The Francis Kite Club →

Ongoing

The Francis Kite Club is a bar and cultural forum; a site of fellowship and a shared space in the East Village of Manhattan founded by friends and co-conspirators. The Kite hosts a range of activities, including live music, art, performance, workshops, and special convenings in a bar setting. The effort reflects a desire to come together, think, share, have a good time, and escape the norms of our professional and social trenches. 

The founding group comprises people working in film, music, art, political organizing, and publishing. Members who are shaping the space include artist and organizer Laura Hanna (Debt Collective), film stunt coordinator John McEnerney, curator and writer Laura Raicovich (Culture Strike), musician Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio), arts fabricator and creative producer Alice McGillicuddy, artist and organizer Nina Nichols, writer and musician Will Meyer, organizer and writer Astra Taylor, economist Caitlin Kline, painter Rommel R, musician Hannah Marcus, artist Lauren Bon, and literary agent Mel Flashman. Artists and new members move through the space daily, building the Kite with their performances and programming ideas. Visit at 40 Avenue C, East Village, New York.

Protodispatch →

Ongoing

Art and culture has enormous potential to shift our imaginations, perhaps the most essential aspect of what is necessary to combat the forces currently at work and bring about change. So, with Mari Spirito and Protocinema, we have produced Protodispatch, a digital journal of artists’ contributions focusing on what is most urgent to them. We've imagined Protodispatch as a site for global publics that offers ideas for how we might survive and thrive in a world beset by precarity and violence. While our material circumstances might differ radically, we all face pandemic, late capitalism, and colonialism as powerful forces in daily life. If part of art’s potential is to help us imagine otherwise, Protodispatch is a platform that provides a place of connection, and even hope. 

I am excited to present our initial round of commissions as they focus on a diversity of subjects in varied geographies. They are all brilliant in their own particular way and I hope you will find them provocative and energizing. Tiffany Sia (with Emilie Sin Yi Choi, Chan Tze-Woon) discuss the perils and opportunities of working in Hong Kong in the wake of shattered pro-democracy protests. Simone Leigh suggests that as Black Americans continue to be besieged by white supremacy, it may be time to once again go underground. Ximena Garrido/Ishmael Randal Weeks describe a process of building a structure communally out of materials brought by participants, revealing the strength of collective memory and its capacity to unveil corruption and lies in the context of Peru’s recent and deep pasts. Through a hyperlinked lyric essay, and a forthcoming month-long social media takeover, Kenya (Robinson) explores Black the relationship of people and water—both fresh and saltwater—as an essential part of the storytelling of US histories (the still above is from Kenya’s project). Jorge González, in an email exchange accompanied by a diary of images and texts, practices and reflects on the relearning of traditional crafts in Boriken (Puerto Rico) as a recuperative strategy for colonial erasure. 

The 31 Women →

Ongoing

The 31 Women is a research initiative and book focused on the artists and times of the 1943 Exhibition by 31 Women. At a time of global uncertainty, ongoing pandemic, and wars on so many continents, The 31 Women looks to an equally volatile historical period and to a group of women artists for grounding and inspiration. Brought together by the powerful force of Peggy Guggenheim, the artistic output of the 31 Women, their ideas and intellectual explorations alongside relationships to one another and their circles, constitutes not only a revolution in art and culture, but also reveals how their networks and diverse art-making were necessary for survival.

The 31 Women book centers on Peggy Guggenheim’s 1943 Exhibition by 31 Women at her Art of This Century gallery. It will unpack not only the personalities and art of the artists involved in the exhibition, but also their relationships to art history and modernism and their relevance to our own times .

Urban Front →

Ongoing

Worldwide, Urban Front works to make cities more equitable by connecting grassroots knowledge and infrastructures to our own committed areas of expertise, by being a bridge between progressive governments and organizations in charge of implementing public measures.

Members of Urban Front have decades of experience addressing critical issues including housing rights, environmental justice, public health, cultural action, urban planning, and political strategy. They are internationally renowned practitioners and have held high-level positions in public office or progressive public funded organizations. Our strength lies in our ability to bring together this expertise to create a unique transnational and transdisciplinary group that offers new highly localized knowledge to the many public and third-sector organizations that work for socio-spatial and environmental justice.

