Meaning, Music and Movement for these Uncertain Times

Chaos & Catharsis is a speaker-led series for a time of overlapping crises: climate disruption, economic instability, democratic stress, technological risk, inequality, polarization, information manipulation, and deepening loneliness. It is designed to help people face the metacrisis with open eyes and hearts, while building the kind of community coherence these times require. Each gathering begins with a substantive conversation on systemic risk, social and ecological breakdown, and pathways forward, then moves into brief participatory moments that help neighbors meet and connect, a guided practice to reset body and breath, and an accessible collective song that builds resonance and shared connection. The aim is for people to leave not only more informed, but steadier, more connected, and better able to respond. See our upcoming events here.

Thought Partners

Charlotte E Binns

I serve as Director of Sustainability for the Village of Irvington, New York, leading initiatives in clean energy, flood-risk mitigation, waste reduction, watershed and ecosystem health, and community resilience.

My work focuses on governance, trust, creative engagement, and the day-to-day systems that help communities prepare, coordinate, connect, and adapt. I believe resilient infrastructure depends on resilient people. Alongside this work, I facilitate embodiment-based practices that build nervous-system regulation, strengthen relational capacity, and help groups move from reactivity to agency.

Ben Von Wong

Ben Von Wong is an environmental artist, photographer, and activist whose large-scale installations turn abstract ecological crises into unforgettable public images, using materials like plastic waste, e-waste, and other discarded objects to provoke action rather than passive awareness. Trained originally as an engineer, he is known for high-impact campaigns on plastic pollution, fast fashion, and waste, and for collaborations that bridge art, activism, and systems change. In addition to his public art practice, he has also been helping convene Metacrisis Salons at the Lightning Society lofts, extending his work from visual spectacle into live community inquiry about the intertwined crises of our time.

Haven Colgate

Haven Colgate is an environmental activist and community leader based in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, recognized for her work in conservation, forest restoration, and sustainability. As the Chair of the Hastings Conservation Commission, she champions efforts to restore local ecosystems; leads the Rivertowns Intervillage Sustainability Network, a collaboration of conservation and sustainability groups in the region; and serves on the board of NYS Association for Conservation Commissions.

Daniel Pinchbeck

Daniel Pinchbeck is a writer and cultural critic whose work asks how humanity might respond to ecological breakdown, technological upheaval, and spiritual disconnection with deeper imagination and more regenerative ways of being. The author of Breaking Open the Head, How Soon Is Now?, and When Plants Dream, he brings a distinctive mix of systems thinking, countercultural history, and consciousness inquiry to the question of how culture changes in times of crisis. Through his books, talks, Liminal News, and The Elevator, Pinchbeck explores what it could mean to move from a collapsing extractive paradigm toward a more relational, life-centered planetary culture.

Gwen Merkin

Gwen is a climate and cultural repair activist and the founder of Wayfinders on Hudson, a program that helps young people develop resilience, leadership, ecological literacy, and deep connection to place through nature-based learning. Her background spans corporate sustainability, urban planning, education, mentorship, ecopsychology, and community organizing, with past roles at Underwriters Laboratories, Cushman & Wakefield, Steven Winter Associates, and the New York City Department of City Planning. Wayfinders on Hudson grew out of her long commitment to youth empowerment and her training in nature mentoring and wilderness living skills.

Douglas Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist, author, and documentarian whose work examines how digital technologies, economic systems, and cultural narratives shape human autonomy and collective life. A professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at Queens College, CUNY, where he helped build the Laboratory for Digital Humanism, Rushkoff is widely known for probing the social consequences of technocapitalism and for helping audiences see how media, money, power, and technology reshape our relationships with one another. Through books such as Survival of the Richest, Team Human, Present Shock, and Program or Be Programmed, as well as documentaries and public scholarship, he has become one of the clearest and most provocative voices on what it means to remain fully human in a digitized age.

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