Twenty Summers

Kioea (pronounced kēōˈāə) is a music group featuring Carand Burnet (she/her) as lead guitarist and songwriter. Their music blends sounds of surf rock, psychedelia, and global influences. J. Swartwood (Aquarium Drunkard) described Burnet’s music as “simultaneously modern and vintage.” Kioea has played at 3S Artspace, The Music Hall, The Thing in the Spring Festival, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, SPACE Gallery, WMUR Summer Concert Series, and elsewhere. Burnet received a Maine ARP Grant through SPACE Gallery and the National Endowment for the Arts, which supported the making of Kioea’s album Stand Tall.

There is no separating equality from ecology, which knows that no member of any natural system has more value than another. In a world of polycrises, what does it mean for activism to be a daily necessity? How can we more deeply integrate it into our lives, allowing our values to shape a more fulfilling and joyful existence? This discussion will bring together advocates who are reframing how we talk about social and environmental justice—and what it means to be an embodied activist.

‘Milk Tea Opera House’ is an initiative to create opportunities to influence more voices, to awaken them, and to guide them. It is vital to be able to experience more voices and together we ask this question: Where does voice come from, and how does it represent you? JU-EH creates a live Milk Tea Opera House Session, along with Twenty Summers, to co-create new kinds of interactive spaces from where the voice is born, redefining the term ‘opera house’ for the next 100 years. The main practice of an MTOH Session focuses on the human voice, and exercise how we use the voice internally in different dimensions. Not the finished flawless performances of an opera singer, but the internal handling of the voice in a much wider spectrum. With this knowledge that JU-EH has lived, studied, and embodied for decades, it is time to collaborate to reveal the depth of our sonic environments, and the image of voice in various daily activities to a wider creative community.

At its heart, fashion is a tool of creativity and transformation—we slip into shapes and silhouettes, ever discovering new shades of self. So why is an industry that is so driven by “the new” seemingly incapable of reinventing itself when it comes to the health of people and the planet? This event will bring together two forces within the industry—photographer Camila Falquez and model, author, and organizer Cameron Russell—to share their reflections on creating authentic and meaningful change over the course of their careers.

McElroy’s debut novel, “The Atmospherians,” told the clever but slightly insiderly and overfreighted tale of a wellness cult designed to cleanse men of their toxicity. “People Collide” is a more agile, universal book, with its title alluding to the randomness of human connection. It’s a variety of rom-com, really, that somewhat lost art. “Circumstances pinball people together,” the narrator declares. “This is called fate because chance is too scary a word.” Perhaps no situation is more pinballish than that of in-laws, and McElroy’s unexpected digression into the psyche of Elizabeth’s mother, a frustrated writer herself who unknowingly condemns Eli for abandoning her daughter, is one of the novel’s great gifts. McElroy, who lives in Brooklyn, seems to aspire as much to flight as to eavesdropping. “People Collide” has some bumpy, odd spots — what body doesn’t? — but its naturalness and ease with the most fundamental questions of existence make it a big project knocking around in a small package, portending even bigger projects ahead.

Join 2021 Twenty Summers Fellow Jeffrey Mansfield and director Michael Cestaro for a conversation following the preview of Signs from the Mainland, a documentary short that explores the extraordinary history of the Martha’s Vineyard deaf community. Starting as far back as the early 1700s, genetic deafness took a foothold on Martha's Vineyard where as many as one in four residents were deaf and a majority of hearing residents also were able to communicate in what is considered one of the precursors to modern American Sign Language. The film explores the deeper meaning and lessons to be learned from this unique enclave where deaf and hearing individuals coexisted seamlessly. Through interviews with historians and community members, the documentary asks, “why did this happen?”, “what was it like?”, and also “where did it go?” The story of the MV deaf community’s eventual conclusion shows us the first steps of the ASL movement, the establishment of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford CT, and bigger lessons about connection over time. Signs from the Mainland reflects on the legacy of the MV Deaf community, the implications for the broader society, and its relevance to contemporary conversations about inclusivity and diversity.

