a world-class institution deeply woven into the cultural fabric of Jersey City and New Jersey.
How can art be transformative for individuals, groups, and society? What are ways to move beyond discourse and towards practice? And what, if anything, does karaoke have to do with this?!
Department of Transformation’s Prem Krishnamurthy and artists Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi explore these and other questions in an experimental, participatory event that unfolds over several hours. The multipurpose space at Hudson County Community College transforms to allow for different formats: interactive talk, sound healing bath, soil-making workshop, and experimental vocal practice—plus some karaoke! Through conversation, mindfulness, small-group activity, singing, and more, the program intends to open up a dialogue around polyvocal ways of working in and on the world.
A Reading by Princeton University’s L’Avant-Scène students
During the Black Lives Matter protests of June 2020, the City of Newark officially removed Giuseppe Ciocchetti’s 1927 Christopher Columbus from Washington Park. Over the next three years, artists, residents, and city officials engaged in a formal process to decide what monument, if any, would take its place. In the interim, photographer Scheherazade Tillet, designer Chantal Fischzang, and writer Salamishah Tillet of Express Newark at Rutgers-Newark created the four-story mural “Will You Be My Monument?” to memorialize Fa’atina, an eight-year-old African American girl who participated in the community activism that night, in downtown Newark. The next year, architect and Columbia University professor Nina Cooke John’s “Shadow of Face” was selected by the city as the Harriet Tubman monument to replace Columbus and was unveiled in March 2023. Bringing together three artists who have recently launched large-scale public art projects in Newark, this conversation will explore the relationship between history, monumentality, collaboration, and gender in urban landscapes today.
This conversation with Liz Pelly and Damon Krukowski, moderated by Mark Hurst, will explore how musicians are facing new challenges from “growth at any cost” tech companies. Spotify, for example, recently announced that it would stop paying anything at all to musicians for tracks getting less than a thousand streams a year. This and other decisions from the tech industry have created a winner-take-all economy in which a few artists earn nearly all of the revenue from royalties and touring, while the vast majority of artists get paid less than ever.
Damon Krukowski and Liz Pelly have both written about the dangers of companies like Spotify, Amazon, and Google. Tech’s exploitative business model is “bleeding music dry,” to quote Liz Pelly in the Baffler. And the rise of generative AI threatens even worse outcomes. On the bright side, there are signs of a pushback. Foremost among these is the UMAW (United Musicians and Allied Workers), which is organizing music workers to fight for a fairer system. With the future of music in the balance, Liz and Damon will describe what the risks are today for musicians and why we might still have reason for hope.
Co-curated by WFMU’s Mark Hurst and Ken Freedman.
Technology has engaged with emotions as never before. It’s influencing and changing our collective feelings. From AI, coding, gaming, virtual reality, projects, and initiatives are flourishing to open a new imaginary. How education, organizations, festivals support the young generation to bring new feelings changing relationships between technology and emotions.
How can art be transformative for individuals, groups, and society? What are ways to move beyond discourse and towards practice? And what, if anything, does karaoke have to do with this?!
Department of Transformation’s Prem Krishnamurthy and artists Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi explore these and other questions in an experimental, participatory event that unfolds over several hours. The multipurpose space at Hudson County Community College transforms to allow for different formats: interactive talk, sound healing bath, soil-making workshop, and experimental vocal practice—plus some karaoke! Through conversation, mindfulness, small-group activity, singing, and more, the program intends to open up a dialogue around polyvocal ways of working in and on the world.
Sociologists Céline Bessière and Sibylle Gollac join historian Carole Reynaud-Paligot to discuss their experiences adapting their work into graphic novels. Why turn to this medium? What do comics do that other forms can’t?
More details coming soon
How can art be transformative for individuals, groups, and society? What are ways to move beyond discourse and towards practice? And what, if anything, does karaoke have to do with this?!
Department of Transformation’s Prem Krishnamurthy and artists Andros Zins-Browne, Asad Raza, and Naoco Wowsugi explore these and other questions in an experimental, participatory event that unfolds over several hours. The multipurpose space at Hudson County Community College transforms to allow for different formats: interactive talk, sound healing bath, soil-making workshop, and experimental vocal practice—plus some karaoke! Through conversation, mindfulness, small-group activity, singing, and more, the program intends to open up a dialogue around polyvocal ways of working in and on the world.