Closing Event: The Big Discussion

Marking the Closing of Sex and the So-Called City

Saturday, March 31, 2018

1 pm – 6 pm

97 Kenmare Street

 

#salonseries   #sexandthesocalledcity   #thebigdiscussion   #storefrontseries   @storefrontnyc

 

With Michael Bullock, Cristóbal CorreaColin CurleyJake JaxsonLydia KallipolitiMatthew Alexander RansomVera Scroggins, and Louise Story

 

Moderated by Andrés Jaque, Office for Political Innovation

 

On the closing day of Sex and the So-Called City, Storefront presents THE BIG DISCUSSION, a deliberation over the two-decade urban legacy of HBO’s Sex and the City and the ways in which it heralded and prescribed the evolution of New York City. Responding to the show’s episodic urban scenarios, the day-long summit convenes experts and activists to share overlapping stories of how LLC shell companies, waste management procedures, gay porn, and mineral rights efforts reshaped the city.

 

The event, curated and hosted by Andrés Jaque and the Office for Political Innovation, invites the public to promiscuously engage with speakers in order to mobilize alternative narratives of sex, capital, real-estate, bodies, natural resources, and ecosystems, and the ways that these elements assemble and interact with each other in New York City’s transurban expansion.

 

Schedule

1:00 pm: Andrés Jaque, Office for Political Innovation – Sex and the So-Called City

1:15 pm: Cristobal Correa, BuroHappold Engineering – NY infrastructures

1:45 pm: Colin P Curley. LA+ – Redistributing Waste

2:15 pm: Lydia Kallipoliti, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute – Shit and the City

2:45 pm: Louise Story, Independent Writer –Secrecy and Real Estate

3:15 pm: Matthew Alexander Ransom, Columbia University – Making Minerals Visible

3:45 pm: Vera Scroggins, Citizens for Clean Water – Activism against Fracking

4:15 pm: Michael Bullock, Pin-Up Magazine – Sex Urbanism

4:45 pm: Jake Jaxson, CockyBoys. – Making Sex Visible

5:15 pm: Andrés Jaque, Office for Political Innovation – Conclusions

5:30 pm: Reception

6:00 pm: Finish

 

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

 

Michael J. Bullock is a writer, journalist and publisher that lives in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.   He started his career in publishing at the grandfather of the modern independent magazine index (from 2000-2004) and went on to set up BUTT (the revolutionary dutch homosexual magazine) in America, becoming it’s US publisher (2003 – 2011). Currently he is the American features editor for the contemporary interiors magazine Apartamento, a regular contributor to the architecture and design title PIN–UP, and works on the publishing side of Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman, and PIN–UP .  In addition he is on the board of directors of Downtown for Democracy a political action committee that he co-founded in 2003 that uses the talent and skill of the creative community to raise money and develop communication materials for progressive candidates. In 2013, Karma published his novella Roman Catholic Jacuzzi.

Instagram: @michaeljbullock

 

Cristobal Correa moved to New York in 1998 and helped found BuroHappold’s New York office. In his 30 year engineering career Cristobal has designed tension structures, facades, art installations, long span structures, and temporary buildings as well as more traditional buildings of concrete and steel. He enjoys working collaboratively with architects and exploring with them the ever-changing challenges of building!

 

 

Years ago, Cristobal was seduced by a master planning exercise and so began his life-long love of cities and their infrastructure.  He currently serves on the board of Open House New York and is the Director of Technology at the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design School at Pratt Institute where he teaches.  He enjoys living in New York City!

 

Colin Curley is a landscape and architectural designer at James Corner Field Operations, and a researcher and production coordinator for LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture. His design research explores the alternative aesthetic and experiential potential of hyper-toxic, denatured landscapes, while operating within the broad spectrum of their social, political, regulatory, and ecological complexities. Colin holds a Master of Landscape Architecture and Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, where he was named a University Olmsted Scholar and awarded the Ian L. McHarg Prize, and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Virginia.

