CELESTE STATION & RYAN CONARRO
CELESTE STATION & RYAN CONARRO
CELESTE STATON is a proud Brooklynite—which she affectionately calls “The People’s Republic of Brooklyn”—and is a social practice artist, tenant advocate, community activist, and founding member of the Intergenerational Community Arts Council (ICAC). She is currently the President of the Atlantic Terminal Tenants’ Association, Inc., serves on Community Board 2 (CB2), a member of the Economic Development Committee in CB2, and is involved in multiple community advocacy organizations. As part of the Future Historical Society at BRIC, Celeste has lead the creation of the audio installation project featuring Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (LAPC) in Fort Greene, along with Ryan Conarro and jazz artist, Eric Frazier. Celeste and the team organized story gatherings, interviews, and research sessions, creating from these a montage of voices representing the rich past and imagined future of the Church and of the Fort Greene neighborhood.
RYAN CONARRO is a creator of interdisciplinary performance and facilitator of community engagement. His upcoming solo performance work, “Saints of Failure,” received a 2019 Brooklyn Arts Council grant and will run in a site-specific production at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church (LAPC) this fall. Ryan is a 5-year resident of Fort Greene, where he’s an active member of Fort Greene Peace and the LAPC Social Justice Committee. He’s Artistic Collaborator In Residence and Community Projects Associate with Ping Chong + Company. He lived in communities in Alaska from 2001 to 2014, where his work as a radio journalist, teaching artist, and interdisciplinary maker established his ongoing practice creating a performance from documentary material. Recognitions include The TCG National Leadership U Fellowship; Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Award; Connie Boochever Artist Fellowship; and three Alaska Broadcasters Association Goldie Awards. Please visit www.ryanconarro.com
“We are two neighbors and artistic collaborators who share a deep investment in Fort Greene, past, present, and future. We’re very excited to be a part of the University Settlement Artist in Residency program to facilitate a project that we hope will cultivate connection at Atlantic Terminal Houses while also challenging us as artists and community workers. We’re looking forward to eating together, talking together, and creating together! ”
PERFORMANCE PROJECT: CORNERSTONE STORIES AT ATLANTIC TERMINAL will be a one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary community storytelling performance event at Atlantic Terminal Houses. Celeste and Ryan will facilitate a series of story circles, interviews, and community meals, in which Atlantic Terminal residents are invited to share family and community histories from the housing complex and from the surrounding Fort Greene neighborhood. From this story process, Celeste and Ryan will script and stage an intergenerational performance in which these stories are performed by residents. The culminating event will be an immersive, roving experience, in which audience members are guided through the Atlantic Terminal complex by the storytellers, discovering successive stories which offer a meaningful encounter with the spaces that make up the complex. The live-performed stories will be interwoven with video and audio installations, designed by Ryan, which provide glimpses of yet more Atlantic Terminal storytellers, sharing remembered pasts and imagined futures.
COMMUNITY CONNECTION: CORNERSTONE STORIES is created by, with, and for community members of the Atlantic Terminal Houses. The project throws open the doors for Atlantic Terminal residents to participate in the building’s Cornerstone Program, which honors select residents who have lived in the complex for over 40 years. Originated in 2018, these recognitions were given to three residents. But the rich stories, histories, and insights of these and other community elders remain undocumented and unheard. Through this project, new Cornerstone residents will contribute to a live archive that will lift up the past and create a shared future. CORNERSTONE STORIES also answers a broader challenge at Atlantic Terminal: awakening and enlivening community participation. Too many of us keep to ourselves; too many unique stories and histories within the complex go unshared. This project brings opportunities for connection right into the hallways, courtyards, and community center of the complex. Finally, CORNERSTONE STORIES creates a container for meaningful encounters between Atlantic Terminal residents in Fort Greene, which continues to rapidly change through gentrification and real estate development. The culminating event will invite Fort Greene citizens to visit the complex and meet neighbors, centering and amplifying stories that are the foundation of this neighborhood.