The month-long celebration is the result of a newly formed alliance between the city’s and the campus’s Hispanic communities. This dynamic merger of strengths promises a magnificent tribute to the Hispanic presence in the city.

Balcon Criollo is a gallery-wide installation of meaningful artifacts showcasing the community’s most cherished memories, their countries of origin and family histories.

“Balcón Criollo” (Creole Balcony) is a new exhibition built by local carpenters and teens participating in La Casita programs. “Balcón Criollo” will showcase a gallery-wide installation of memorabilia, artwork, traditional music instruments, costumes, photos, devotional imagery, antiques and more.

All items are being loaned by local families, many of whom will be present at the opening event and through the following weeks to share their family histories.

Throughout the four weeks, events will include Caribbean cuisine tastings, a domino tournament and the much anticipated Bomba & Plena Festival, with lively performances by La Casita’s own Bomba & Plena Dance Troupe and the Rochester-based ensemble Pleneros D’Borikén.

Luz Encarnación, the center’s youth programming coordinator and community liaison, is the producer of four main events in collaboration with the YWCA, CNY Latino Newspaper and , which supports and oversees the entire production. “We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to showcase our rich heritage and the legacy of the Hispanic residents of Central New York,” says Encarnación.

La Casita is hosting this collective show of local art through Oct. 10. All program events free of charge and open to the public, with free parking available.

Hispanic Heritage Month Program at La Casita Cultural Center:

“Balcón Criollo”
Friday, Sept. 20, 6-8 p.m.

Neighborhood residents will co-host with local artists to greet visitors and share personal stories related to the items on display. Selected community members who have played a positive role in the history of the West Side community will receive special recognition at this event. Music will be provided by DJ “La Maquina” (Roberto Perez). Light refreshments will be served.

Nuestro Sabor, A Taste of Latin America
Saturday, Sept. 28, 1-4 p.m.

Traditional dishes for all to taste will be featured as members of the Hispanic community showcase the best Caribbean cuisine and share family recipes. Music provided by DJ “La Maquina” (Roberto Perez).

Torneo de Dominó, Domino Tournament
Friday, Oct. 4, 4 – 7 p.m.

An domino tournament is open to community teams to compete. Winners receive a trophy and cash award at the Hispanic Heritage closing event at La Casita on Oct. 10. Co-produced with NY Latino. Light refreshments will be served.

Bomba & Plena Festival
Thursday, Oct. 10, 6 – 8 p.m.

The closing event for Hispanic Heritage Month will bring the community together for a festival of Caribbean rhythms, live music and dance performance. Light refreshments will be served.

Reflecting on the work, Sherman states: “The representation may be almost like a constellation of moments of awareness. It’s impossible to summarize what you think in a video, but it is possible to create a veil of a series of works that contribute to the aggregate consciousness of a society, like a transparent curtain of events, of subconsciousness.”

Sherman is a professor of arts, design and transmedia at Syracuse University. He was a founding co-editor of Fuse magazine, Toronto (1980); founding director of Media Arts for the Canada Council for the Arts, Ottawa (1983-87), and co-founder of Nerve Theory, an international performance art/recording collaborative (1997). In 1980, he represented Canada at the Venice Biennale, and in 1986, was appointed international commissioner for that same Biennale, one of the world’s major contemporary art exhibitions every two years in Venice, Italy. Among numerous distinctions, Sherman received the Bell Canada prize for excellence in video art in 2003, and Canada’s Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2010.

This new program was inspired by a reflection from Point of Contact’s editor, Pedro Cuperman: “In these times when technology and electronic publishing seem to threaten the survival of the printed folio, Point of Contact presents itself as an advocate for the survival of the book as an object. The evolution of the publishing industry is having an impact on readers, their preferences, their habits, and how they experience language arts. Of course there are great advantages in the electronic medium for literary programs. But this is a tool of accessibility and outreach to readers, not a replacement for the material object or the materiality of language and the page as part of the experience of this art form. We all conceive art in multiple dimensions of expression, and it does not exclude any form.”