More info: www.urban-front.com

Art & Society Census

Winter-Spring 2021

What do you feel is most important in culture right now? This is the driving question of the Art & Society Census, a new project launched by BPL Presents — the arts and culture division of Brooklyn Public Library — together with writer and curator Laura Raicovich and in partnership with Hyperallergic. Together we’re taking stock of changes in culture by hearing from anyone who wishes to participate in the census, beginning with a survey that can be accessed here (available in English, Mandarin, and Spanish).

The results of this short questionnaire will provide material for the formation of working groups made up of members of the public, organized by Brooklyn Public Library over the winter and spring of 2021. Both the written feedback and the outcomes of the working groups’ discussions will be presented at an expanded convening — inviting NYC residents, artists, art appreciators, national and international arts workers, museum and public institutional directors and staff — with the aim of spurring new ways to share art and culture in public spaces that will best serve the broadest collective imaginable.

Submit your Census responses here.

Congress on Art & Life June 22, 2021

A culminating event for the Art & Society Census.

For the past year, BPL and partners have engaged in radical listening from people across the country about what changes we want to see in the arts, in culture and our daily lives, while the pandemic upended all of these. Through a survey of over 1500 people and a series of focused working groups, we’ve heard and taken stock of what important changes on the part of institutions, cultural producers, and participants need to happen and what fresh imaginings can help us seize this moment.  

Topics on the agenda: inverting expertise and finding new languages, financial transparency and better funding models,  the importance of local organizing & institutions for our survival, what we wish to see--a series of demands.

We call together the public to hear about our learnings and voice your own. 

We are joined by project organizers, working group facilitators, and working group participants. 

Project Organizers: Laura Raicovich, Jakab Lászlo Orsós and Cora Fisher 

Facilitators: Fadwa Abbas, Kazembe Balagun, Suhaly Bautista-Carolina,  Jennifer Keeney Sendrow & Hrag Vartanian. 

Participants: Open to all.

*A document will be shared with all who sign up in advance of the event, which has been compiled from the project and outlines the observations offered and changes demanded by participants. 

A Blade of Grass Magazine: Governance Reimagined

May 2020

Laura Raicovich guest-edited the fourth issue of A Blade of Grass’s biannual magazine on art and social change. Completed just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, the issue looks at Governance Reimagined by delving into the work of artists and cultural producers who not only bear witness to the pain and upheaval we are experiencing but also provide examples for a different way of living.⁣
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The included stories of international democratic movements, self-governance, decolonization, coalition building, and mutual aid inject some optimism into this revolutionary moment and can provide a playbook for artists and cultural producers to bridge the gap unminded by our political leaders.⁣ The issue includes contributions by Raquel de Anda, Marcus Briggs-Cloud⁣, Deborah Fisher ⁣, Laia Forné⁣, Thomas Gokey ⁣, Laura Hanna⁣, Kathryn McKinney, ⁣Alejandro Meitin, Jorge Díaz Ortiz⁣, Gala Pin, Laura Raicovich, Miguel Robles-Durán⁣, Jonas Staal⁣, and Li Sumpter.

Download the issue for free here.

Trainings for the Not-Yet

September 2019–January 2020

“Trainings for the Not-Yet” is an exhibition at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, conceived by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk that unfolds through a series of trainings in civic engagement, radical collectivity, and active empowerment. The project brings together collaborators who create and practice alternative imagining of being together in the face of the pressing emergencies that shape the world today.

