The Bureau will be on hand to sell books at the second installation of Situational Junta: An Unlikely Diplomatic Alliance

Location: The Bowery Arts + Science at The Bowery Poetry Club

308 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston

Dates: Mondays, Oct 21, Nov 18, Dec 16

The second Situational Junta, on Monday, November 18, will feature:

Emcee: DW Gibson (of the Kristiania Collective)

Main Dish: Lee Ann Norman’s ‘This is Our House: On music, memory, and the politics of culture’

Time: 6-8pm

$10

{Each evening begins with a happy hour from 6pm to 7pm, and a live radio broadcast from 7-8pm.}

ABOUT THE SERIES

The United States Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) and the Associação Espaço Cultural Lanchonete (aka Lanchonete) are taking over Bowery Poetry for a series of evening encounters and exchanges, one part happy hour and the other part radio talk show… shaken, stirred, and served straight up on the airwaves! For three evenings this Fall, Situational Junta poses a simple question: If artists are empowered to innovate on a large enough scale to interrupt the status quo, what would that look like?

Antonio Gramsci wrote that “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Situational Junta convenes a cast of unlikely midwives to cross borders and spark whimsy as they search for workarounds (or gambiarra) to the present condition and stoke a hunger for something new. Equal parts salon, happening, cabaret, and fireside chat, Situational Junta is a mash-up of ideas and forms building new alliances and bridging Bowery Poetry’s past to the future.

Description: Each evening is designed as a radio talk show, hosted by an emcee, and featuring a main guest or guests. In addition to their interview-conversation or performance, guests may prompt the audience to speak amongst themselves as music takes over the broadcast. A rotating, intergenerational, interdisciplinary cast of characters round out the hour through a tightly choreographed sequence of commentary, artist work, news flashes, and ‘commercial breaks’. People and projects emerge in unlikely proximity. Music, ideas, and drinks flow and the evening culminates with a soapbox open mic that invites audience members to join the broadcast. The <<main dish>> is surrounded by a sequence of newsflashes, ‘commercial breaks’, and urgent interventions by a retinue of creative schemers and artful dreamers.