In PRACTICE, Afro-Diasporic cultural idioms are interwoven through dance, sound, speech acts and design to incite the critical through-lines of creolized expressive arts formed within the greater geographic contexts of the "New World". This redux iterates on the larger evening-length work - that premiered at The Clemente in 2022—as it aims to guide viewers through a performative practice, celebrate the gift of gathering, and hold space to consider the emancipatory uses of culture for radical place-making and visioning collective liberation through creative practice.

Retinal Burning is an adaptation of Jesús Hilario-Reyes’ former work Akin to the Hurricane, which began in Spring 2018 following the events of Hurricane Maria. To interrogate the im/possible complex within the hyper-visibility and invisibility of the Black body, Hilario-Reyes utilizes the Carnivalesque to take a satirical approach to undermine said complex. Bubbling from a deep concern for visibility regarding Black people within a global context, this work mediates absolutes, lightness, and darkness. It proposes a ghosting towards or perpetual mobility to blurry embodiments. For Historias, Hilario-Reyes will create a site-specific version of Retinal Burning incorporating research and responses to the Lower East Side and The Clemente’s historical context. 

A dynamic performance led by artist and poet Edwin Torres where a choir of eight poets; Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Lydia Cortés, Sheila Maldonado, E.J. McAdams, Yesenia Montilla, Urayoán Noel, Kristin Prevallet, and Emanuel Xavier, will be conducted to bring to life five historical poems by foundational Latino poets. This bilingual performance, in both Spanish and English, oscillates between solo and collective voices, creating an organic and responsive experience. Through instant vocal arrangements, rhythm, and song, Torres guides the poets in generating spontaneous new poems while reinvigorating the original works. The performance honors the contributions of José Martí, Salomón de la Selva, Julia de Burgos, Lourdes Casal, and Clemente Soto Vélez—voices that span diverse Latin American geographies and aesthetics, deeply connected to migrant and diasporic histories, and integral to the rich Latino poetic tradition in and beyond New York.

No one wants to be an artist, but everyone wants to be paid for his work. - Franz Kafka

Cuarto Oscuro is a live streamed four part performance taking place in September, 2024 at the Clemente Center in NYC. Inspired by Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika / The Missing Person,in which he proposes a theater that hires anyone who applies, the project will employ a cast of new immigrants, hired directly from NYC's migrant shelters. Cuarto Oscuro will stage tableaux based on a pictorial script assembled from photographs of immigrant life on the LES. The artists will then re-shoot these tableaux using a multi camera flash system in an homage to the techniques of Jacob Riis, whose photographs changed the fabric of the Lower East Side. The new image flow will be interwoven with bilingual texts generated from the work process and from ongoing interviews with the cast. Three of these sessions will be live streamed, and an edit of the entire output will be projected on the Suffolk Street facade of the Clemente Center on September 28, as part of the Historias festival. 

Cuarto Oscuro is created by Lucia della Paolera and Seth Tillett, with Lorenzo Bueno, Nicole Fernandez, Michael Guidetti, and Justine Lugli. The project is realized with the generous support of the Clemente Center, Tenement Museum, International Center of Photography, Joel Fitzpatrick Studio, and Bronx-based LxNY partner and co-producer ID Studio Theater.

Cuarto Oscuro is part of a large theater work called FOUNDER, scheduled for full performance in the fall of 2025. 

“In its totality, the chorus is uncontainable, and potentially infinite, like a body of water, or a diaspora.” —Elisa Peebles on Circulo de Voces

Círculo de Voces is a public performance piece and series of talleres reimagining the choir as a public service, like a library or park. We center the voice as a primary tool for connection and collective transcendence. Inspired by the group vocalizations in Cuban Rumba and Puerto Rican Bomba, as well as Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening, Xenia is composing user-friendly pieces centering embodiment, collective improvisation and the use of references to ground the group in structure while deconstructing phrases and empowering singular voices to emerge, creating the sound of a new kind of coro, (choir).

From September–November,  The Clemente will present Exorcism = Liberation, a public art project investigating our relationship to land, self-determination, migration, and climate disaster. Through collective citywide experiences in New York City, Chicago, and the Connecticut River Valley of Western Massachusetts, the work invites the American public to imagine alternative futures through the lens of Puerto Rican culture and the U.S.’ ongoing colonial history. Exorcism = Liberation utilizes familiar political media campaigns to immerse the public in sonic experiences, distributing stickers, posters, handmade banners, lawn signs, and pins through local community and art organizations. 

Exorcism = Liberation is an act of intervention, a rehearsal for collective action during a critical American election. To learn more about the project, partners, and upcoming events, check out exorcism-liberation.net

9:00 PM: Event ends