Date: Wednesday, February 22, 2006
TIme: 7:00 pm
Location: The Pink Pony, 178 Ludlow (between Houston and Stanton)
This will be a brainstorming meeting with a focus on designing guidelines and plotting out the timeline for AI Firefly's new commission for the creation of a new public art, film, public performance, or new media project that addresses issues related to one of the four AIUSA current campaigns. We'll also be discussing Fuel for the Fire, a training weekend in May for high school students who work at the intersection of art and activism.
Everyone is welcome!
If you haven't been involved before, now is a great time to start. Please feel free to give me a call at (917) 513-7514 if you have questions about the group or would like to chat before coming to a meeting.
About Amnesty International Firefly Project: AI Firefly is a NYC-based collective that produces public events, including workshops, gallery exhibitions, screenings, dialogues and discussions, conferences and festivals, and concerts. Firefly works to raise awareness of human rights issues and support the exchange of ideas, strategies, motives, and methods for creating art that is politically and socially engaged. Amnesty International Firefly Project is affiliated with Amnesty International USA as local group #704 and as a pilot project for the Northeast Region.
]]>Hosted by Amnesty International Firefly Project, the weekend will provide students with an in-depth introduction to a range of strategies for integrating activism and the arts, and will feature conversations with local artists on approaches and strategies.
Fuel for the Fire is for high school sophomores, juniors and seniors who:
>> are looking for ways to integrate their political concerns and their theater/painting/filmmaking/public art/interdisciplinary interventions
>> want to learn new strategies for thinking critically about the relationship between art and activism
>> need resources for raising funds, pulling off giant projects, and getting new work into the world (and out of the bedroom/computer/sketchbook)
>> are ready to spend a weekend learning from artists who have successfully negotiated the rocky terrain of art and activism
Students, parents, and faculty should e-mail fire@aifirefly.org to receive an information packet and application. Or visit our website, www.aifirefly.org/fire, after March 1, to read more.
]]>Projects must involve collaboration with local NYC communities and/or draw a connection between international and local human rights issues and include a plan for community outreach, distribution, or education around the final project. Preference for local artists with a history of successful community collaborations (emerging artists and arts groups with three-year professional history also considered) and for nontraditional work that expands or critiques the concept of “activist” art.
Project guidelines will be released in February 2006. If you're interested in working with us to manage this process, please get in touch.
]]>An estimated 20,000 people are trafficked into the United States every year (as many as 700,000 are trafficked internationally) — many through and into New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
]]> Read more about trafficking on our trafficking website.If you're interested in getting involved, contact us.
]]>Date: Monday, January 23, 2006
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Fix Cafe, 110 Bedford Avenue (corner of north 11th) Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Subway: L to Bedford Avenue.
We'll be discussing two new upcoming projects, (1) a commission for the creation of a new public art, film, public performance, or new media project that addresses issues related to one of the four AIUSA current campaigns, and (2) an intensive two-day training weekend for high school students around grassroots arts/activist organizing strategies, planned for early May.
Everyone is welcome! Feel free to e-mail me at steffani@whatfelt.org if you haven't been to a meeting before or have any questions.
For more information about the events and to learn more about cases of trafficking in New York City, click here.
If you're interested in getting involved, please contact us at trafficking@aifirefly.org.
Here's more information about the events we presented:
Monday, October 10, 8:30pm
HERE Arts Center — 145 Sixth Ave. at Spring St.
PLAY READING and PANEL DISCUSSION. Isadora Productions will present excerpts from their new play, Becoming Natasha, based on Victor Malarekʼs book about the global sex trade, The Natashas. The reading will be followed by a panel discussion on the place of activism in the theater.
Featuring Josh Fox (International WOW), Susan Pavlin (Synchronicity, Women+War), Ron Russell (Epic Theatre Center), Sophia Skiles (THAW), Rana Kazkaz (The Kazbah Project), Brigit Evans (Producers), Allison Prouty (Vitals Theatre Company), Jessica Blank & Erik Jensen (The Exonerated), and Anita Durst (Chashama).
Tuesday, October 11, 7pm
Exit Art – 475 Tenth Ave. at 36th St.
ARTIST TALK. Debra Pearlman, photographer and installation artist, in conversation with Jean Reilly and Alison Boak of the International Organization For Adolescents.
Presented by Amnesty International Firefly Project and Exit Art in conjunction with Exit Biennial II: Traffic open through December 23, 2005.
Wednesday, October 12, 9pm, $12
Tonic — 107 Norfolk St. near Delancey St.
BENEFIT CONCERT. CocoRosie sings quiet music that crackles and sparks like found footage. With Diane Cluck and the Dirty Projectors.
Proceeds to benefit Amnesty International and Safe Horizon.
Monday, October 17, 7–9pm
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave. at 34th St.
Room: C203/C204
PANEL DISCUSSION. An informational discussion on human trafficking in New York and the legal and practical challenges associated with combating trafficking in the city and assisting its victims.
