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In Preparation for Urgent Futures

9/6/23

Residency

In Preparation for Urgent Futures

Miguel Braceli stages kids' urgent questions of our time.

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As part of his CMA residency, Miguel Brraceli debuts Urgent Futures, a participatory project to collect, discuss, and stage children’s critical questions from our time.



Over the course of the spring semester, Miguel worked with third graders at Children’s Workshop School in the East Village to generate questions based on current issues, encouraging kids to be acutely curious about the world surrounding them.



The project kicked off in the classroom, where students used archival copies of The New York Times, donated by the Queens Public Library, to create their own newspaper version of Lygia Pape’s Divisor (Divider) performance piece as a means of literally embodying their current questions.



Lygia Pape (Brazilian, 1927–2004). Divisor (Divider), 1968. Performance at Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, 1990. Photo by Paula Pape. © Projeto Lygia Pape

The students also had the opportunity to explore art and form their own questions in an exhibition context at Pace Gallery. Students took a field trip to the gallery's Chelsea location, where they viewed the work of Matthew Day Jackson.



Students formed six groups to formulate questions based on the prompts: what, when, who, how, where, why, como, que. Afterwards, kids drew their questions on large inflatable letters and carried the balloons (via subway!) back to CWS.




Divided into three parts, the activation of September 21 documents the creation of a massive flag made of letters asking third grader Damiya Gardener's question: Does it affect the Earth?



Urgent Futures invites visitors to bear witness to the next generation’s dire questions about the future of Earth, from environmental, social, and political perspectives.

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