Jeanne van Heeswijk in collaboration with Laura Raicovich, Adelita Husni-Bey, Patricia Kaersenhout, Shumaila Anwar (Initiative for Diversity, Inclusion & Peace (IDIP)), Habiba Chrifi-Hammoudi, Joy Mariama Smith, Adrian Piper, Denise Valentine, Nancy Jouwe, Black Quantum Futurism (Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips), Chloë Bass, Beatrice Catanzaro, Kolar Aparna, Mehbratu Efrem Gebreab, Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh (Arab Image Foundation), Clara Balaguer and Gabriel Fontana, Fran Ilich, Jun Saturay, Ying Que, Bakudapan Food Study Group, Michael Rakowitz, Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie, Superuse Studios, Freehouse, De Voorkamer (Pim van der Mijl and Shay Raviv), W.A.G.E, Philadelphia Assembled (Toward Sanctuary Dome), Staci Bu Shea (Casco Art Institute), Laced-up project (Sarah Mobley and Maaike van Dooren), Whitney Stark, Carmen Papalia, Zein Nakhoda, Homebaked Community Land Trust (Britt Jürgensen), Homebaked Bakery (Angela McKay), Homegrown Collective (Samantha Jones),  Selçuk Balamir (de Nieuwe Meent, Code Rood), Joska Ottjes (Bond Precaire Woonvormen), Irene Calabuch Miron, Ethel Baraona Pohl, We Are Here, Abdulaal Hussein and Paul de Bruijne, New Women Connectors, Lieneke Dwars, Stranded FM, Welkom in Utrecht, Gabriel Erlach, Sydney Sinkamba, Ultra-red, Mustapha Seray Bah (Stichting Mowad), Goldsmith.Company, and Extinction Rebellion Utrecht.

Visit BAK for more information.

Freedom of Speech: A Curriculum of Studies in Darkness

November 2018–present

Organized for the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at the New School and co-curated by Laura Raicovich and VLC Director and Curator, Carin Kuoni, Freedom of Speech: A Curriculum for Studies into Darkness is a year-long examination of speech as it is enacted today. With Indian artist Amar Kanwar's film Such a Morning (2017) as a point of departure, the seminars invite participants to imagine freedom of speech as a subject for urgent consideration, perhaps within a space of withdrawal or darkness. Each seminar has a particular point of departure overlaid with intersectional thinking from artists, Indigenous peoples, feminists, and innumerable other perspectives, to question current circumstances, and to confront the inequities and uncertainties in our times. The seminars unfold throughout 2019 and details can be found here.

Mel Chin: All Over the Place

April–August 2018

Mel Chin: All Over the Place was a multi-location exhibition with exciting manifestations of the work of Mel Chin co-produced by the Queens Museum and No Longer Empty, co-curated by Laura Raicovich and Manon Slome. The exhibition spanned nearly four decades of Chin’s malleable and wide-ranging approach to artistic practice. Exhibition sites in New York City included the Queens Museum, Times Square, and the Broadway-Lafayette subway station.

The objects and project artifacts in All Over the Place were organized around the thematic strands that have long preoccupied Chin’s thinking, including the natural environment, socioeconomic systems and injustice, the weight of lamentations as well as the lightness of humor to reveal truths. Botany, ecology, and oceanography are examples of the disciplines that intersect in the artist’s politically charged work and demonstrate how art can promote social awareness and responsibility and reanimate curiosity. Select works highlighted Chin’s engagement of multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork in order to posit community-based solutions to ecological and sociopolitical crises. As a result of such teamwork, Chin’s work challenges the idea of the artist as the exclusive creative force behind an artwork.

All Over the Place debuted four newly commissioned projects, Flint Fit, Soundtrack, Unmoored, and Wake. Flint Fit, an ambitious, boundary-breaking project, consists of a complex triangulation of places and processes. Flint Fit was envisioned as applying the strengths of places, as an action in the face of crisis, connecting New York City; Flint, Michigan; and Greensboro, North Carolina in time, function, and fashion. In Flint, the water is contaminated with lead, and residents must use bottled water for cooking, washing, and drinking, creating countless, constantly accumulating empty plastic vessels. At Chin’s instigation, over 90,000 used water bottles were collected by the people of Flint, and sent to Unifi, Inc, a textile manufacturer in Greensboro, North Carolina where they were shredded and made into fabric. Michigan-born, New York-based fashion designer Tracy Reese designed a capsule collection made from this fabric, with a focus on rain gear and swimwear. The garments were then sewn by women sewing their way back into the workforce at the St. Luke N.E.W. Life Center back in Flint. These designs debuted in a fashion event at the exhibition opening and were displayed at the Queens Museum’s Watershed Gallery.