Instagram: @see_p_see, @laplusjournal

Facebook: /LAPlusJournal

Twitter: @laplusjournal

 

Lydia Kallipoliti is an architect, engineer and scholar. She is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Director of the Geofutures M.S. Architecture Program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and Professor and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology (CASE) in New York.

 

Prior to her current position at RPI, Kallipoliti taught at Columbia GSAPP, the Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and Syracuse University. She holds a Diploma in Architecture and Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, a SMArchS in building technology from MIT and a PhD in history and theory of architecture from Princeton University. Her research focuses on the intersections of architecture, technology, and environmental politics and more particularly on recycling material experiments, theories of waste and reuse, as well as closed and self-reliant systems and urban environments. She is the author of Closed Worlds, Or, What is the Power of Shit for which she has received the ACSA award for Creative Achievement. She is also the founder of EcoRedux, an innovative online research platform, and ANAcycle thinktank, a design, research and writing practice based in Brooklyn, NY.

 

 

Jake Jaxson is the CEO of CockyBoys, a New York based gay adult entertainment company. Jaxson has produced numerous award-winning documentaries, TV shows, and independent films, highlighted by an Emmy Award for TRIBEtv. Jaxson’s work is dedicated to the healthy and creative exploration of gay sex! His life and work have been featured in New York Magazine, The Village Voice, OUT, Cosmopolitan, Elle, DNA, Salon, Paper, and Huffington Post.

Instagram: @JakeJaxson

Facebook: /JakeJaxson

Twitter: @cockyboys

 

Matthew Ransom is an architect and researcher based in New York City. His work is largely focused on uncovering the many ways in which architecture manifests itself, and in the politics of representation. This interest has led to work with organizations such as Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs and the Columbia University GSAPP Incubator at the New Museum, where his research with A-Frame, a collective practice formed in the studios at Columbia, uses natural language processing to parse the ways architecture is communicated. He has worked both in New York and Paris, and is currently the design director of Overhead, an architecture office founded in 2018.

Instagram: @matthewransom

 

Vera Scroggins

I am presently 67 years old and retired from Nurses’ Aide Work and am a mother of three, adult children and grandmother of two. I moved to rural, Susquehanna County, Pa., in 1991 from Long Island, NY, Nassau County and living here now for 27 years. I came to escape pollution and industrial development and wanted a rural area, low traffic, clean air and clean water. Seventeen years later in 2008, I was shown a gas-drilling rig on a farm near me in my county and was shocked and dismayed and decided to document all I could of this and learn all I could about it. I’ve been documenting with videos on my youtube channel under my name of Vera Scroggins and have about 800 videos showing what I experienced and viewed in my county and elsewhere; I’ve given many testimonies to groups and to government agencies to show the risks, impacts, harms to my county of having gas development industrialization next to homes, schools, and on farms. I also started giving Citizen Gas Tours to show all this to interested parties who contacted me since 2009 and have given hundreds of Tours to people from all over USA and from five continents. We have seven or more gas companies in my county developing, besides pipeline companies and gas compressor station companies.  In 2013, Cabot Oil and Gas took me to Court to allege repeated trespassing on their leased properties and asked for and received an Injunction to keep me away from their sites and lease roads. I am now under a Permanent Injunction and must stay 100’ from their developed sites, 25’ from their leased roads which are off public roads, and park 100’ away from their leased road entrances or be charged with contempt of court. Since Injunction, I’ve been charged with contempt and received fine of 1,000 and am presently in court for contempt again this year and also criminal trespass charges and disorderly conduct charges. I deny intentionally trespassing or any disorderly conduct. I’ve had several civil rights attorneys represent me along the way and now I’m on my own and pro se and representing myself. Cabot Oil and Gas is able to exaggerate trespass charges to keep me away and hinder me in my documenting. I was able to go on Cabot sites for 5 years before they decided to pursue an Injunction and now criminal charges. Gas Workers also have lied to the Court about what they see and claim I have done. I still document, videotape, speak out, and give Citizen Gas Tours to show how the Gas Industry has taken over our Country; in my county in Pa., we now have almost 1500 gas wells, over 50 Gas Compressor Stations, hundreds of miles of new, high-pressure, gas pipelines, gas power plants, and waste treatment plant and waste ponds and other parts of this needed infrastructure. There is air pollution from all this, noise pollution, light pollution, water pollution, industrial traffic pollution.