Take a look at Synchronous Creative in an evening of site-specific movement and exploration surrounding the idea of “safe spaces” at the Hawthorne Barn. The evening is an inside look at their creative process, where they led audience members through a few prompts and exercises utilized through their process at Twenty Summers.

Join Rebecca Orchant & Bill Hough for a conversation celebrating Rebecca’s new book Simmering, A Kitchen Memoir . “There are somethings that you just can’t do in front of other people. You can’t look at magazines with boobs in them; you can’t eat condoms on your mom’s nightstand; and you most certainly can’t stick your finger into the Duncan-Hines vanilla frosting tub. And so I waited.”

A powerfully gifted musician and a scholar of Black American music, Jake Blount speaks ardently about the African roots of the banjo and the subtle, yet profound ways African Americans have shaped and defined the amorphous categories of roots music and Americana. His 2020 album Spider Tales (named one of the year’s best albums by NPR and The New Yorker, earned a perfect 5-star review from The Guardian) highlighted the Black and Indigenous histories of popular American folk tunes, as well as revived songs unjustly forgotten in the whitewashing of the canon. Jake Blount’s music is rooted in care and confrontation. On stage, each song he and his band play is chosen for a reason - because it highlights important elements about the stories we tell ourselves of our shared history and our endlessly complicated present moment. The more we learn about where we’ve been, the better equipped we are to face the future.

Journalism informs. It investigates. It holds the powerful accountable. But can it also be art? Adam Moss makes that case in his new book, The Work of Art, featuring visual artists, novelists, poets, musicians, and journalists like Gay Talese, Ira Glass, and the front-page editors of the New York Times. Join Moss and Provincetown Independent editor Ed Miller, along with journalist and historian Dan Okrent, journalist and podcaster Andrew Sullivan, and journalist and artist Tessera C. Knowles, as they discuss the creative side of journalism — as it is practiced now, as it has flourished historically, and as it takes ever-new forms on the way to an indefinite future. This event benefited the Local Journalism Project — the nonprofit organization that supports next-generation journalists at the Provincetown Independent.

This sonically-innovative harpist is revolutionizing her instrument for the digital era. Over the past 15 years, she has worked relentlessly to stretch boundaries and limitations for harpists. In 2022, she made history by becoming the first black woman to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition. That same year, she was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award. “No harpist thus far has been more capable of combining all of the modern harp traditions—from Salzedo, through Dorothy Ashby, through Alice Coltrane—with such strength, grace and commitment.” —saxophonist Ravi Coltrane

Over the past six or seven years I have focused on cutting away certain areas of maps, creating lace-like pages of roads, rivers, and other geographical features. These are then protected between sheets of acrylic, in boxes, or safely mounted on panels. For my site-specific installation at Twenty Summers, I embraced the fragility of the pages, leaving them unprotected and open to whatever might happen when people also enter the space. I envisioned hundreds of cut maps hanging from the beams, perhaps randomly, perhaps in a specific layout. I have a sense of the installation being somewhat representative of the world, in particular the fragility of the planet and how we are failing to take care of it. But I also like the idea that it spreads through the community and parts of it live on wherever people put the pieces that they take. I see the whole as ephemeral and removing some of the individual elements does not diminish it. And maybe, during future iterations of the installation, more will be added, and it will continually evolve; perhaps becoming a permanent part of my art practice.

All life once rose from the ocean, and all life still depends on it today. From melting glaciers and rising sea levels to plastic pollution and overfishing, our common origin is in danger. This group of marine biologists, ocean advocates, and researchers of the local coastal ecosystem venture into a discussion about how the ocean connects us—and what we can do to protect it.

Fabiola Méndez is a Puerto Rican cuatrista, singer, Emmy-nominated composer, and educator that has taken part in a musical and cultural movement, crossing over the lines of genres such as folk, jazz & Afro-Caribbean and taking the listener on a journey through identities, cultures, and roots.

