Black Asian Coalitions Across Generations

This is an in person event with a virtual zoom live stream. Space is limited for in-person guests so please only reserve an in-person ticket if you are likely able to come.

Hosted by: Tisch IBDEA Coalition, The Bandung Residency (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts & Asian American Arts Alliance)

Co-sponsored by: NYU Graduate Film, NYU Undergraduate Film and TV, Tisch Creative Research, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA), Center for Multicultural Education and Programs (CMEP) and the Asian Pacific American Institute at NYU (A/P/A).

Curated and Moderated by: Jess X. Snow and Casiano Hamer

Black Asian Coalitions Across Generations is a two day exploration of how artistic and organizing practices have bonded the Black and Asian American community and inspire their mutual collaboration, coalition-building, and liberation. In the midst of ongoing historical and contemporary racialized violence that impacts both communities, this event celebrates the film, fine arts, and political organizing that emerges from the union of these two communities.

This two day panel and storytelling workshop strives to bring together Black and Asian storytellers, artists and activists in an inter-generational space of learning, dreaming and community building.

Through a public panel and discussion features Black and Asian artists, historians and organizers across multiple generations, followed by a reception, and an intimate screenwriting workshop (the following day) we hope to plant seeds of dialogue, celebration and collaboration toward shared futures that support our collective safety, liberation and wellbeing.

The Panel and Reception (May 1, 6:30-9:30pm)

This evening will feature a cross-generational dialogue centering on how community-informed artistic and organizing practices can deepen coalition-building between two communities as well as heal historical wounds. We will also discuss the challenges that come with building solidarity across culture, identities and generations. The public panel will close with a mixer where attendees can continue discourse and deepen their collaborative relationships. It will also serve as a space of creating safety, celebration and mutual thriving among the Black and Asian communities. This event will begin with a meditation by Black and Chinese dharma practitioner and screenwriter Nico Cary, followed by a presentation by Black Feminist historian, Michele Mitchell (NYU Department of History) that ground us in a collective necessity for coalition building to imagine alternative futures. This will be followed by a discussion that include all the presenters, performers as well as local organizers, Rohan Zhou-Lee (The Blasian March), Yves Tong Nguyen (Red Canary Song) and Sumaya “Nazar” Bouhbal (The Young Lords Collective) . The night will conclude with a short musical performance by Japanese-American folk musician/activist, Nobuko Miyamoto (A Grain of Sand) followed by a reception with snacks, refreshments and tablers (Bandung Residency, Red Canary Song, the Young Lords Collective and the Blasian March).

The Workshop (May 2, 1-4pm) Dean’s Conference Room, 12th Floor, Tisch School of the Arts, 721 Broadway, Lunch provided

There has been a historical lack of stories about Black and Asian kinship, struggles and coalition-building in film and literature, especially stories that come from authentic perspectives from both communities. If the stories we tell define our culture, and our culture re-imagines the fabric of society, how may our communities build deep coalitions toward alternative futures without stories to guide them? Inspired by the learnings of the panel on the previous day, this narrative and character-development workshop strives to plant seeds of collaboration between Black and Asian NYU students as well as aspiring storytellers from the Bandung Residency (a NYC-based residency that aspires to build Black Asian solidarity organized by A4 and MoCADA). Guided by an experienced Black and Chinese screenwriter, and dharma meditation facilitator, Nico Cary, and co-facilitated by NYU Grad Film thesis students, Jess X. Snow and Casiano Hamer, participants will partner up to develop a concept for a narrative film, play or novel that features authentic relationships between both communities.The workshop aspires to have participants to leave the workshop with actualized collaborators and the seeds of a screenplay, or tv show, short story or novel that they can continue developing.

This workshop invites Black and Asian identifying participants with a deep interest or demonstrated history in artistic, activist or scholarly work around Black Asian kinship, and continued exposure to both communities. We encourage any level of screenwriting experience. We encourage participants with a shared history of collaboration and friendship to apply together as pairs. We also encourage collaboration between writers/scholars and writers/organizers.

The workshop will be capped at 20 people.

Apply to the workshop here by April 27.

Accessibility

Please wear masks and do not come if feeling sick because some panelists are immunocompromised.

The venue is on the 12th floor up an elevator. For special accomodations please email Casiano at crh401@nyu.edu.

Panelists, Performers/Presenters

Nobuko Miyamoto (virtual) – is a songwriter, dance and theater artist, author, and Artistic Director of Great Leap. She danced in Broadway’s Flower Drum Song and film West Side Story, but in the 70s found her own voice as activist and troubadour, co-creating seminal album, A Grain of Sand, which became the soundtrack of the Asian American movement. In 1978 she founded Great Leap, putting the Asian American story on stage with original musicals and concerts. The 1992 LA Uprising, prompted Great Leap to become a multi-ethnic organization, with A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens, a long touring show that gave a platform for Asian, Latinx and Black artists to share their first-voice stories. Post 9/11, Nobuko used art to deepen relations with Muslims and other faith communities. Nobuko creates songs for the Japanese Buddhist tradition, danced by thousands in yearly obon festivals. Her EcoVid music videos bring People of Color into the environmental conversation. Nobuko now co-produces FandangObon, an Eco-Arts Festival that builds cross-cultural solidarity using participatory music and dance from Latinx, Asian, African and Muslim traditions. In 2021, her album 120,00 Stories (Smithsonian Folkways) and memoir Not Yo’ Butterfly (UC Press) were published.

