Swoon is a Brooklynbased artist whose lifesized woodblock and cutpaper portraits hang on walls in various states of decay in cities around the world. She has designed and built several largescale installations, most notably the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea at Deitch Projects in 2008. Her pieces have been collected by The Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, & the Tate Modern. Major pieces have appeared at PS1, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Black Rat Press. Swoon is also an instigator and a collaborator. She founded the Toyshop collective and the Miss Rockaway Armada, and is a member of Just Seeds and the Transformazium. Since 2006 she has organized four largescale raft projects and floated down the Mississippi and Hudson rivers with them. Most recently, she and her collaborators designed a flotilla of seagoing rafts that invaded the 2009 Venice Biennale. Her artistic process is predicated on the belief that art is an immersive, provocative, and transformative experience for its participants. Although her aesthetics can be seen as an outgrowth of street art, her engagement with ethical living and making art share a close kinship with the idealism of offgrid, barterbased cultures and economies based on sharing. She uses scavenged and local materials and embraces print media as a potent means of action for social change.

What is TEDx?

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, selforganized events that bring people together to share a TEDlike experience. Our event is called TEDxBrooklyn, where x = independently organized TED event. At our TEDxBrooklyn event, TEDTalks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are selforganized.