Point of Contact also presents Cruel April, a weekly poetry event staging New York poets from Point of Contact’s newest poetry collection, “Corresponding Voices, Vol. 5.” Every Thursday of April, Point of Contact will host a free poetry reading, at 6 p.m., followed by a reception and dialogue with the poets, in commemoration of National Poetry Month.

This public program in literature is made possible thanks to the support of The College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics at Syracuse University and the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA).

An activist and renowned Latin American artist, Tiscornia brings to Syracuse a mixed-media installation that curator Pedro Cuperman describes as “the outcome of a tale, where we have a fragmented world, where the pieces are somehow geometrically organic, logical … a kind of ‘architecture of catastrophe.’ It is about the artist’s obsession with organizing her world after having lived through the tragedies of military dictatorships in her home land, and the present catastrophes, wars that we endure in our own time. Ana’s work demands from the viewer a sort of reconstruction, reintegration of the work, and our world.”

Tiscornia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and has resided in New York since 1991. She is an assistant professor at SUNY College, Old Westbury and art editor of Point of Contact, the book series.

Her selected solo shows include: “Solo Projects,” ARCO 2009, Madrid; “On Location,” Allegra Ravizza Art Project. Milan; “Tuning,” Leo Fortuna Gallery, Hudson, New York; IX Bienal de la Habana, “Dinamicas de la cultura urbana,” Havana, Cuba; “Noticias Breves,” Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires; “On Sites and Cites,” Grayson Gallery, Woodstock, Vt.; “Parentesis en la ciudad,” San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The Point of Contact Gallery is a member of the Coalition of Museum & Art Centers at Syracuse University. Punto de Contacto-Point of Contact is a New York tax exempt corporation supported through grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), SU’s College of Arts & Sciences and members of Point of Contact’s Patrons Program. For more information, call 315-443-2169.

In today’s virtual era, when we can communicate at light speed, inhabit cyber realities and continually discard the “old” in search for “upgrades,” one might expect that technology innovation makes us less burdened, less constrained by time and space. By the same token, so many of us are living rushed unthinking lives, desensitized and isolated from anything real. Are we constrained by our own innovations? We work, live and play inside frames, according to Horowitz, and those frames are mobile or immobile, physical, mental or metaphorical.

In this exhibition, the intrusion of familiar objects with uncharacteristic contents invites the viewer to reconsider the forms, functions and limitations of recognizable, repurposed relics, and pokes fun at our decreasing flexibility, our increasing demands and the collective loss of craft, localized innovation and repair.

“The trunks, once utilitarian objects used to carry clothing and other personal items, are now filled for the sake of filling. The cardboard, created initially to contain other entities, functions as contents. Though each framing device no longer holds the contents they were created to contain, they contain nonetheless; it is the humor and irony of this relationship that I strive to illustrate thorough my work,” Horowitz says.

To create this installation, Horowitz began by collecting trunks, cases and boxes. Though most bore a patina of age, use and neglect, he cleaned, fixed and saved each piece. Horowitz is able to manipulate cardboard to create the designs and patterns he finds within the lines and corrugation so readily offered. “I have drawn each piece through the gauntlet intentionally, irrationally or purely by necessity,” says Horowitz. “Thinking over my work, and planning new directions strays into theory, but in practice, I work, live and act in this moment.”

The Point of Contact Gallery is a member of the Coalition of Museum & Art Centers at Syracuse University. It is free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday  9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday, noon to 3 p.m. To schedule visits at any other time please call 315-443-2169.

Whether it is architecture, city planning, new-found cultural norms or age-old issues of separation, Porter and Alva question, investigate and propose. Having partnered in previous projects as curator/artist and as co-curators, they now team up as artists for the first time, at Point of Contact. For this exhibit, Porter and Alva employ work by Boston-based Witkin, a series of texts and diagrams, to serve as a bridge from written word to spatial arrangement, and from artist to writer to curator, warping the term “collaboration” to be more dynamic.