Rohan Zhou-Lee – pronouns They/Siya/祂/Elle – is a dancer, writer, and public speaker. They are also known for founding The Blasian March, a Black-Asian solidarity initiative through education and celebration. At CUNY’s first ever LGBT-themed conference, Queeribbean Crossings (Caribbean Equality Project,) the Blasian March received a certificate from The Public Advocate For the City of New York in affirmation of the “work to unite diverse Brooklyn communities in love, fellowship, and support.”

Michele Mitchell – an associate professor of history at New York University, received critical praise for her book Righteous Propagation: African Americansand the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction. H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online contributor Edward J. Blum lauded Mitchell’s “superb research and dynamic analysis” of a complex subject: the racial uplift movement among African Americans from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Mitchell explains the gender, class, and racial contexts in which this movement arose and flourished, and discusses subjects such as the exodus of newly freed blacks to Liberia; Jim Crow laws; racial improvement teachings of leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois, who emphasized racial pride, and Marcus Garvey, who led the Universal Negro Improvement Association; theories of social Darwinism and eugenics; and increased social stratification.

Yves Tong Nguyen – (they/she/he) is a queer and disabled Vietnamese cultural worker and sex worker whose organizing home is with Survived & Punished NY and Red Canary Song. Yves is personally concerned with supporting survivors of all forms of violence through organizing and informal community support.

Sumaya “Nazar” Bouhbal (she/hers)/ The Young Lordes Collective (YLC) – is a grassroots artist-activist youth collective that aims to create a growing and breathing network of underrepresented New Yorkers. Since March 2021, the Young Lords Collective has cultivated a generative space for community-based learning, care, and revolutionary struggle for our generation’s emerging artists and activists. Through multimedia publications, mutual aid initiatives, food drives, open mic nights, educational discussions, and more, the Young Lordes Collective pays homage to past activist groups by uplifting the future’s change makers. Sumaya “Nazar” Bouhbal is the Founder and Creative Director of YLC. Bouhbal is an NYU MLK Honors Scholar and a student at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. When she’s not leading the Young Lordes Collective, she works as an actor, model, and musician.

Panelist and Workshop Facilitator

Nico Cary (he/him/his) is a screenwriter, interdisciplinary artist, dharma and mindfulness teacher. He comes from a large Black and Chinese family – like, grandmother twelfth of twelve, grandfather ninth of nine large. He received his BA from UC Berkeley’s Interdisciplinary Studies Field School, specializing in cognitive linguistics. He is currently developing a new series for AwesomenessTV. He is also a Garrison Institute Fellow, and his multimedia installations on collective grieving processes have been featured at the Smithsonian and as a part of The Healing Project at Yerba Center for the Arts in San Francisco. While engaged in a deeply fulfilling artistic career, Nico also proudly serves as a mindfulness teacher for InsightLA and MindfulUSC. He is interested in the many different vocabularies of healing and the holding capacity of mindfulness, particularly as it relates to embodied activism and creative ecosystems.

Hosts and Moderators

Jess X. Snow (they/them) is a non-binary filmmaker, multi-disciplinary artist, poet and thesis candidate in the directing MFA program at NYU Tisch. Spanning murals, narrative films, protest posters, and coming of age fiction—their body of work reimagines mental (un)wellness, intergenerational practices of care and kinship across cultures and species; and abolitionist futures. Their stories have been supported by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for Science in Film, Tribeca Film Institute, BAFTA US. They were the former student artist in resident at the NYU A/P/A Institute, and was a 2022 Bandung Resident. Their short films centering the desires, disobediences and dreams of flawed Chinese migrant queers have been screened globally.

Casiano R. Hamer (he/him/his) is a writer/director based in New York City. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Film and TV at NYU where he is the IBDEA Coordinator. He is also a graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and a minor in Creative Writing.

The Bandung Residency (Co-Host)

The Bandung Residency is an opportunity designed to uplift the work of organizers, artists, educators, and way-makers whose practice is intended to foster solidarity between Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Black communities. Inspired by recent events that have deeply impacted these communities, this program takes cue from the first large-scale Asian–African or Afro–Asian Conference, also known as the Bandung Conference, which took place in 1955 in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The groundbreaking summit, which hosted leaders from 29 newly independent Asian and African states emerging from colonial rule (representing a total population of 1.5 billion people, 54% of the world’s population at the time), signaled a pivotal juncture between these communities to discuss peace, equality, and mutual respect for sovereignty, political self-determination, cultural cooperation, human rights, the role of the Global South (then known as the Third World), economic development, and decolonization.

Similarly, The Bandung Residency aims to cultivate a dynamic safe space for a diverse cohort of changemakers interested in engaging in social justice discourse, restorative healing, cultural placemaking, expanding the narrative between communities, and cross-community allyship, whether participating in the program for their personal transformation, in service to the communities identified, or both.