 

Louise Story

Louise Story, an award winning journalist who spent 12 years at The New York Times. Louise is known for her hard-hitting investigations into international fraud and money laundering. She was a lead reporter on the financial crisis and her recent project on dirty money in real estate led to federal regulatory reform, the DOJ’s largest kleptocracy case ever and to greater public interest in secretive shell companies.

Twitter: @louisestory

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

 

Office for Political Innovation

The Office for Political Innovation, a Madrid/New York based practice directed by Andrés Jaque, develops architectural projects that bring inclusivity into daily life. All of the practice’s architectures can be seen as durable assemblages of the diversity that comprises ordinary life.

 

The practice received the Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts in 2016 and the Silver Lion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, and has designed award-winning projects such as Plasencia Clergy House (Dionisio Hernández Gil Prize), House in Never Never Land (Mies van der Rohe European Award Finalist), Tupper Home (X Bienal Española de Arquitectura y Urbanismo), and Escaravox (COAM Award 2013). In 2015, Andrés Jaque was the winner of MoMA PS1’s Young Architect Program, with the project Cosmo.

 

The Office for Political Innovation’s work has instigated crucial debates for contemporary architecture. In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA) acquired the project IKEA Disobedients as the first architectural performance to be part of its collection. In 2013, the practice presented Superpowers of Ten at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Different Kinds of Water Pouring into a Swimming Pool at RED CAT / CalArts Center for Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles, and Hänsel & Gretel’s Arenas at La Casa Encendida in Madrid. In 2012, the practice unblackboxed Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion with the intervention PHANTOM: Mies as Rendered Society. In 2011, the research and prototype-making project Sweet Parliament Home was presented at the Gwangju Biennale, and in 2010, the installation Fray Home Home was displayed at the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennial.

 

The Office for Political Innovation is the author of the publications PHANTOM: Mies as Rendered Society, Different Kinds of Water Pouring into a Swimming Pool, Dulces Arenas Cotidianas, and Eco-Ordinary: Codes for Everyday Architectural Practices and Everyday Politics. Their work has been published in many key media outlets, including A+U, Domus, El Croquis, the New York Times, and Vogue, among others.

 

Miguel de Guzmán / Imagen Subliminal

Imagen Subliminal Architectural Photography + Film was founded by architect and architectural photographer Miguel de Guzmán. The firm, comprised of Miguel de Guzman and Rocío Romero, is a New York and Madrid-based practice whose work is commissioned by many internationally renowned architecture, construction, and real estate firms.

 

Imagen Subliminal’s photographs have been published worldwide in print magazines such as Architect, Dwell, El Croquis, Arquitectura Viva, A+U Japan, Domus, Casabella, Mark, C3, and many other books and newspapers. The practice also  collaborates with online media as Archdaily, Dezeen, Designboom, and Divisare.

 

Imagen Subliminal’s film work has been displayed at MAXXI Rome, Centre Pompidou Paris, and architecture film festivals in New York, Los Angeles, Budapest, Santiago, and Seoul.

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Support

Storefront’s programming is made possible through general support from Arup; DS+R; F.J. Sciame Construction Co., Inc.; Gaggenau; Knippers Helbig; KPF; MADWORKSHOP; ODA; Rockwell Group; Tishman Speyer; the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; The Greenwich Collection Ltd.; the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Peter T. Joseph Foundation; and by Storefront’s Board of Directors, members, and individual donors.

 

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