Tuesday, September 27, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM | Free | RSVP here
6PM Planting at the NYU Native Woodlands Garden, Schwartz Plaza (corner of Washington Square South and Washington Square East)
6:30PM Lecture-Performance at NYU Steinhardt Pless Hall, 82 Washington Square East, First Floor Lounge
A/P/A Institute at NYU Artist-in-Residence Beatrice Glow begins her residency with the act of planting a native tree, and the presentation of a new lecture-performance. Glow’s work uncovers invisible, suppressed stories that lie in the geopolitical shadows of colonialism and migration. During her residency, the interdisciplinary artist will research the social history of plants via spice routes and botanical expeditions focusing on the historical and contemporary relationship between the islands of Rhun (in present-day Indonesia) and Manaháhtaan to create Rhunhattan, a multiplatform project which will include psychogeographic and immersive tech experiences. Leeza Ahmady (Asia Contemporary Art Week), Thomas Looser (NYU Department of East Asian Studies), Jennifer McGregor (Wave Hill), Jack Tchen (A/P/A Institute at NYU), and Associate Dean Lindsay Wright (NYU Steinhardt) will offer comments, and composer, performer, and improvisor Pauchi Sasaki will present a musical composition.
Message from A/P/A Institute at NYU:
Remapping Historical Feelings
Nutmeg, beavers, shells, or porcelains? Nieuw Amsterdam, New York, or Rhun?
History, as consumed, too easily becomes a game of multiple choice with no apparent consequences except for who wins and who loses, and who scores higher on college entrance exams.
One of Beatrice Glow’s brilliant, creative obsessions is to bring “forgotten” things, places, and people together to feel some of the magnitude of past trade and land wars, and how such events continue to ramify. What did it mean for the Dutch to value the island of Rhun more than the backwater trading post of Nieuw Amsterdam? Her artistry is to bring back the wonder, juxtaposition, and scale.
Glow’s installations have us appreciate the “wayfinding” knowledges of Indigenous peoples and cultures. Through her collaborations with scholars and storytellers, we glimpse a foundational understanding of original peoples still actively making and creating during the centuries of colonial and cultural dispossession—what scholar philosopher Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance” renouncing “dominance, tragedy, and victimry.”
- Jack Tchen, Founding Director of the A/P/A Studies Program and Institute at New York University