We hosted an evening of performances, talks, and reflections to celebrate the launch of Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape, our exploration of escape in the urban environment. Presented in collaboration with ISSUE Project Room Artistic Director Lawrence Kumpf, the evening brought together a diverse lineup featuring Keller Easterling, Professor of Architecture at Yale University and author of Extrastatecraft; singer, musician, and artist Joseph Keckler; Ron Shiffman, Professor at Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, former director and co-founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development; Marc Kushner, Architizer co-founder and partner at HWKN; Maria Chavez, curator and sound artist; performers Niegel Smith and Jax Jackson; performance-installation artist, writer, and curator Bethany Ides; Vyjayanthi Rao, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research; writer, theorist, and artist Evan Calder Williams; Henk Ovink, Senior Advisor to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force; and more, to explore how and why we escape the city, pushing the concept to its edges to see where Elsewhere may take us.