Panelists include Suzanne Tomatore, Director of the Immigrant Women and Child Project at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; Juhu Thukral, Director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center; and Gulnahar Alam, Executive Director of Andolan: Organizing South Asian Workers. Moderated by Alice M. Miller, Assistant Professor of Clinical Population & Family Health at Columbia University.
Presented by the New York City Women's Human Rights Action Team and hosted by CUNY's Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies - The Graduate Center.
]]>
We also produced projects by artists Rachel Budde and TRYST and participated in an artist/curator talk at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA).
For more information about the Peekskill Project, visit the HVCCA website.
For more information about TRYST, visit their website.
For more information about Rachel Budde, check out this New York Times article featuring an interview with Rachel and photographs of her installing her piece.
]]>A screening of Ashley Hunt’s innovative documentary investigation into the privatization of U.S. prisons.
Free; followed by wine reception and discussion.
PEN Prison Writing Program presents a reading of prize-winning writing by former winners of its annual contest, including Eric Waters, introduced by former PWP chair Bell Chevigny.
Free; followed by wine reception and discussion with the poets.
]]> PEN Prison Writing ProgramFounded in a belief in the capacity of writing to be rehabilitative, PEN’s Prison Writing Program has been working since 1971 to value, recognize, and encourage the written expression of those who are, or have been, incarcerated within the United States. Through an annual literary competition for people in prison, the fostering of mentoring relationships, through public readings of prisoners’ work, offering writing help to recently-released prisoners, and providing materials to those interested in launching prison writing workshops—the PWP aims to offer the educational and artistic support necessary to fortify literature’s potential as a force for responsibility and justice, and to make available to a broader audience this important body of work.
]]>Paul von Zielbauer of the New York Times and former Rikers medical director Dr. Robert L. Cohen discuss prison health care and the role of journalism in bringing human rights issues to light.
Free; followed by wine reception and discussion.
]]> Speakers:Dr. Robert L. Cohen was the DIrector of the Montefiore Rikers Island Health Services from 1982 through 1986. He is currently appointed by Federal Courts to monitor medical care in Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Connecticut.
Paul von Zielbauer began covering jails and prisons for The New York Times's Metro desk in 2003. Prior to that, he covered Connecticut as The Times's bureau chief in Hartford. He got his Bachelor of Arts from Iowa State University in 1988 and started his reporting career at the City News Bureau of Chicago in 1993. After spending a few months riding a bicycle from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, Vienam, where he taught himself Vietnamese, he graduated with honors from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1996. He lived for a year in Berlin as a Fulbright Scholar writing about the changing nature of Germany's citizenship laws, and, as a freelance reporter for Newsday, spent two weeks in Belgrade covering the student-led protests against the government of Slobodan Milosevic that eventually brought down the Stalinist government. He spent a year coverning environmental issues for the Times Union in Albany and joined The Times in 1999 as a general assignment reporter.
]]>Amnesty International Firefly Project, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review and ABC No Rio present an exhibition of drawings by prisoners from around the country and a series of Thursday-night events on prisoners rights.
]]> With pieces ranging from depictions of prison scenes to symbolic representations of prisoners aspirations toward freedom, Jailhouse Drawings offers a unique insiders view of life in prison. The images were selected from a pool of submissions to the CHRLRs cover contest for A Jailhouse Lawyers Manual (JLM), a handbook of legal rights and procedures designed for use by prisoners.ABC No Rio
156 Rivington St., between Suffolk and Clinton
F to Delancey / J, M, or Z to Essex
www.abcnorio.org / 212-254-3697.
May 19th, 7PM: OPENING RECEPTION for Jailhouse Drawings
May 26th, 7:30: RIKERS ISLAND AND PRISON HEALTH - Paul von Zielbauer of the New York Times and former Rikers medical director Dr. Robert L. Cohen discuss prison health care and the role of journalism in bringing human rights issues to light.
June 2nd, 7:30: PRISON POETRY - PEN Prison Writing Program presents a reading of prize-winning writing by former winners of its annual contest, including Eric Waters, introduced by former PWP chair Bell Chevigny.
June 9th, 7:30: CORRECTIONS - A screening of Ashley Hunt’s innovative documentary investigation into the privatization of U.S. prisons.
Jailhouse Drawings will be on view Sundays from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. The exhibit will close on June 16th. All Thursday-night events are free and open to the public and will be followed by discussion and wine reception.
]]>Firefly Project invites you to an open conversation about where we go from here.
You met at the conference - now's the time to reaffirm the connections you made. You didn't make it to the conference - here's your chance to meet the people who did. Bring your project ideas: you want to build an activist community website? set up a once-and-for-all master listserve for the artist/activist community? organize a series of workshops on puppet-making? create a public art project on Wall Street? Now's the time to share and recruit!
]]> RSVP REQUIRED if you want to make an announcement or distribute materials - nextsteps@aifirefly.org]]>