Photo by Cindy Trinh @cindytrinh.photo
Join Think!Chinatown for our last block party of the year, as we travel all across time together!
Going back in time, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 will bring her special collection of Chinese records inherited from Chinatown neighbors and families. From Cantopop to Mandopop, we’ll get you grooving and singing along to all your family favorites from the 1950’s-90’s.
In partnership with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, we’ll time travel into the future with muralist Jess X. Snow, musician treya lam, and AR artist Wiena Lin through an interactive meditative poetry and music experience on Mosco Street. As we dance, we invite you to share your wishes and prayers for the future, and plant them into the stars, seeds, and birds in the Augmented Reality Experience of the In The Future Our Asian Community Is Safe mural.
The In The Future Our Asian Community Is Safe mural was ideated and created in summer of 2021 through poetry, painting and photography workshop sessions with the W.O.W. Project’s intergenerational community members that unearthed their visions for futures and safety.
This is a block party for the whole family! No RSVPs needed. Rain or shine! Meet you at the box 💃🕺
YiuYiu 瑶瑶 (aka Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan) is a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ based on Lenape land in NYC’s Manhattan Chinatown. Her work centers on engaging communities as our classroom and fostering intergenerational dance floors that celebrate art and history as powerful acts of resistance and resilience. | @rochellehkwan
Jess X. Snow is a non-binary Chinese diasporic writer/director, multi-disciplinary artist and poet. Spanning large scale augmented reality murals, wheat-pasted posters, children's books, and narrative films, their body of work explores how diasporic people reclaim their authentic selves and build chosen family and imagine liveable migrant futures. Currently they live on the lands of the Munsee Lenape (present day New York City). Their murals which center femme, queer & trans Asian, Pacific, Black, Indigenous people and their futures can be found on walls across the continent. They are the lead muralist behind "In The Future Our Asian Community Is Safe". | @jessxsnow
treya lam is a multi-instrumentalist and composer whose joyously complex identity informs but does not define their work, whether solo or when collaborating with a variety of multidisciplinary ensembles. Their strident voice, politically charged songwriting and fluency on guitar, piano and looped viola recalls Nina Simone and Andrew Bird. treya’s debut Good News was created by womxn and genderqueer collaborators, and they are currently developing otherland - an audiovisual chamber-folk album on healing in the wake of grief and loss, radical self acceptance and the relationship between individual and collective healing. | @treyalam
Wiena Lin is a Futurist, Fine Artist, and Creative Director who creates sensory experiences in physical and digital spaces by extending the expressiveness of traditional art and design mediums with technology. As a Fine Artist, she explores themes of environmental sustainability and spirituality and has exhibited internationally at The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, The Himalayas Museum and BMW / ADO and more. She is the AR lead for the interactive experience of In The Future Our Asian Community Is Safe. | @wienalin
The W.O.W. Project is a women, queer, and trans-led community initiative using art and activism to grow and protect NYC Chinatown’s creative culture in a time of rapid change. | wowprojectnyc.org | @wowprojectnyc
Presented by Think!Chinatown in partnership with Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Sponsored by Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA).