Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) presents the 21st annual River To River Festival, Downtown New York City’s leading free summer arts festival, taking place June 12–26.
River To River 2022 approaches Lower Manhattan as a site for human connection. Mirroring the festival’s origins as a way of reviving the neighborhood after 9/11, this edition comes at a time when gathering together feels especially important as a method of healing. Artists look to nature and ritual as well as metaphysical wonders to offer a hopeful perspective on the future of public space.
“We are thrilled to bring artists’ vision and energy to different sites across Lower Manhattan for everyone to enjoy,” says Jess Van Nostrand, LMCC’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programs. “We look forward to seeing visitors of all ages celebrate creativity with us!”
RIVER TO RIVER 2022 EVENT DETAILS:
Dates, times and locations subject to change—be sure to check www.LMCC.net/R2R for
up-to-date information. Please note that all events are free, but due to limited capacity
some require advance registration. RSVPs open June 1.
OPENING EVENT:
GREGORY CORBINO
MURMURATIONS
June 12, Gather at 2pm, Parade at 3pm
Teardrop Park, Battery Park City
Enter at North End Avenue or River Terrace
Kicking off the 2022 River To River Festival, MURMURATIONS is a visual symphony, a puppet poem in public space, a performative conversation with New York Harbor.
Through puppetry, participants are invited to experience the wonder, fragility and history of New York’s waterways from multiple viewpoints—as puppeteer, as audience, as fish, as micro-plastic trash—to experience human impact on the earth through a non-human lens and inspire connection and stewardship through “murmuration,” the term used to describe the miraculous phenomenon of very large groups of birds, fish or insects moving together.
Materials for the performance will be sourced directly from New York City waterways. In this time of climate change and extinction, MURMURATIONS looks to the wonder hidden beneath the surface of the river as an invitation to take collective action, to listen, to radically love, and to murmurate. By activating public space with sound, movement and pageantry, what was once trash becomes living sculpture and offers a pathway into a universe of joy, justice and queer possibility.
Presented in partnership with Battery Park City Authority
OKWUI OKPOKWASILI + PETER BORN
repose without rest without end
Video Installation on view June 12–26, 7am–11pm
Amphitheater at 28 Liberty, Ground Level
Live Performances:
June 13 at 8pm
June 20 at 8pm
Performance Duration: Approximately 40 minutes
Amphitheater at 28 Liberty, Ground Level
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born’s new video and sound installation takes its point of departure from Okpokwasili’s performance work Adaku’s Revolt. This new piece focuses on a young Black girl who, as she is coming of age, rejects imposed beauty standards. She stops straightening her hair in refusal of the pain and damage created by chemical straighteners and hot irons used to tame unruly curls.
In this new video installation, Okpokwasili draws connections between Adaku’s hair and tree roots. The girl’s refusal becomes a vehicle of resistance from which the artist draws connections with trees whose seeds were transported by fugitive slaves in their hair. These acts of resistance reproduced networks not unlike the way trees communicate through extensive root systems underground. Stories and seeds are passed on through multiple generations of humans and vegetation, refusing trauma while reproducing and celebrating resilience.
Two live performance activations of the work will take place at 8pm on Mondays during River To River.
Co-commissioned by LMCC and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center with support of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Presented in partnership with Fosun, with the support of the Alliance for Downtown New York
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
ROSE DESIANO
LENTICULAR HISTORIES: SOUTH STREET SEAPORT
On view June 18–26
Opening Event: June 18 at 7pm
The Seaport, located off Fulton Street on Little Water Street and Front Street
In an immersive installation of mirrors, historic photographs and optical illusions, these photo sculptures bring to the surface and celebrate the community, workers and the histories of the South Street Seaport Historic District and the New York Harbor. Created in collaboration with the South Street Seaport Museum.
Presented in partnership with The Howard Hughes Corporation and the South Street Seaport Museum
JONATHAN GONZALEZ
PRACTICE
June 17 at 7pm
La Plaza at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, 114 Norfolk Street
In PRACTICE, Afro-Diasporic cultural idioms are interwoven through dance, sound, speech acts and design to incite the critical through-lines of creolized expressive arts formed within the greater Caribbean and Turtle Island. Performed in the historic open-air setting of La Plaza at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center, this one-night engagement invites audience members into the performative practice as party-goers, celebrating the gift of gathering in person and holding space for the long emancipatory uses of culture by African-descendants in the supposed “New World” for radical place-making and liberation.
Co-commissioned by LMCC and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center with support of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Presented in partnership with The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, with additional support from Brooklyn Academy of Music and Dance & Performance Institute, Trinidad & Tobago
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
AMY KHOSHBIN & JENNIFER KHOSHBIN
THE SUN SEEKERS
June 18, Exhibition Open 12–6pm, Live Performance Time TBA—check LMCC.net/R2R
Upper Gallery
The Arts Center at Governors Island, 110 Andes Road, Governors Island
The Sun Seekers is an hour-long participatory performance led by Amy Khoshbin for the River To River Festival, set in sister duo Amy & Jennifer Khoshbin’s immersive installation at The Arts Center at Governors Island. The performance promotes healing through disconnecting with technology and reconnecting with ourselves, each other and the natural world.
