2019 Season Announcement
At NAVEL, Public Programming is an invitation to experience what matters to us Now. The programs you encounter here come together through an act of trust in the community’s collective consciousness: each year our residents elect, from an open call, a committee of curators who propose topics they believe to be compelling, challenging, and urgent. Over the next few months, these nascent notions are developed collectively — through assent and dissent, exchange of impulse and feeling, sharing physical and artistic space — and the result is our 2019 season.
We invite you to peer into our Collective Brain, into the messy miasma at the core of creative community, and join us for a year of inquiry, uproar, and play around the dinner table, in the margins of the web, on stage, in the mosh pit, and most of all in brighter, more defiant places.
Tickets and reservations for all programs become available two months before the event date. NAVEL members receive early access to tickets to core programs a week before the general public. Become a member for early access and discounted tickets all year long.
Here’s what’s coming:
One Another
Organized by Dorit Cypis
Wednesday, April 17 – ongoing
In an era where we struggle to recognize the complexities of diversity and difference, One Another is a durational and collective research project in response to an urgent question: who are we to one another? Facilitated by artist and mediator Dorit Cypis, participants will investigate identity, difference, conflict and social relations through ongoing group research and facilitated public dialogue. Throughout the program, Cypis will offer tools from her Peoples Lab initiative to build communication skills and access more intimate engagement across difference.
NO CRUISING
Organized by Chris Tyler
Thursday, May 16 – Saturday, May 18
A decade before Stonewall and 3000 miles across the country, one of the first LGBT uprisings against the police happened right here in Los Angeles. Commemorating the 60th anniversary of 1959’s Cooper Donuts Riot, NO CRUISING is a multi-day event of skill shares, sound walks, performances, installations, and discussions exploring queer histories and strategies of resistance to the carceral state. NO CRUISING is an antidote to state-sanctioned Pride celebrations, raising awareness around the ongoing policing of queers – especially people of color, trans and non-binary people, and sex workers.
A Right to Defiance
Organized by Jasmine Nyende
Saturday, June 15
This day-long festival includes meditation, installations, discussions, videos and readings on punk culture, and a full evening of performance by queer/femme/Black/Brown punk bands from around the country. A Right to Defiance melts the face off white supremacy and heteronormativity as the standard environment for Punk, amplifying strategies for survival and healing.
سفره دايمه Sofra Daymeh
Organized by Daleen Saah
Saturday, September 7 – December
The Palestinian communal dining table, or سفره (sofra), is not only the unacknowledged source of much commercially-successful cuisine in the West, but has long been a site of radical resistance to occupation, colonization, and cultural erasure. This September, NAVEL is thrilled to partner with a celebrated Palestinian chef (TBA) and five guest facilitators for سفره دايمه Sofra Daymeh, a night of exquisite dining and conversation that might change what you think you know about the relationship between food and politics. سفره دايمه Sofra Daymeh continues throughout the fall with dinners in Palestinian-American homes across the country, advancing the conversation around the decolonization of food.
The Zapatista Wi-Fi Rebellion
Organized by gloria galvez
Friday, September 20 & Sunday, September 22
Illuminating the digital presence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) on the internet as a phenomenon with massive possibilities for broad-based resistance beyond Mexico, The Zapatista Wi-Fi Rebellion is a two-day program to educate and activate audiences around rebellious internet usage in corporate imperial cyberspace.
0.1%
Organized by Dr. Yewande Pearse
November TBA
0.1% explores what it means to uncover the genetic roots of who we are and who we could be. In the age of the “quantified self,” many questions remain unanswered with regard to the impact of such inquiry on both notions of the self and the socio-political. This week-long program demystifies how genomics inform identity, with an exhibition of works selected through an open call, the release of a Massive x NAVEL collaborative zine, an installation by neuroscientist and philosopher Dan Lloyd, discussions of scientific papers, and talks by influential figures whose work grows in the delta where hard science meets the arts.
2019 Programming Committee
Dorit Cypis, Israeli, Canadian, American, has explored themes of history, identity, and social relations as an artist, educator and social activator since the 1980s. Her work, poetic, formal, body full and political, traverses performance, photography, immersive media installation and social practice. The civic community programs she has created include Kulture Klub Collaborative, initiated in 1992, for artists and home-less youth to bridge survival and inspiration. She has written on identity and social relations for books and journals and has designed curriculum for colleges and universities. Her current artwork, Close Your Eyes If You Want to See, transposes a proverb on human relations to visual braille then interpreted by musicians as musical score to transform seeing to listening. Peoples Lab is her initiative to build creative leadership for social change.
gloria galvez is Los Angeles based and maintains a life practice that disrupts, subverts, and dismantles bland and oppressive status-quo norms. She is committed to creating access to physical and abstract spaces of possibility, imagination and self-determination for communities and individuals for whom it’s constantly denied. https://gloria-galvez.com/
Jasmine Nyende is an artist and vocalist for Black femme & them punk band FUCK U PAY US (FUPU). Her art practice spans performance, textiles, writing and community building as a form of activism. She leads a monthly fibers group centering how craft & DIY culture can be used for social justice.
Dr. Yewande Pearse is a neuroscientist and science communicator. Her research interests in the lab focus on rare genetic neurological disorders, gene therapy, stem cell research and CRISPR, but her fascination with the brain is not limited to any one area of the field. She has written for Massive, TEDMED and Subpac, hosts a monthly podcast called Sound Science on Dublab radio and has been a guest speaker at Immerse(d), an event series exploring the impact of how deep immersive music can impact our brains, and Science of Grief, a 14-hour community conversation and performance on grief in partnership with Science Gallery Lab Detroit and The Detroit Institute of Arts.
Daleen Saah is an urban planner and designer based in Los Angeles, California. Through consulting over the past 5 years, she has practiced urban planning, land use planning, GIS and spatial analytics, and data story-telling with heavy focus on graphic design and data visualization. As a designer and futurist, her research and scenario building provides critical thought on multi-scale development in the United States, London, Latin America and the Middle East. Currently, Daleen is interested in the advancement of creative programming that welcomes new ways of understanding our city’s ecologies and radically addresses the social and political dimensions of the built environment. As a Palestinian-American, she is equally interested in work that reflects Arab image, identification, and representation.
Chris Tyler is a writer, cultural organizer and performing artist examining the intersections of popular culture, collective action and digital identity. Past work includes Little Red Scare (Bushwig), flesh failure (The Civilians R&D Group) and TRL>>>TOTAL REJECTS LIVE!!! (Public Theater/Under the Radar Festival). He is a co-founder of CITIZENS UNITED, a New York-based performance collective inadvertently formed on Election Night 2016. His style has been called “equal parts hilarious and chilling” (Fusion),“precise-yet-butchered” (Out) and “so cute” (Taylor Swift). AB: Brown University.