The Sanctuary for Independent Media’s fifth year is coming to a close and it is having a party to celebrate. On Saturday night The Sanctuary will hold its final Raise the Roof event of the year.
Branda Miller, a professor at RPI, has been with The Sanctuary since the beginning. Miller says the Raise the Roof event has something for everyone. "One of the things that is great about this event is that it’s a bunch of different things rolled into one. It’s a birthday party, a holiday party, it’s a thank you for all our volunteers and all the people who have supported us."
Steve Pierce has been with The Sanctuary since its inception in 2005. "It was made up of all kinds of people who were in alternative media projects who had been meeting for a while. Eventually, they decided to purchase a meeting space that turned out to be a historic former church in North Troy."
The Raise the Roof series refers to two things according to Pierce. "First the party to celebrate five years in our location in North Troy. It’s also a party celebrate some major renovations we’ve done on our building. It’s pretty exciting. We’ve had 15 different events from film to music to speakers to a play. All different kinds of stuff."
Five years into its mission, even the founders of Troy’s Sanctuary for Independent Media concede that mission isn’t always easy to define.
"Sometimes it is hard to communicate," says Steve Pierce, director of the Sanctuary. "People coming to our events aren’t always sure what to expect. We’re exposing them to information and culture that isn’t generally seen in the corporate media" — by which, he means the mass culture as well as local daily newspapers.
"I don’t mean to sound anti-corporate," he says. "But there just isn’t much money to be made at this."
"This," is the unique mix of entertainment, speakers, training programs and media-arts presentations offered by the Sanctuary, located in a former church at Sixth Avenue and 101st Street in Lansingburgh.
The mix is aptly described by the title given this sixth season of events, already underway: "Raise the Roof!: Celebrating Our First Five Years." The title was inspired in part by the recent completion of a phase of the ongoing renovations to the building, including a new roof; but also by the rabble-rousing nature of the facility’s programming.
"I think all of our programming is really about creativity," says Branda Miller, an RPI professor and Pierce’s partner in programming at the Sanctuary.
TROY — A number of community organizations are coming together to use virtual reality to imagine a better future for their neighborhood at a workshop this Sunday at the Sanctuary for Independent Media. Using photos of buildings in a section of North Central/Uptown, participants in the four-hour free workshop will work as a team to create 3D prototypes as an urban planning tool for the community.
Entitled “Second Life for Community Development: Re-imagining Your Neighborhood Through Virtual Worlds,” the workshop is co-sponsored by iEAR Presents! and the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Troy Architectural Project, the Missing Link Street Ministry, the Uptown Initiative and the Troy Alley Action Project. Stephanie Rothenberg, an artist and educator that uses networked media, will lead the workshop using building tools in Second Life, a 3D virtual world.
Branda Miller, a media arts professor at RPI and the arts and education coordinator at the Sanctuary, said the event demonstrates the collaborative effort between the organizations.
Joe Abbey is a white, self-proclaimed agnostic who also happens to be the lead guitarist in an otherwise all African American regional gospel group, The Heavenly Echoes.
Far from being the infidel in a field of holy men, Abbey fits right in with his band of proselytizers who struggle like all of us to keep their act together in a world gone mad. Joe also is a middle-aged RPI graduate who loves the Rolling Stones and fronts a blues band called JV and The Cutters.
It is Joe’s blues band that will share the stage with Thomasina Winslow and Mother Judge on Friday as part of Troy’s Sanctuary for Independent Media’s Live From Lock One concert series.
By Don Wilcock Joe Abbey is a white, self-proclaimed agnostic who also happens to be the lead guitarist in an otherwise all African American regional gospel group, The Heavenly Echoes.
Far from being the infidel in a field of holy men, Abbey fits right in with his band of proselytizers who struggle like all of us to keep their act together in a world gone mad. Joe also is a middle-aged RPI graduate who loves the Rolling Stones and fronts a blues band called JV and The Cutters.
It is Joe’s blues band that will share the stage with Thomasina Winslow and Mother Judge on Friday as part of Troy’s Sanctuary for Independent Media’s Live From Lock One concert series.
One of the reasons Joe never rose to the top in the music business is his own attitude. "If everybody else is a great cook, at least let me bring the plates," he says, explaining that he lacks the technical expertise — and the patience — to learn other people’s songs to perform in a jam situation. Instead, while others would try to trace the Allman Brothers’ guitar prints through "Whipping Post" endlessly week after week, Joe kept coming up with originals. "It was easier for me to make something up than it was to copy or learn something," he says.
