Corpus Delicti

WELCOME TO CORPUS DELICTI “Life is not at all like a biography. But it consists in the metamorphosis of one’s self being transformed by time, becoming not only other but others.”

— Orlando: My Political Biography (Dir: Paul B. Preciado 2023) The possibility of living life as a work of art is an underacknowledged dimension of the trans awakening in the world today. At least, so much seems to be the case for many of the artists, archivists, and other eminent beings who have converged at the Armory over the past two weeks, through the creative intervention of the multiversal artist Arca, and under the auspices of the New York City Trans Oral History Project. This culminating in today’s public program, Corpus Delicti, held in celebration of Arca’s Mutant; Destrudo.

In the tradition of massive sound interventions like Bruce Nauman’s “Days” in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, Arca proposed a cacophony of voices and shifting self-states for a world in transition. A common-law Latin term for “body of the crime,” the phrase corpus delicti is repossessed by this gathering to proclaim that trans people are not trapped in the wrong bodies, but bodies seeking liberation from a wrong society. Through embracing the surrealist practice of “exquisite corpse,” through which the artist invites voices not her own to add to a group work, this collective represents a diversity of intergenerational and multicultural voices and visions, coming together to create an immersive experience of living trans history.

I hope you will take time to engage with the marvelous sound installation in the Library by the artist Aviva Silverman, which they describe more fully in their note in this program. Extending Arca’s invitation, this work represents a unique intersection between art and archival practice in which 36 voices (a special number as Silverman relates) invite us all into a trans-temporal constellation. Throughout the grand historic space, this exquisite corpse is truly multi-sensorial: a curated collection of books and analog media are available for your perusal, and films selected by Xiomara Sebastián Castro Niculescu are also on view.

Corpus Delicti is also the product of Silverman’s artist residency at the Idea Lab—a new incubating space for interdisciplinary study organized under the auspices of the public program. Past residents have included the poet Claudia Rankine, and we look forward to welcoming many more in the years ahead.

Many thanks, and many happy returns, to Arca, who set the vision for this day when she visited earlier this year, walked through the historic rooms, and declared she could hear the voices of trans people echoing throughout the Armory. It has been a real honor to play a role in amplifying this worthy convocation. The gorgeous murmur I hope you will hear today can stir up something powerful in every one of us, if we allow it to touch that part of our own history that conducts us into universal connection and perpetual becoming.

—Tavia Nyong’o, Curator of Public Programming, Park Avenue Armory

CONVERSATION SERIES: MAKING SPACE AT THE ARMORY

CORPUS DELICTI saturday, october 14, 2023 from 12pm to 6pm featuring panel discussions including Kate Bornstein, Cassils, Ceyenne Doroshow, Eli Erlick, Cecilia Gentili, Griffin Hansbury, Abram J. Lewis, Carlos Motta, D’hana Perry, Aviva Silverman, Sandy Stone, Dao X. Tran, Dorian Wood, and ricky sallay zoker aka YATTA performances by Early Shinada and YATTA and exhibitions and activations by Aviva Silverman and Xiomara Sebastián Castro Niculescu

presented in conjuction with arca’s mutant;destrudo

2023 SEASON SPONSOR

SERIES SPONSORS

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by The Thompson Family Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Reed Foundation, Wescustogo Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, GRoW @ Annenberg, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council. Public support for this program is provided, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.

Making Space at the Armory is supported, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cover image: Yves B. Golden, Memoir (detail), 2017. Image courtesy of the NYC Trans Oral History Project.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS At a moment of maximum anxiety and backlash over the fundamental human rights to autonomy, expressivity, modification, and self-transformation of the body, these discussions bring artists, activists, and intellectuals together in the Armory’s Veterans Room to imagine and enact transgender art and music as a vehicle for dialogue across differences.

12:00PM – 1:00PM

NYC Trans Oral History Project The NYC Trans Oral History Project is a collective, community-based archive of transgender life in New York, founded in 2014 and built in partnership with the New York Public Library and local community groups. Co-Founder and academic Abram J. Lewis and Project Coordinator and artist Aviva Silverman discuss the meaning and significance of building this radical archive with Dao X. Tran, whose work with Voice of Witness supports social justice movements through the collection and publication of oral histories. This panel opens with a reading from interdisciplinary artist, writer, and organizer Early Shinada, converging collective moments of witness around live relays of history.

1:00PM – 2:00PM

Worship of Heavenly Bodies Founder of the academic discipline of transgender studies Sandy Stone, trans health consultant and artist D’hana Perry, and GLITSINC Founder and Executive Director Ceyenne Doroshow discuss how trans people and trans bodies are both governed and excluded by ingrained societal structures. This conversation tracing the history of trans lives within and without the medical/political industrial complexes is moderated by interdisciplinary artist Carlos Motta. How does the radical spirit of individuals and communities persevere through these shifting social and political landscapes?

2:30PM – 3:30PM

House of Paths: Trans Time Travel Trans communities have disproportionately been objects of study by cisgender professionals; barred from meaningful agency over studies of which they are the subject. In a conversation introduced by Aviva Silverman, celebrated transgender trailblazer Kate Bornstein and internationally celebrated author, activist, and public speaker Eli Erlick discuss their respective relationships to timelines, aging, and the ephemerality of institutional fixtures that exist for oppositional cultural movements. When is trans liberation a means of time travel?

