A special event hosted in collaboration with ISSUE, the Van Alen Institute presents an evening of performances, talks, and reflections to celebrate the launch of Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape, an exploration of escape in the urban environment. The evening brings together a diverse lineup featuring Richard Sennett, the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University; Keller Easterling, Professor of Architecture at Yale University and author of forthcoming Extrastatecraft; singer, musician, and artist Joseph Keckler; Ron Shiffman, Professor at Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, former director and co-founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development; Maria Chavez, curator and sound artist; performers Niegel Smith and Jax Jackson; Vyjayanthi Rao, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research; writer, theorist, and artist Evan Calder Williams; Henk Ovink, Senior Advisor to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force; and more, to explore how and why we escape the city, pushing the concept to its edges to see where Elsewhere may take us. The celebration will continue with drinks following the program.
Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape is a multi-year initiative of Van Alen Institute to explore the experience of escape in the urban environment. Elsewhere is comprised of competitions, public programs, and research that investigate key questions of the contemporary urban experience: How and why do we escape from urban life? What prompts us to escape to the city? What forms of escape can we find within the urban environment? And how might the experience of going “elsewhere” contribute to our well-being? This event opens four days of festival-style programs, running from November 12–17, 2013, at the Institute and select venues throughout New York City.