A chance meeting with a stranger on the side of the road led artist, Michael Joseph down a decade-long journey photographing and documenting an American subculture, called Travelers. Travelers are the most contemporary of non-conformists, having evolved from the 1930s Dustbowl Hobo, '50s Kerouac Beatnik, and the '90s East Village Squatter. Michael presents his work and new book, "Lost and Found: A Portrait of American Wanderlust" through visuals and audio. His portrait project set in Provincetown, called "Wild West of the East" will be discussed. Topics common to both projects include identity formation, found family, wanderlust, the human journey and the search for equality and human authenticity.

Introduce yourself to the nettle plant through an immersion of flavor, texture, sensations and experiences. Nicole Cormier RD, LDN offers connections to Urtica dioica with a tasting of various preparations of the plant to eat, sip and feel. “I am passionate about helping people...improving whole health ... mental and physical ...educating ... I believe in the power connecting farmers and consumers.”

The Weather Station is the project of Toronto based songwriter Tamara Lindeman. The last few years have seen The Weather Station release two albums: the career defining Ignorance (2021) and its ethereal, mostly live recording companion piece, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars (2022). In that time, The Weather Station have gone on to headline tours across North America and Europe, play major festivals, and perform on the televised Austin City Limits as well as Jimmy Kimmel Live. Ignorance was named Best New Music (Pitchfork), and landed in year-end Top 10 lists from The New Yorker (#1), Spin, New York Times, Uncut, Pitchfork, The Guardian, and many others. Called "a heartbroken masterpiece" in The Guardian, the record was a complex evocation of climate grief that struck a chord worldwide. As a writer, Lindeman is known for her detail. “Her writing can feel … like the collected epiphanies from a lifetime of observing” (Pitchfork). Over the course of six albums, her music has moved from home recorded, mostly acoustic folk to the “ornate act of world building” (New Yorker) that was Ignorance. The throughline, though, is a focus on ideas; her lyrics walk the line between the personal and the conceptual, forever tying small moments to larger metaphysical quandaries. Nominated for three Juno Awards, a Socan Songwriting Award, and the Polaris Prize, her albums have made a mark both critically and conceptually.

On August 18th, 1949, Forum 49 hosted a panel discussion called ‘Directions in 20th Century Architecture’ featuring architect Marcel Breuer, the artist and filmmaker György Kepes, and architect and journalist, Peter Blake, who was then curator for Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. All three speakers were engaged in the then-raging debate about whether modern houses should use the materials and methods of vernacular, regional architecture, or employ universal, standardized, machine-made components. Breuer had just finished building his own experimental house in Wellfleet and one for the Kepes family not far away. Both houses were modest-sized, environmentally sensitive, outposts for art-making and creative congregation. By coincidence this 75th anniversary of Forum 49 is also the year the Cape Cod Modern House Trust is seeking to purchase, restore and re-open Breuer’s house as a platform for scholarship and new creative work. By looking back at the Forum 49 discussions, this talk will explore the relevance of Breuer’s work today, as well as the process of preserving his summer house and the archiving of its contents.

The ecological crisis is only a symptom of a deeper spiritual disconnect, one that must be mended to heal the whole. What can we learn from nature about the processes of decay and renewal? What must be decomposed in order for our species to mend its relationship with the Earth? In this keynote conversation bridging the spiritual and ecological, we will hear from Atmos editor-in-chief Willow Defebaugh and philosopher, writer, and founder of The Emergence Network Bayo Akomolafe, as they invite us into a deeper understanding about the transmutations and murmurations our world is faced with today.

Cody Plays is an experiment in creating a play in a matter of a few days with a rotating group of special guests and collaborators created by writer/performer Cody Sullivan. Where is the show taking place this week? What is happening in the world that day? Who can we beg to take a role? The answers to these questions are the frantic, immediate, ephemeral ingredients that Cody uses to facilitate the group creation of each Cody Plays. Cody started the show in Provincetown at The Gifford House, in June 2023. He continues to play in Provincetown and Boston. “The results are outrageous and boisterous and harken back to Provincetown’s devil-may-care days.” – Chris Muller, The Boston Globe.