CRUCES: Thinking in Public Forum
When: June 14 @ 10am–5:30pm
Where: The Clemente, 107 Suffolk St, NY, NY, 10002
Keynote Speakers: Chat Travieso and Johanna Fernández,
Roots & Resistance: Reclaiming Historias in the Bronx
For this keynote conversation, historian Johanna Fernandez and artist Chat Travieso will explore the legacy of music, resistance, and the reclamation of space in the South Bronx.
Artistic Keynote Performance: Shaun Leonardo, performing Rehearsal
A rehearsal is unscripted, unfixed – a workshop of the workshop – a moment of planning and execution in one. It need not reach resolve or finality. A rehearsal might provide the time and space for an unsettled moment of reckoning or simply serve as training for how we might exist with one another.
For CRUCES, Rehearsal will cull participatory somatic responses from the historically grounded morning sessions to transition attendees to the future-facing afternoon sessions.
Delegates: Oscar Oliver-Didier, Gabriel Hernández Solano, Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, Suhaly Bautista-Carolina, Elena Martinez, Marlene Ramirez Cancio, Cristina Pérez Jiménez, Lizania Cruz, Dylan Gamboa, Jorge Matos, Ligia Guallpa, Monxo López, Yazmany Arboleda
RSVP HERE!
*All passes include a community lunch
CRUCES: Thinking in Public Forum is a daylong convening of cultural workers, artists, community leaders, scholars, and neighbors, designed as an open, participant-driven space for collective inquiry and exchange. As the culminating event of Sembradas (Phase 1 of Historias), this forum inaugurates CRUCES (Crossings), a signature series of public convenings dedicated to fostering dialogue and collaboration within and beyond the Latinx community. Rooted in the principles of knowledge justice, the forum surfaces collective, situated knowledge and responds to the intentional erasure of culture-specific histories by centering public storytelling, memory work, and shared authorship as vital practices of resistance.
Inspired by unconference models, the event invites unstructured dialogue across three core frameworks:
Democratizing Scholarship – Advancing inclusive knowledge-making by cultivating scholarship as a communal and iterative process that values co-creation and mutual learning.
Community-Based Research – Grounding inquiry in lived experience, memory, and intergenerational dialogue to expand the boundaries of knowledge production and foster deeper exchange between communities and institutions.
Formats for Collective Thinking – advancing participatory methodologies such as creative archiving, mapping, annotation and oral traditions to serve communities in this political moment.
This forum offers a space to reimagine authorship and cultural stewardship—where Latinx and allied communities are not merely subjects of study, but active participants in shaping the narratives that define them. Together, these projects invite reflection on who gathers knowledge, for what purposes, and under whose authority—while generating meaningful, community-rooted insights into Latinx cultural life in New York City.
In doing so, Historias poses a central question: How can we collectively build knowledge infrastructures that honor the complexity, creativity, and enduring contributions of Latinx communities across this city?
Breakout Session Topics:
Schedule:
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM | Central Convening & Keynote Framing with Johanna Fernandez and Chat Travieso
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM | Morning Breakout Sessions: Tracing the Past
12:10 PM – 1:15 PM | Midday Share-Backs & Communal Lunch
1:15 – 1:45 PM | Participatory Keynote Performance with Shaun Leonardo
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM | Afternoon Breakout Sessions: Imagining the Future
3:15 PM – 4:15 PM | Collective Synthesis & Action Wall
4:15 PM – 5:30 PM | Karaoke Practice! (with D.O.T.) + Afterparty
To conclude a generative day of embodied archiving, speculative visioning, and collective creating, Clemente residents Department of Transformation (D.O.T.) will lead a closing session that synthesizes the conceptual strands explored by each breakout session cohort. Through a show-and-tell presentation and rapid proposal prototyping process called Idea Machine, participants will be empowered to come together, think boldly, and take a concrete step towards manifesting the future we dream up together.
Led by founder Prem Krishnamurthy and curator Sam Rauch, Department of Transformation is an artist-organized group that investigates new formats for collective learning and healing.
*The Clemente is proud to be in the process of a major capital project to bring our historic building into ADA compliance for greater accessibility for all. In the meantime, please note that our building is inaccessible for wheelchair users and potentially other mobility impairments. Don't hesitate to contact info@theclementecenter.org for questions or accessibility requests; we will do our best to accommodate.