Event Details
Sunday, September 17, 2023
2–5 pm

Park Avenue Armory    
643 Park Avenue
New York, New York

Free. Spaces are limited; register for the event here.

A meditation on wind and lightness, Laurel Schwulst’s Activations program How to Build a Bird Kite transposes her interactive digital piece of the same name into the physical, communal space. First published by the New York Times in 2021 amid social distancing measures, How to Build a Bird Kite proposes that readily available materials and natural resources—such as wind—are enough to provide a sense of calm and levity in difficult times. For this in-person iteration, participants are invited to build and fly their own kites, joining Schwulst in the practice of everyday ingenuity and intentional craft.

Program Description
Activations is a series of interdisciplinary public workshops designed by artists in response to civic spaces in New York City. Each activation invites participants to encounter a readymade site through the lens of an artistic practice, reimagining them as spaces of creative possibility. All are welcome to participate.

Laurel Schwulst, born in 1988, is an artist, writer, and technologist. She is recognized for her experiential projects-as-worlds; expanded writing practice; creative direction leadership; websites; innovative learning materials and educational environments; and her ongoing collaborations. Her writing has taken the form of essays, perfume reviews, and interviews with other artists, and has been published by the New York Times, Creative Independent, and Art in America, among others. For over a decade, she has taught award-winning design classes and workshops at academic institutions including Yale University, New Haven, and Princeton University, New Jersey. She has presented her work internationally at cultural, academic, and internet-native institutions, including BBC Radio 4, Rhode Island School of Design, University of Seoul, Google, and Wikipedia. Schwulst serves as director of the gift shop at Are.na, a platform for networked curation, and is working towards a “PBS of the Internet.” She lives in New York.