Raven Chacon and Laura Ortman will perform a free show in Brooklyn Bridge Park on November 5
Who: Laura Ortman & Raven Chacon
What: Live concert presented by Public Art Fund
Where: Empire Fulton Ferry Lawn, Brooklyn Bridge Park
When: Sunday, November 5, free (advance RSVP recommended), 4:00
Why: Following an earlier rainout, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) and Raven Chacon (Navajo) will activate Nicholas Galanin’s Brooklyn Bridge Park sculpture, In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra, with a free concert on November 5 at 5:00. Chacon is a Pulitzer Prize–winning composer, performer, and installation artist based in Red Hook and Albuquerque, while Ortman is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who has collaborated with Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, New Red Order, and many others.
Discussing the large-scale immersive piece, Galanin, who is based in Sitka, Alaska, said in a promotional video, “Creative sovereignty and creating work is a form of reclamation of our ideas, our knowledge, our language, our place, while including other perspectives and other ideas and other people’s experiences to be accessed through that work too.”
Ortman and Chacon have worked together previously, including at Ende Tymes X in Brooklyn, the American Academy in Berlin, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, and other locations. In Brooklyn Bridge Park, they will present an improvisational site-specific performance incorporating local field recordings and a mix of instruments. Admission is free, though advance registration is recommended, and attendees are encouraged to bring a blanket to sit on.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]