In a major partnership with Times Square Arts, two works by Chin have been commissioned. Unmoored was a spectacular, surreal phenomenon pushing Mixed Reality to fill the skies above Times Square. It was a work that engendered a moment of awe, with a glimpse into an imperiled future. A parallel work, Wake, commissioned by the Times Square Alliance, was a presence that evoked the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal bleached by erosion and time. A larger-than-life ship’s figurehead based on Jenny Lind, the superstar of the 19th century, surveyed the air above her. While offering a shift from the frenetic energy of the city, these works evoked the city’s triumphs, its grave dark past, and created and a place for contemplation.

Non-Stop Metropolis: The Remix

April 2016–January 2017

While at Queens Museum, Raicovich initiated a multi-faceted project in collaboration with renowned writer, historian, and activist, Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is the author of 15 books about environment, landscape, community, art, politics, the power of stories, and hope. The roots of this project are found in her remarkable trilogy of Atlas books that propose creative mapping as a means to relay alternative histories of place, specifically in Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas and in Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas. In 2016, the third and final book in the series took New York City as its subject. Titled Nonstop Metropolis Solnit produced this publication with her collaborator Josh Jelly-Schapiro and a host of renowned writers, artists, historians, and cartographers.

Nonstop Metropolis: The Remix includes:

Artist Commissions: Two new artworks were created for the Queens Museum by artists Mariam Ghani and Duke Riley, inspired by essays in Solnit and Jelly-Schapiro’s New York City Atlas. Ghani’s work focuses on the linguistic diversity of Queens and Riley’s on the histories and present dynamics water and power in New York City.

For the large wall at the center of the Museum, Mariam Ghani created The Garden of Forked Tongues, 2016, a large-scale info-graphic based on data of endangered languages in Queens. Inspired by writer Suketu Mehta’s Atlas essay Tower of Scrabble, it presented New York City as an asylum for languages—the heart of which lies in the cultural and linguistic diversity of Queens.

Mariam Ghani, installation view at the Queens Museum

Enveloping the Museum’s Watershed gallery, Riley’s That’s What She Said, 2016, was a sweeping drawing inspired by Water and Power, essayist Heather Smith’s contribution to the Atlas chronicling the development of Manhattan as a history of exploitation of the city’s surrounding natural resources—chief among them, water.

Printed Broadsides: These four-color printed posters featured excerpts of selected essays and included the wonderful maps from Solnit and Jelly-Schapiro’s book. Each broadside was provided to the public monthly, free of charge.  

Public Programming: The Atlas was further animated via a series of public talks, walks, and urban adventures led by the essay writers from the book, artists, and other imaginative thinkers addressing topics including water and power, linguistic diversity in Queens, walking as an embodied act, the conjoined histories of environmental and financial disaster in Lower Manhattan, wilderness in the City, and Latino radio in NYC. Additionally educational opportunities, map-making workshops, and a celebration of the launch of the Atlas in October 2016 rounded out the programming slate.

Mickalene Thomas: Untitled

June 2015–Jan 2016

Early in her tenure at the Queens Museum, Raicovich initiated a series of major commissions for the large wall at the center of the museum’s atrium that envelops the Panorama of the City of New York, a beloved historical model of New York City’s five boroughs. Given the scale of the wall as well as its visibility from the Flushing Meadows Corona Park and its centrality at the museum, Raicovich determined this space should feature women artists, whose work is under-represented in major public commissions. Each commission would be installed for one year; the first was created by Mickalene Thomas, tracing geographies she encountered throughout the boroughs and overlaid by a pattern that is reminiscent of both an iconic print from one of her mother’s dresses and the ubiquitous chain link fencing found in nearly all urban landscapes. This commission was followed by others including, Mariam Ghani, Anna K.E., and Mierle Laderman Ukeles.