Witkin’s writings, which can be read as “lists,” are accumulations of thoughts that suggest a sense of order, but still remain abstract. They are organized in an undefined way and yet are quite concrete. They repeat, are rhythmic and include a sense of time and space. Both Porter and Alva respond to the juxtaposition of order and abstraction, as well as to the visual composition of Witkin’s publications. Working collectively and individually, these artists push the means, methods and roles of an exhibition and its participants, seeking and constantly finding new points of contact.

For more information about this and other upcoming programs at Point of Contact, visit the website at . Punto de Contacto-Point of Contact is a New York nonprofit corporation supported through grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and Syracuse University.

This event is about the essential conflict of a contemporary Latin American poet vis-à-vis her world. In this woman’s life and body of work, conflict could not be reduced to a psychological problem, but rather was the mark of the existential clash faced by a generation of women.

A panel of distinguished guests will include:

• Jaklin Kornfilt, professor of linguistics in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences;
• Bruce Smith, poet and professor of English in SU’s College of Arts and Sciences; 
• Madeleine Stratford, professor in the Department of Language Studies at Université du Québec, Outaouais; and
• Nayda Collazo Llorens and Patricia Bentancur, artists and creators of two original visual texts included in the new Point of Contact edition, inspired by Pizarnik’s poetry.

“Conflict: Peace and War” is the theme of the 2010 Syracuse Symposium, an annual intellectual and artistic festival held on the SU campus. The SU Humanities Center organizes and presents Syracuse Symposium for SU’s College of Arts and Sciences and for the University community. More information is available by calling (315) 443-7192.

Punto de Contacto-Point of Contact is an independent non-profit arts organization in residence at SU.

Led by producer Ricky Encarnacion, Heaven Report includes guitar, bass and saxophone. The group flew in for the annual gala of the Spanish Action League this weekend, and decided to add this event to its itinerary.

The Point of Contact Gallery inaugurates its fall/winter program of exhibitions titled “La Colección” Sept. 16 with a selection of photography from its permanent collection, including works by New York artists Papo Colo, Burt Barr, Gregory Crewdson, Judy Pfaff, Rob Van Erve and Sandy Skoglund. This is a special program to commemorate Point of Contact’s 35th anniversary and the Point of Contact Gallery’s fifth anniversary. The program will bring out the entire permanent collection in five exhibitions from September 2010 to January 2011. Special events will be held at the gallery on the Third Thursday of each month.

Point of Contact Gallery is located at 914 East Genesee St., Syracuse. For more information, visit http://www.puntopoint.org.

Original works created over the past three decades especially for Point of Contact’s book series form this rare collection of more than 200 pieces of photography, collage, drawings, paintings and three-dimensional works donated by their creators. “Each project, a visual metaphor, is an autonomous work deployed in its own terms and in its own visual space, intertwined in a purely alternative way,” says Pedro Cuperman, founder and director of Point of Contact.

In 1975, Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact originated a journal about the verbal and visual arts, known as Punto de Contacto first, and later as Point of Contact. In time, this journal, now a book series, has become a medium for some of the most relevant contemporary artists around the globe and many of them have become long-time collaborators, co-creators and designers of a project that continues to evolve and move forward in unforeseen ways.

“La Colección” comprises works by Burt Barr, Roy Bautista, Luis Camnitzer, Pérez Celis, Marta Chilindrón, Papo Colo, Gregory Crewdson, Jaime Davidovich , Katherine Desjardins, Nancy Graves, Joseph Kugielsky, Elka Krajewska, Alberto Lastreto, Hung Liu, Marco Maggi, Luis Felipe Noe, Nam June Paik, Izhar Patkin, Judy Pfaff, Cesar Paternosto, Liliana Porter, Regina Silveira, Ana Tiscornia and Ursula Von Rydingsvard.

Point of Contact Gallery is located at 914 East Genesee St., Syracuse. For more information, visit .

Syracuse University professor of Latin American literature and founding editor of Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact Pedro Cuperman, accompanied by guest editor and renowned linguist and poet Ivonne Bordelois and Ana Aldaburu, director of CeDIP, greeted more than 300 guests and the media at the state-of-the-art center created as an interactive space for research, documentation and publications about contemporary arts.

