2026 O+ Kingston Theme: MO+numents
The O+ Festival will return to Kingston, NY for the 16th annual exchange of art, music and wellness October 9-11th, 2026.
Our monuments were put up by people who wanted to freeze American society into place, with themselves at the top. But we, unlike the stone and metal figures on a monument, can decide that it is time to move.
~ Francis Bacon
In moments of uncertainty, monuments, whether made of stone or long held belief, begin to tremble as the terrain they occupy is questioned. In recent years across the United States, the ground itself has shifted. Notions of who we are as a nation, once seemingly inalienable—have been removed, publicly contested or proven to be no more than an unrealized promise.
The toppling of statues and the collective re-evaluation of who is honored in public are indicative of a profound turning point. What once stood as fixed, authoritative markers of history are revealed to be contingent and deeply entangled in systems that exist to protect those in positions of power. The language of monuments fractures. Statues fall, and the illusion of permanence gives way to a more uneasy truth: that what we enshrine is always a reflection of what we value.
So try where you are, do what you can
You belong to what you understand
So teach yourself how to demand the monument that you deserve
For rising up in a beaten down world
~ Erin L. Thompson
In the Hudson Valley—home to O+ Festival—monuments have never been singular or merely manmade. The land is the ancestral home of the Lenape, the Mohican, and the Munsee, whose relationships to place precede and exceed the frameworks of monuments and memorials as they are historically defined by Western canons. The area is now shaped by waves of industry, agriculture, artistic experimentation, and local organizing around land, housing, equity and healthcare access.
The story of the region, much like the mountains, river valleys and plateaus of its landscape, reminds us that history is not only inherited; it is continually made and unmade, never fixed. Fifty year old awnings are being removed, revealing historic facades, more true to the proportions and intention of the monumental architecture beneath. Permanence is an illusion; even stone yields to time.
“Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.”
~ Joseph Joubert, musician/conductor
“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.”
~ Mirah, O+ Alum Musician
Here, dismantling is not an endpoint, but a threshold to building new, more resilient and inclusive systems. And in the spaces opened through this process we face the question: what do we build in their place? The risk of forgetting sits alongside the possibility of repair. How do we avoid reproducing the same exclusions in new forms? What and who do we elevate as models for the way forward? What replaces fallen monuments is not a final answer, but an ongoing practice.
O+ Festival 2026 welcomes artists, musicians and writers—working in all mediums, genres and modalities—who approach the theme of monuments as both a question and a form. They resist the singular, the simply heroic, or the permanent. Their work turns toward the work done, sometimes at the margins, that moves everyone forward. The labor of everyday heroes, the persistence of communities often excluded from dominant narratives, the culture of care that sustains life, one person at a time. These are monuments that breathe—temporary, participatory, and permeable–and connect us to the collective.
What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past… if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.
~ Caroline Randall Williams
Since the organization’s founding over 16 years ago, O+ has looked to the future, to what is possible, asking how we might build differently and why we should all accept structures that do not serve us. The O+ model of exchange proposes “what if there is another way?”
What would it mean to create monuments rooted in community rather than individual authority, that uplift our neighbors rather than a figure from a history long past or pushed through the lens of power? To mark not only triumph, but survival, mutual aid, and interdependence? Between what we uplift and what we unlearn, there is a space—uncertain, generative, and alive. It is here that new forms of individual and collective memory, value and contribution take precedence —not notions carved in stone, but a commitment to share the work of building a more honest, compassionate and expansive history and future.