Join Judith Sloan, audio and radio producer of collaborative work with Warren Lehrer, of Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a new America. Sloan will Share audio excerpts and some of the stories behind the stories.

At a time when immigration issues and policy are being hotly debated throughout the country and the globe, Sloan comes to UnionDocs to focus on Ethics and Politics in Oral History and issues facing documentary work with refugees and immigrants in the current political climate. She’ll draw from audio and radio pieces from Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, a multimedia project (book, audio cd, exhibition, interactive website and exhibition) created in collaboration with visual artist, writer, photographer and designer Warren Lehrer.

Crossing the BLVD shares the stories, sounds, and images that reveal the human toll of a cold- and post-cold war-world, and pre- and post-9/11 world and forms a portrait of a paradoxical and ever-shifting America. Sloan shares excerpts culled from over two dozen Crossing audio compositions and radio documentaries that blur the boundaries between music and speech, journalism and expressionism, tradition and the avant-garde. Sloan will also share stories that reveal the impact the project has had on the lives of the people who are portrayed and stories that continue through EarSay public events and on the Crossing the BLVD website.

Acknowledgment for Crossing the BLVD Winner, 2004 Brendan Gill Prize, Municipal Art Society of New York Winner, 2003 Innovative Use of Archives Award from the Archivists Roundtable of NY

“Immigrant life in Queens, as told in the intimate, rich, comic, ironic and sad stories so often seen but not heard in America’s big cities.” The Washington Post

”Crossing the BLVD is a rich…varied listening experience, a demonstration of the way you can explore the world without leaving home. BLVD emphasizes the rhythmic musicality of everyday speech. You hear laughter, sorrow and many moving tales of hardship, flight, splintered families and the difficulties of assimilation. A turbo-driven Eyewitness guide – and riveting first-person testimonies.” The Guardian, London

Judith Sloan is an actress, oral historian, writer, and audio artist/radio producer whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. Works include Denial of the Fittest, Responding to Chaos, and A Tattle Tale and Crossing the BLVD: strangers, neighbors, aliens in a new America, a multimedia project about new immigrants and refugees written in collaboration with Warren Lehrer. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work in theatre and radio which focuses on voices often ignored by the mass media including: Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, etc.; the Brendan Gill Prize 2004, BAXten Artists Award 2005, Third Coast International Audio Festival 2005, short doc competition, etc. A frequent guest lecturer on college campuses on issues of diversity, human rights, and the arts, Sloan’s work has been published by Second Story Press, W.W. Norton, and the New York Times. Her theatre and radio works have been produced throughout the U.S. and abroad at venues including La Mama, The Public Theatre, and The Smithsonian Institution, on NPR, WNYC and listener-sponsored stations nationwide. Along with Warren Lehrer, Sloan is co-founder of EarSay, an artist driven non-profit arts organization uncovering voices often ignored in the mass media. Their work has been supported by The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, a Futhermore publishing grant; a program of the J.M. Kaplan fund, a V-Day Award, New York Foundation on the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Queens Council on the Arts.