2023-2024 W.O.W. Project Annual Report

The W.O.W. Project

ABOUT

Program Year 2023-2024

W.O.W. emerged from our 7th year and cultivated an 8th year of rebirth, adaptive resistance, and reflection. Our programming this year manifested collective exploration and sharpened -political analysis. After internal recalibration, it was a pleasure to recenter on public programs and close out the CRNY artists’ residency grounded in collective care as resistance. 2023-2024 saw-the relaunch of our youth program Resist Recycle Regenerate, infusing renewed youth input and creativity into W.O.W.’s work, and the continuation of From Chinatown, With Love. Closing out this year in transition with the ending of CRNY, we hold ample gratitude and appreciation for the learning and growth that these seasons have yielded, precious time together, continued cultivation of community, and the promise of blossoming to come from the seeds sowed.

FALL PROGRAMS

September - December 2023

Our fall programming series from November to December 2023, Cartographies of the Present: Charting Our Freedom Dreams was a series of public programs aimed at unsettling the relationships between arts, culture, social movements, and carceral expansion.

The Jail, The Police, and the People’s Chinatown: A Zine Launch Party The W.O.W. Project, Chinatown Art Brigade, and Immigrant Social Services hosted a launch party for two zines at the ISS Storefront space at 27 Walker Street. Both zines, “Envisioning Abolition in Our Local Asian American Communities”

by Chinatown Art Brigade, and “The Jail, the Police, and the People’s Chinatown” by Serena Yang, explore the connections between the proposed jail in Chinatown, the police and other forms of state control, and people’s struggles for self-determination in Chinatown. With multiple activity stations including button making, a reading nook, a poetry collage station, and refreshments, community members gathered to celebrate the creation of these publications.

Unmaking Dystopia: Abolition at the End of the World | Two Sessions The second program of our fall series, Cartographies of the Present: Charting Our Freedom Dreams was an opportunity to study the trajectory of prisons and punishment in the United States and New York City and ask the questions: Why was Rikers Island built? Why do reformers want to close it?

By tracing different stories of “the jail” from the 18th century to the present day, including moments of resistance and rupture, we wanted to better understand how the fight against the Chinatown “megajail” is locally and historically situated as well as profoundly connected to other struggles—across the world, time, and space—for life, justice, and self-determination.

Making Possibility: Art, Craft, Culture as Worldmaking The W.O.W. Project and story holder and memory worker, Kale Mays held our final program of our fall series. “Making Possibility: Art, Craft, Culture as Worldmaking” offered an opportunity to hold collective grief within the interlaced layers of ecocide and genocide that have led to the repeated construction, demolition, and resurrection of The Tombs on the sacred shore of long-buried fresh waters.

Together, we worked to propagate community memory and vision shared possibilities through ritual offerings to the paved landscapes and buried waters that we now refer to as Lower Manhattan.

FROM CHINATOWN, WITH LOVE October 2023 - February 2024

Abrons Arts Center and the W.O.W. Project came together to celebrate the Year of the Wood Dragon with the fifth edition of From Chinatown, With Love, a Lunar New Year calendar illustrated by Amanda Chung, Banyi Huang, Clae Lu, Jen Louie, Anson Lin, and Joy Freund.

This year’s calendar provided much-needed mutual aid to 12 businesses that are within a 2-block radius of the Manhattan Detention Center construction site.

We were thrilled to partner with Lucky Risograph again to design, print, and co-host our public programming for this year’s iteration of From Chinatown, With Love.

Lunar New Year Calendar Launch Procession On the calendar promotion day, The W.O.W. Project team and W.O.W. youth led a lion dance parade around the neighborhood, blessing businesses for the new year.

The event featured the debut of a 15-foot dragon puppet named Gertrude Chen, and concluded with a performance at 26 Mott Street. The 2024 From Chinatown, With Love program ended with a free art-making workshop at Abrons Arts Center, accessible to all ages.