America’s longest-running political comic celebrates 30 years of graphic rebellion in Troy
By Kathryn Geurin
On a tired block of North Troy’s 6th Avenue, the double doors of a modest church open onto an unusual sanctuary. Empty of pews, the dim front room is lined with folding chairs, the pillar of a lectern stands silhouetted against an expansive white movie screen. A portrait of a woman peers down from the wall, clutching a swaddled baby in her arms, but she is not your typical Madonna, and her words, which hang in a speech bubble beside her open lips, are not scripture; they are a cry for change. The iconography of this curious refuge is arresting: the snarling jaws of a police dog, trumpeters facing down tanks, a cowering skeleton, an open hand.
World War Three Illustrated is so much more than a comic book. It's an anthology of left-wing visual thought on the politics of our day. Since 1980, it has attempted to "shine a little reality on the fantasy world of the American kleptocracy."
This weekend, it will be taking over the Sanctuary for Independent Media, with covers from 30 years filling the walls, live music, multimedia presentations, puppetry and workshops (on Sunday).
The gala celebrates the magazine, which includes the work of Peter Kuper, Rebecca Midgal, Sandy Jimenez, Mac McGill and Seth Tobocman, who will project his comics with live spoken word and music by Eric Blitz, Andy Laties and Zef Noise.
On Sunday, the World War Three events continue with a panel discussion and workshop called "Be The Media! Visual Journalism: Comics and Graphic Novels."
The discussion on zines and comix, and collaborative workshop to make a digital mini-comic, will be led by Midgal, Jimenez and Tobocman. Registration available online.
If your mother ever told you that you were wasting your time reading comic books, you might want to bring her to the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy over this Mother’s Day weekend. They are having an event that proves comic books can be intellectually stimulating.
On Saturday, starting at 8 p.m. the Sanctuary, at 3361 Sixth Ave. in Troy, is holding a 30th anniversary gala celebration for World War 3 Illustrated, a New York City-based comic book anthology magazine. On Sunday, there will be an afternoon of workshops teaching others have to form, create and publish you own political/social justice magazine.
Clearly World War 3 Illustrated isn’t Archie and Veronica worrying about dating. The social topics dealt with over the years have ranged from race to religion to sexual relations. On the political side, the magazine has confronted issues like the Tompkins Square Riot, the Gulf War, genocide in Bosnia and Iraq. You can expect to soon see stories commenting on oil slicks, health care reform and continuing Wall Street corruption.
In the feature film "My Suicide: A Self-Inflicted Comedy," a teenage boy announces in media class that he plans to kill himself on camera as his final project. Some classmates cheer him on and encourage him to end it all, while others try to talk him out of it, and still others seek him out as a kindred spirit. His parents send him to one counselor after another, but most of the advice he receives from adults feels like cliched catchphrases and has little impact. Despite the heaviness of the subject matter, the film finds its comedy -- dark comedy, to be sure -- in the story of the boy's inner journey as he grapples with the kinds of existential questions teenagers deal with as part of growing up.
Director David Lee Miller said recently by phone from his studio in California that the film isn't really about suicide. "Hitchcock always talked about the McGuffin. It's not necessarily the subject of the picture; it's what the picture revolves around. I do not consider our movie to be a suicide movie. Our film's a narrative story about the teen condition."
Two days before he plays Carnegie Hall and a week after doing several dates with renowned banjo player Bela Fleck’s Africa Project, African artist Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba will play Troy’s Sanctuary for Independent Media next Wednesday, March 24.
Bassekou plays an ngoni, a small stringed instrument that is an ancestor of the banjo. The ngoni was the instrument of choice for the griots (teachers) of Malli since ancient times and was threatened with extinction until Bassekou stood up, put a strap on it and began playing it with the same abandon as an American rocker.
His innovative updating of this instrument can be heard on his Speak Fula CD just released by SubPop, the label that introduced Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney to the world.
Bassekou is a world music darling who has jammed with Bono from U2, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal. This unusual date at the intimate Sanctuary in Troy is part of a 47-date North American tour running through April.
Far from being the infidel in a field of holy men, Abbey fits right in with his band of proselytizers who struggle like all of us to keep their act together in a world gone mad. Joe also is a middle-aged RPI graduate who loves the Rolling Stones and fronts a blues band called JV and The Cutters.
America’s longest-running political comic celebrates 30 years of graphic rebellion in Troy
Two days before he plays Carnegie Hall and a week after doing several
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