January Town Hall: Home(land)

In A4’s first Town Hall of the year, we are focused on land, displacement, and the AAPI-led decolonization, abolitionist, and anticapitalist movements that advocate for equitable rights to exist and make a home.

We will be hearing from featured presenters Vivien Sansour of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library to discuss their work for a free Palestine, and Anita Kwok and Audrey Hui of Youth Against Displacement to discuss their work to fight displacement in New York’s Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The evening will also feature a line-up of two-minute pitches from the community.

After the presentations, we’ll host a potluck meal, so please bring something to share; homemade or store bought items are welcome. A4 will provide snacks and drinks.

This event is FREE and open to the public. RSVP is required to pitch and/or attend, but please note you do not have to pitch to attend.

Interested in pitching? Please carefully read about the pitch process below.

Accessibility: The building is ADA accessible. Please find A4’s Accessibility Notes on our website here.

If you need CART Transcription, ASL interpretation, large print, or any other accommodations for this event, please email jlee@aaartsalliance.org at least one week before this event.

To keep everyone safe and healthy, if you are not feeling well or have been exposed to COVID-19, please stay home. We will provide masks.

Interested in pitching? Please carefully read about the pitch process below.

About the Pitch Process

A4 Town Halls are a forum to share an upcoming project or exhibition, promote an event or opportunity, find collaborators and venues, or simply introduce yourself to the community. There are two ways to pitch at an A4 Town Hall: a two-minute pitch which requires pre-registering, and a thirty-second pitch which you can sign up for at the event.

Two-minute pitches

You must complete the below steps in order to reserve your two-minute pitch slot.

1. Register for a “Pitch” ticket (either with or without a donation), and
2. Complete this pitch form with details about your pitch at least three days before the event

If you do not complete the form by the deadline, you risk not being included in the line-up.
In your pitch form, please include any images, video, or slides you would like presented during your pitch. We encourage you to share your website and social handles so that we can promote on the event page and in the slides – which we share with all attendees after the event.

Slides will be presented in the order in which they are uploaded. If you would like to ensure your slides appear in the correct order, please number them. We recommend no more than 20 slides. A4 Staff will be compiling and driving the master slideshow. Presenters will not be able to use their devices to present.

This time we are capping the two-minute pitches to 14 total presenters on a first come, first served basis. If we reach capacity, and you would like to be put on the waitlist, please email jlee@aaartsalliance.org.

We will send the pitch order to all presenters by the morning of the event.

Thirty-second pitches

After the two-minute pitches, we invite anyone from the audience to provide a thirty-second pitch. This requires signing up at the event via an online form we provide.

About Vivien Sansour

Vivien Sansour is an artist, researcher, and writer. She uses installations, images, sketches, film, soil, seeds, and plants to enliven old cultural tales in contemporary presentations and to advocate for seed conservation and the protection of agrobiodiversity as a cultural/political act. Vivien founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library in 2014, where she works with farmers in Palestine and around the world. As an extension of this project she created The Traveling Kitchen, a social engagement project aimed at bringing to the forefront conversations about climate crisis, food politics, and the imagining of new worlds. Her work as an artist and scholar has been showcased internationally, in places such as The Chicago Architecture Biennale, Victoria and Albert Museum, Dutch Design Week, Berlinale, Istanbul Biennale, Fotoindustria, the Venice Art Biennale, and the Fisher Center for Performing Arts at Bard College. As a writer, Vivien has written for magazines such as e-flux, Mold Magazine, and The Forward, where she was featured as a food columnist.

An enthusiastic cook, Vivien works to bring threatened varieties “back to the dinner table to become part of our living culture rather than a relic of the past.” This work has led her to collaborate with award-winning chefs, including Anthony Bourdain and Sammi Tamimi.

A former Harvard University Fellow, Vivien is currently the Distinguished Artistic Fellow at Bard College where she premiered her art performance, “The Belly is A Garden” at the Fisher Center for Performing Arts and the Bard farm. As part of her fellowship Vivien is teaching in the Experimental Humanities department where she is developing a course on human and nature design in the Hudson Valley entitled, “The Belly is A Garden - El Batin Bustan.” Learn more at viviensansour.com.

About Youth Against Displacement
Youth Against Displacement is an organization of young people and young at heart committed to fighting displacement, whether from where you live or where you work, mainly in Chinatown and the Lower East Side.

They currently organize at the picket line in front of the Museum of Chinese in America to re-open the original Jing Fong and hold the Museum accountable for the $35 million it received as part of the Borough-Based Jail Plan; they organize for the passing of the Chinatown Working Group Rezoning Plan; they advocate for candidates who support anti-displacement in Chinatown and the Lower East Side; they fight alongside tenants who have been evicted from their homes in the neighborhood by predatory landlords and slumlords.

Representing YAD is Audrey Hui, an NYU student and artist born and raised in San Francisco, and Anita Kwok, a Master of Social Work student and a born and raised New Yorker. Find YAD at @youth_against_displacement on IG.

About A4’s Town Hall

Town Hall is A4’s bi-monthly community gathering event that features presentations, pitches, and power networking! We welcome artists of all disciplines, as well as arts organizations, to pitch upcoming projects, find collaborators, or discover new opportunities in a lively space.