People’s Projection: Community not Cages The W.O.W. Project and the Illuminator collaborated on the People’s Projection: Community Not Cages, a protest near the Megajail/former Tombs. The From Chinatown, With Love procession ended with a political projection at Baxter and Walker St., turning a Chinatown building into a site of protest against the borough-based jail plan. W.O.W. RRR youth showcased their dragon puppet, symbolizing community power. The event highlighted the land's history and called on artists to boycott jail-related projects, rejecting the carceral state and its violence.

Abrons Exhibition During the winter, Abrons Art Center hosted an exhibition displaying all past From Chinatown, With Love calendars, which culminated in a day-long workshop led by Lucky Riso and The W.O.W. Project. They hosted a range of activities accessible to all ages, starting with red envelope making, exploring the prompt: “What powers do you want to grow in the community in connection to the year of the wood dragon?” The workshop concluded by inviting participants to engage in an imaginative drawing and writing exercise on a provided postcard that was added to the exhibition wall: “What could be in place of the Chinatown jail?”

SPRING PROGRAMS March - June 2024

Spurred by the urgency of profound violence and loss, the W.O.W. Team sought to craft spring programming that illustrates the clear throughlines between the genocidal, extractive violence abroad and local struggles against heightened policing and displacement. This led to Springs From Below, a series combining political education, discussion, and imaginative artmaking, that called upon participants to center interdependence in their dreams and aspirations for liberated futures. The series concluded with a parade and evening celebration.

Teach In At Collect Pond Park Denise Zhou, Monica Mohapatra of Critical Resistance, Joy Freund, and 2023-2024 RRR fellow Sasa Yung co-led a conversational teach-in connecting colonial land histories, Rikers prison, US policing, abolitionist resistance, and imperialist violence and genocide in Palestine. Denise discussed the history of Canal Street, the Manhattan Detention Complex, and Collect Pond Park, highlighting colonial violence and Black, brown, and Indigenous resistance. Mon gave an overview of Rikers' history and mass incarceration. Joy covered the current borough-based jail plan, and Sasa discussed current resistance efforts.

Jellyfish Teach In By the basketball courts of Columbus Park, Denise Zhou and Joy Freund led an iteration of the teach-in on Rikers history and the connections between policing, prisons, and US imperialist violence abroad. Folks took the time to channel their curiosity, hope, despair, rage, and love into wishes and commitments to a better future. Calling upon the imagery of plants, water, and words, the fabric strips participants decorated became the tentacles of three jellyfish puppets used in the Springs from Below: People’s Abolition Parade.

Ringing our Power: Ceramic Bells CRNY artists Juliet Phillips and Singha Hon led a ceramic bell workshop with a group of elders from the Chinatown Kiwanis Club. Through an afternoon of conversation and hand building with clay, the group explored concepts related to safety, and the importance of our voices in the conversation about Chinatown and the jail right now. Robust bilingual facilitation support from Judy Lei and Chris Deng made it possible to have a cross-lingual conversation about safety and ceramics. Immense gratitude to our facilitators and to all the members of the Kiwanis club who shared such heartfelt hopes, and created beautiful bells.

Carp Kite Workshops Inspired by the Chinese legend of the carp leaping over the dragon gate, CRNY teaching artists Joy Mao and Lorraine Lum led two groups of participants in the design and hand carving of diamond-shaped “fish scales” symbolizing windows into our future. As the original fable highlights perseverance and strength in numbers, Joy and Lorraine translated this sentiment into a communal invitation for folks to design scales inspired by the prompt, “what can you imagine for our community in place of cops and carceral systems?” Participants printed their fish scales onto fabric which was afterwards constructed into a series of carp-shaped wind socks that flew in our Springs From Below: People’s Abolition Parade.

Pins Power and Patchwork Summer Program Coordinators Cocoro Kitagawa and Sophia Kschwendt held space in Columbus Park for participants to create patchwork squares to contribute to a collective banner used at W.O.W.’s Springs from Below: People’s Abolition Parade. Using fabric, thread, ribbons, and found materials, folks responded to the prompt, “what do you dream for Chinatown in place of a jail?” The squares they decorated were pinned around the text, “Chinatown is a site of resistance,” and this banner led the front of the parade.