Other distinguished panelists included New York University/Buenos Aires professor Tamara Kamenszain and the Argentine poet Fernando Noy, who was a close personal acquaintance of Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik (1936-72), the subject of the book.

“We are profoundly grateful to Syracuse University for its continuous support of Point of Contact through the last three decades. The presence and prestige of this Central New York institution of higher learning is strongly felt in Latin American arts and literature,” Cuperman said at the event. “This new Point of Contact bilingual edition, ‘ALEJANDRA,’ released today in Buenos Aires, soon to be presented on campus at Syracuse University, is the product of three years of groundbreaking research and arduous labor in editing and translation, a most significant contribution, and a work of art that we can all be proud of.”

The new bilingual issue of the Point of Contact book series focuses on the life and verse of Pizarnik, who was a leading feminine voice in contemporary Latin American letters. Based on a collection of letters from young Alejandra, all unpublished until now, this significant compendium approaches Pizarnik’s work through critical and visual texts, including essays by Tamara Kamenszain, Fiona Mackintosh, María Negroni, Olga Orozco, Susana Chávez-Silverman, Madeleine Stratford and Silvia Baron Supervielle. Visual texts are by Patricia Bentancur, Nayda Collazo-Llorens and Graciela Sacco.

The official release in the United States will take place on Oct. 20 at the Maxwell Auditorium on the SU campus. Co-sponsored by Point of Contact and the Syracuse Symposium, the event, including a panel discussion, is a program of the SU Humanities Center. The dialogue between guest scholars, poets and artists will focus on the essential conflict of this contemporary poet vis-à-vis her world and the existential clash faced by that generation of women.

In 1975, Punto de Contacto/Point of Contact originated a journal about the verbal and visual arts, known as Punto de Contacto first, and later as Point of Contact. In time, through the development of a successful partnership with SU, this journal, now a book series, has become a medium for some of the most relevant contemporary artists and writers around the globe; many have become long-time collaborators, co-creators and designers of a project that continues to evolve and move forward in unforeseen ways.

Pizarnik’s surrealist voice resounds from the ’60s to inspire a new generation of dreamers. One of Argentina’s adored poets, she achieved literary greatness in the Spanish world and met an early death in 1972, at the age of 36.

“Alejandra” features a stellar assembly of international scale contemporary artists, three from Latin America—Graciela Sacco (Argentina), Patricia Betancur (Uruguay); Nayda Collazo-Llorens (Puerto Rico)—and three faculty members from Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts: Mary Giehl, Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby.

Artists will be in attendance at the opening event.

A visual and verbal exploration, this exhibition complements the 2010 release of a Point of Contact journal special edition dedicated to Pizarnik. The new publication will feature a series of unedited letters about poetry, from young Alejandra.

For this rich display of drawings that is a development of the work he’s just presented at two solo exhibitions in Buenos Aires, “Roth invents a world of multiple figures, drawn to life in a Buenos Aires café while listening to stories about lost loves, departed pets and friends, and the refusal to go out and love again …” writes the show’s curator, Pedro Cuperman.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, raised in Buenos Aires, where he currently lives, Roth has exhibited extensively between Prague and Buenos Aires in venues such as the Laura Haber Gallery, Centro Cultural Borges and the Wussman Gallery, among others. His works can be found in collections of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (MAMBA), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Latinoamericano, La Plata (MACLA); Jewish Museum of Prague; Museo de Bellas Artes de Azul, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Museo Contemporaneo de Santa Fe (MAC); and the Jewish Museum of Buenos Aires.

For more information, call 315-443-2169 or visit .

The event is free and open to the public.

Condit is a professor of film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was the recipient of a 1989 Guggenheim Fellowship. Her films include “Annie Lloyd,” “Little Spirits,” “Why Not a Sparrow” and “All About a Girl.”

“I consider myself a storyteller whose work swings between beauty and the grotesque, humor and the macabre, innocence and cruelty,” Condit says. “My videos explore the dark side of female subjectivity and address the fear, aggression and displacement that exist between ourselves and society, ourselves and the natural world.”