The Sun Seekers is a sci-fi narrative about an alternate world that maintains a direct correlation to our experience of the isolation and anxiety of indoor on-screen life (the Wreck-tangle). Each performance begins in the Sun Seekers Sunport—the indoor immersive installation of analog sensory sculptures that doubles as an initiation space to the Sun Seekers world. Participants collectively engage with immersive sensory sculptures such as vaginal scent pods and weighted blanket capes as prompts to awaken senses found outside the Wreck-tangle: smell, touch, sound, balance. Performers lead participants through a series of polysensory somatic prompts outdoors, like durational absurdist movement, visualizations and consuming healing botanicals together.
BETH GILL
NAIL BITER
June 22–23, times TBA—check LMCC.net/R2R
Federal Hall, 26 Wall Street
Beth Gill’s Nail Biter is a darkly beautiful dreamscape in which the theatrical tools of character and story are reimagined through a psychodramatic lens, transforming contemporary dance performance into a vital space of ritual. Nail Biter reaches towards science fiction and ancient myth to reveal stories of connection and loss with a sense of magic and awe.
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
Co-commissioned by the Fisher Center at Bard, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Walker Art Center, this multi-stage creative process consists of artistic residencies and preview performances.
Presented in partnership with National Park Service
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
keyon gaskin
June 23 & 25 at 8pm
La Plaza at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, 114 Norfolk Street
A performance of keyon gaskin
Co-commissioned by LMCC and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center with support of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
CRAIG HARRIS
BREATHE
June 25 at 4pm
The Pavilion in Rockefeller Park, Battery Park City
Enter from River Terrace, near Chambers Street
BREATHE is the creation of trombonist/composer Craig Harris, who comes from a
tradition of using art as a cultural facilitation to help promote change. BREATHE is performed by a large ensemble of musicians making a sonic statement in response to the long-term and current injustices inflicted upon African American people. BREATHE is offered to support the community in staying resilient and persistent in fighting for justice.
Presented in partnership with Battery Park City Authority
HEATHER KRAVAS
duet/duet
June 25–26, 8pm
Studio A3, The Arts Center at Governors Island, 110 Andes Road, Governors Island
duet/duet is a dance that happens on a field in the sunshine next to another dance that happens inside a room, overlooking a river at sunset. It is a dance created between performers opal ingle, Joey Kipp and Jennifer Kjos, in partnership with choreographer Heather Kravas. One dance contemplates a shape made between two people so that we might also consider the distance between them. The other reflects a line as two people travel and change together. Not adhering to expectations, the performance is a vessel to experience the specific temporality of dusk.
solid objects (the body of work which encompasses duet/duet) is a co-commission of Walker Art Center/Minneapolis and On the Boards/Seattle. Alongside support from LMCC, solid objects has received funding/support from the Robert Rauschenberg Residency, Oxbow Gallery/Seattle, 4Culture/Seattle, The Ken and Judith Joy Family Foundation and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship Award (Heather Kravas).
Presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels
ABOUT RIVER TO RIVER
River To River, LMCC’s annual summer festival, was created in the aftermath of 9/11 with the intention to heal and celebrate New Yorkers’ resiliency through the power of art. Since 2002, River To River has remained free and open to all, showcasing artistic and creative diversity across disciplines through the presentation of art and installation in public spaces and in partnership with leading institutions in Lower Manhattan.
RIVER TO RIVER FOUNDING PARTNERS
River To River was founded in 2002 by American Express, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, the Alliance for Downtown New York, Brookfield Place, Battery Park City Authority, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Seaport District.
RIVER TO RIVER 2022 PRESENTING PARTNERS
Battery Park City Authority
The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center
Fosun
The Howard Hughes Corporation
National Park Service
RIVER TO RIVER 2022 SUPPORT
Leadership support provided by: Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels and The Mellon Foundation
Major support provided by: Battery Park City Authority, Goldman, Sachs & Co, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Howard Hughes Corporation and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Friends of the Festival: Con Edison’s Arts Al Fresco Series and Mertz Gilmore Foundation
River To River is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
River To River is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
MURMURATIONS and BREATHE are presented in partnership with Battery Park City Authority.
Lenticular Histories: South Street Seaport is presented in partnership with The Howard Hughes Corporation.
repose without rest without end, PRACTICE and a performance of keyon gaskin are presented with the support of The Rauschenberg Foundation.
repose without rest without end is also presented in partnership with Fosun with the support of the Alliance for Downtown New York.
repose without rest without end, PRACTICE, Nail Biter, a performance of keyon gaskin and duet/duet are presented with the support of Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.
ABOUT LMCC
Founded as Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, LMCC serves, connects and makes space for artists and community.
Since 1973, LMCC has been the champion of independent artists in New York City and the cultural life force of Lower Manhattan.
LMCC Serves Artists through:
Residencies that enable artists to experiment and develop their work and ideas, with professional development, financial training and networking opportunities
Grant funding to artists that support local/neighborhood projects
Presentation opportunities that allow artists to share their work and creative process with the public
LMCC Serves Community through:
Free public programs in Lower Manhattan that activate neighborhoods and bring people together through performances and rich artistic experiences
Access to artists and the artmaking process to build connections and dialogue between artists and audiences
Grant funding for neighborhood arts and community-based organizations