8TH ANNIVERSARY PROGRAMMING

People's Abolition Parade Our spring parade was the culmination of our spring workshop series–a beautiful art and cultural intervention at the proposed Megajail site. As policing and prisons are tools of oppression honed and traded internationally, we took this opportunity to ground our local fight against the borough-based jails within the larger context of global movements for liberation. Our resident artists led our community in the creation of pieces of various mediums to dream outside of violent systems in our current reality.

Through puppets, windsocks, signs, and other mediums, we transformed Baxter St. into a site of protest, dialogue, and joyous resistance. We asked our community in Chinatown and greater NYC to imagine a world where violence and harm are met not with cages, but with community, accountability, and care.

The parade began and closed with beautiful performances from queer traditional Korean drumming group Pungmul, and convened community members and organizers from collectives including Nodutdol, Q-Wave, Chinatown Language Justice, Asians For Palestine, and Chinatown Art Brigade.

People’s Abolition Evening Celebration Following our parade, W.O.W. celebrated our 8th anniversary across from the Megajail construction site. Emceed by Programs Director Yuki Haraguchi, the evening featured performances by artists addressing the prompts, “What does embodying abolition look and feel like to you? What do you imagine in place of the jail?”

The evening included performances and readings from writers Kai Naima Williams, Omotara James, and Ghinwa Jawhari, and musicians OHYUNG and Huda Asfour.

The evening concluded with with projections from the People’s Projection: Community not Cages, in collaboration with Chinatown Art Brigade and The Illuminator, sharing the story of the land, NYC prisons, and resistance. Guzheng player Clae Lu and flutist Mr. Li provided musical accompaniment.

We enjoyed food from two businesses featured in the 2024 From Chinatown, With Love calendar: Sun Sai Gai and Nha Trang One.

No Such Thing as a Humane Cage: Film Screening The W.O.W. Project and cinemóvil nyc came together for an evening of films honoring resistance efforts against the US prison system, led and dreamed by those directly impacted. Through showing three films, we shared the history, wisdom, and art of political prisoners and organizers navigating survival from within, and discussed what we can apply and practice locally in the abolitionist struggle.

RESIST RECYCLE REGENERATE (R.R.R.) September 2023 - June 2024

Following an internal year of pause, Fall 2023 marked the restart of RRR for its sixth year, with a revitalized curriculum by RRR alums Serena Yang, Bridget Li, and Vivian Yi. The 2023-2024 cohort included six fellows: Emma Hua, Vicki Li, Max McCall, My Ahn Phan, Sonia Tsang, and Sasa Yung; and a leadership team of Program Director Yuki Haraguchi, Coordinator and RRR alumna Angela Chan, Program Leaders Alicia Kwok and Fanny Li, and Teaching Artist Joy Freund.

This year was shaped by emergent focus on themes of (collective) power, lineage, and familial love, and featured workshops from guest artists in a range of mediums. Each session connected artmaking with political education, dialogue, and struggle, grounded in the local context of the Megajail and the global context of imperial violence and capitalism. Guest teaching artists Ryan Wong, Serena Yang, Vincent Chong, and Joy Mao shared their wisdom in writing, poetry, bookbinding, and embroidery.

The group project examined power, creating a platform for fellows to articulate collective power's role in social change. The result was Gertrude Chen, a 15-foot-long rainbow dragon puppet operated by six people. Constructed from recycled soup containers, her individually designed scales hold a wealth of intimate and personal references to power and love including drawings, protest photos, and poems. Her creation was a practice of queer play and performance as resistance, and proceeded to shape and feature in W.O.W.’s 2024 programming.

RRR’s sixth year concluded with the final showcase, Under The Same Skies, where fellows presented their final projects. Inspired by themes of lineage, Asian American identities, and collective power, Under The Same Skies honored personal and community narratives as guiding stars to navigate a constellation of relationships, politics, and history. The event opened with a gallery walk of each fellow’s projects and ended with a discussion panel featuring the cohort, unpacking the inspirations and processes of creating their work, along with dreams and hopes for the future and reflections on the past year as fellows.