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"Breakaway" Included in Din Din 39th Street Block Party

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Din Din: 29th Street Block Party

May 31 @ 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

This Block Party is the opening event for Din Din, a series of free, socially-distanced outdoor public events which use food and art to build community. 

Location: 39-22 29th St, Long Island City

Participating Artists

Program Includes

The Connected Chef

The Connected Chef mission is to re-envision food access to ensure every household has access to local, nutritious food. Access is more than just providing groceries. It means one’s ability to obtain healthy groceries, prepare them in a culturally relevant way, and opportunity to engage in the growing and cultivating of that food. We are the home of Lifeline Grocery; a sliding scale grocery program that offers local, nutrient dense groceries to households across Queens by meeting community members where they are (cost $0 – $45). Cultivating community through food is our love language. We invite you to join us in moving towards a community where food is a human right and where we are committed to one another in recreating what food access is. To learn more about us please find us at theconnectedchef.org.

Breakaway by Heather Kapplow

“Breakaway” consists of a varied series of audience-enacted gestures woven into multiple Din Din events. It is ritual activity that conflates the notion of theatrical breakaway props — things designed to be destroyed without hurting anyone — with the idea of freedom obtained by breaking away from dysfunctional patterns rooted in traumas from the past.

Heather Kapplow creates participatory experiences that elicit unexpected intimacies using objects, alternative interpretations of existing environments, installation, performance, writing, audio and video.

Harvest Mandalas by Nadine Nelson

“Harvest Mandalas” is an art project, think tank, café, wellness lab, and interactive experience that turns food waste into works of art and encourages visitors to contemplate on their health, wellness, and sustainability. Chef Educator and Culinary Artist Nadine Nelson construct Harvest Mandalas with donated food. Mandalas present themselves everywhere in nature; they are the structures of our cells, our world, and our universe. Meaning circle in Sanskrit, it is a symbol of wholeness, continuity, interdependence, unification, abundance, harmony and the cycle of life; the Harvest Mandala seeks to inspire those qualities in ourselves and each other. The very act of creating a mandala is therapeutic and symbolic.

Nadine Nelson is a career educator, chef, artist, activist, and owner of Global Local Gourmet. As an expert in interactive culinary education and experiential event production, she uses food as a catalyst and platform to build community, revitalize the neighborhood, preserve our cultural heritage, and empower people to lead healthier, happier, connected and more prosperous lives by creating educational and recreational programming around cuisine from seed to waste. Her cooking classes, culinary and farm tours, corporate team building, wellness workshops, food art activations, and immersive epicurean events are legendary for their social sculpture and collaborative human engagement. 

“Radio Repast LIVE!” by Will Owen

At the onset of the pandemic, Will began to host a live radio show, Radio Repast, playing music connected to food, family, and travel. Will also cold-called loved ones of all stripes asking if they had any recipes memorized. These recipes were flanked with conversations about family, heritage, and culture. Will compiled these recipes into a series of zines available for free download. For Din Din, Will is hosting Radio Repast LIVE! People passing by on the street during the opening will be invited to participate in the live radio broadcast. The recipes collected will become a new risograph zine freely distributed at the end of the exhibition.

Will Owen originally from North Carolina, US is an artist, composer, and curator currently based in part of the Lenapehoking currently known as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Will works with many mediums, but often returns to three: Sound, Installation Design, and Food. Will creates artworks that address state changes– physical state changes– liquid, solid, and gas, in addition to geopolitical, social, and emotional state changes. He exhibits internationally and domestically at museums, galleries, festivals, biennials, universities, artist-run spaces, theatres, night clubs, public squares, interstate buses, gymnasiums, tour boats, public restrooms, abandoned gas stations, rooftops, forests, and for no one at all. 

Blowing Sugar [Glass] performance  吹【糖】玻璃 by Yiyi Wei

Sugar blowing is a traditional Chinese craft. Yiyi Wei draws upon her childhood memories of watching sugar blowers at Lunar New Year temple fairs. Molten sugar’s materiality is very similar to molten glass. Wei never acquired the skill of traditional sugar blowing, instead, she learned to blow glass. Echoing her longing for home and the fleeting memory, the performance creates an environment where people gathered, watched demonstrations, drank from blown sugar vessels and shared the sweetness in their memories. Within time, the smell of cooked sugar slowly diffuses, creating an invisible veil undulating in between everyone and everything.

Yiyi Wei is a Chinese interdisciplinary artist. She received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, where she began to consider her artworks as processes that perceive the entangled connections between human and non-human existences. Weaving between the tangible and the transient, Wei contemplates on our posture within a system of symbiotic relationships across time and culture using performances, interactive installations, and poetic writings. 

Music by DJ Vinyl Richie

Bronx native Richard (DJ Vinyl Richie) Nathaniel got his taste for music at a young age listening to records in the house and around the parties in his neighborhood. When he is not controlling a crowd he is creating and curating sound projects.

The Street Vendor Project

The Street Vendor Project (SVP) is a membership-based project with more than 2,000 vendor members who are working together to create a vendors’ movement for permanent change. We reach out to vendors in the streets and storage garages and teach them about their legal rights and responsibilities. We hold meetings where we plan collective actions for getting our voices heard. We publish reports and file lawsuits to raise public awareness about vendors and the enormous contribution they make to our city.

Food Vendor – Rosa 

Rosa A. is a longtime vendor and SVP member, who works just 2 blocks away from Flux Factory! She usually runs a breakfast cart with tamales, bagels, and pastries on 31st Street and 39th Avenue in LIC, right off of the 31st Street NW train. Her hours are 6 AM – 2 PM, Monday – Friday. Rosa is a mother and grandmother, and after waiting 14 years for a permit of her own, was finally able to receive one and open her own business.

  • Ice Cream ($2 for a cup or cone)

    • Includes flavors: strawberry, blackberry, vanilla, chocolate, walnut, cherry, oreo cookie, coconut, pineapple/lime swirl

  • Cut Fruits ($3 per ziplock bag)

    • Mango & Pineapple (Offered with chili, salt, lemon, or chamoy)

  • Meal Plate! ($10 per plate)

    • Rice, beans, salad, guacamole with choice of steak or chicken

Earlier Event: May 15
"Tree Talk" Free Tree Therapy Program Included in Urban Tree Festival London
Later Event: May 31
"Breakaway" Included in Din Din at Flux Factory