Past event
Right to Flight: A Public Performance & Participatory Artwork
About the event
🌧️ Due to the weather, this performance has been rescheduled to Sunday, October 4 from 4:00-5:00 PM. ‼️ There is no ferry service from Manhattan to Governors Island after 4:15 PM. Please plan to arrive before 4:15 PM. You can return to Manhattan on any ferry until 6:00 PM. The Right to Flight team will also be giving a talk at the Climate Imaginarium as part of World Migratory Bird Day on October 10th. You can RSVP for that event here.
🦜 Participatory Artwork & Public Performance Right to Flight is a participatory public artwork and performance that responds to the hundreds of thousands of migratory birds killed each year through collisions with New York City's glass buildings. Right to Flight invites New Yorkers to reimagine the city for migratory birds. Combining large-scale woven sculpture, performance, sound, costume, memorial-making, and public participation, the project invites audiences to reflect on the intertwined futures of human and more-than-human life in the city. At its heart is a monumental communal nest, woven from reclaimed textiles and natural materials, that becomes a site for collective mourning, storytelling, and hope. Through performances inspired by extinct North American birds, hand-cast memorials of collision victims, and sculptural bird-safe architectural interventions, Right to Flight transforms ecological grief into an act of collective care. Rather than presenting biodiversity loss as inevitable, the work encourages audiences to imagine cities that support coexistence, demonstrating how art, architecture, preservation, music and dance performance can foster more compassionate and regenerative urban futures.
🐦 Right to Flight Leading Right to Flight is international author, artist, death doula and Professor of Historic Preservation at Pratt Institute, Harriet Harriss, whose acclaimed collaborators include textile designer and artist Brooke Garner, multidisciplinary artist and researcher Leslie Ruckman musician, actress and singer…