3:30PM – 4:30PM

Exquisite Corpse: Fantasies of Identification A conversation between hybrid visual and performance artist Cassils, founder of Trans Equity Consulting and Faltas author Cecilia Gentili, and genderless dragon Tiamat Legion Medusa on body modification as an expansive site of freedom and embodiment. Moderated by psychoanalyst and internationally recognized expert on gender identity Griffin Hansbury, this panel draws its title from Ellen Samuel’s book of the same name, combining literary analysis, legal history, and visual culture in tracing the roots and evolution of contemporary understandings of bodily identity.

4:30PM – 5:30PM

The World is Memory This panel brings together Sierra Leonean-American vocalist, composer, and sound artist ricky sallay zoker who performs as YATTA, and multidisciplinary artist Dorian Wood in dialogue with their experimental music as a form of survival, world-building, and a means of ancestral preservation, concluding with a musical presentation by YATTA.

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Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

ONGOING ACTIVATIONS Installations, screenings, and media collections are open concurrently with the panels and allow audiences a glimpse into curated collections and new works from members tapped by the NYC Trans Oral History Project.

Corpus Immundus: Notes from the Underside Films curated by XCSN (Xiomara Sebastián Castro Niculescu) Field & Staff Room 12:00PM – 1:30PM: That Fertile Feeling (1983); Chloe Dzubilo: There is a Transsolution (2019); and What I Did Last Summer (1991).

1:30PM – 3:00PM: Yapping Out Loud: Contagious Thoughts from an Unrepentant Whore (2002) 3:00PM – 4:30PM: Bixa Travesty (2018) 4:30PM – 6:00PM: Tan Inmunda y Tan Feliz (trans: So Filthy and So Happy, 2022) This program is a love letter, an audiovisual ode to trannies, travestis, hookers, and street queens—to those threateningly opaque and sensuous figures lurking in the shadows of “trans history,” too filthy for it’s sanitizing embrace. Presenting video traces documenting a set of artists, activists, and guerilla performers across the Américas and spanning the 1980s to the present, the works in this program deliciously refuse the trappings of respectability politics. “Immundus,” from the Latin meaning filthy, impure, foul; in some cases, even immoral or demonic. Instead of rejecting filth – working to scrub out their pre-manufactured reputation as sex-crazed and violent addicts, hysteric menaces, vectors of contagion, threats to the natural order of things—the artists documented in these video works ecstatically embrace their status as Other. They insist on disgust, terror, camp, and excess as tools, as combative and transcendent ways of knowing and moving through a world trying to snuff you out. Together, this program hopes to offer us a way out of a canonically white “trans history” and into its Black, brown, poor and sex working underside—where unknowable horrors, illicit pleasures, and truly revolutionary potentials lie.

“Corpus Immundus” unfolds through varied video genres and rejects typical ideas of authorship and objecthood to instead focus on the mediated documentation of these disruptive, filthy figures themselves. A looping trilogy of shorts document the inceptive performance and organizing work of trans punk, hooker, and nightlife divas against the deathly mechanisms of US healthcare and policing in the 1980s and 1990s, through the work of Vaginal Davis, Chloe Dzubilo, and Connie Fleming’s performance in the work of Charles Atlas. Video documentation of a 2002 live stage performance by Canadian artist Mirha-Soleil Ross splinters the criminalization of sex work and the legacy of Western anti-prostitution feminism to instead propose the transsexual hooker as a privileged lens through which to imagine liberation for both human and non-human animals. Finally, an afternoon double feature of Latin American documentaries, on Brazilian travesty artist Linn da Quebrada and Chilean travesti persona Hija de Perra, point to the limits of liberalizing US transgender identity, instead exploring anti-colonial genderplay, unabashed sexuality, and confrontationally filthy performance art as pleasurable means of rejecting a world that wants us dead.

Angelic Hosts: Sound Installation by Aviva Silverman Library A manifestation of the NYC Trans Oral History Project’s digital collection, Aviva Silverman suspends 36 auditory excerpts from 36 narrators— stories bridging time and space, reaching towards Olam ha Ba (Hebrew for “The World that is Coming,” understood to be a world of harmony, peace and justice.)

The number 36 has particular relevance Jewish numerology, and is often referred to as the number of supreme holiness. This connotation connects to the concept of the LAMED VAV ZADDIKIM (Heb. 36 ‫—)םיִק ִּידַצ ו״ל‬the 36 people born in each generation, capable of restoring the world to wholeness from chaos. These individuals have unique capacities to perceive the Divine Presence dwelling in all things—it is said that the world exists on their merit. According to philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem, this theory is drawn from the astrological belief in 36 celestial decans, each of which rules ten days of the year and, thus, ten degrees of the constellations. Visitors are invited to hold these illuminated orbs, each containing a unique story, connecting the listener to the legacy illuminated through the collection.

Media Room Parlor A collection of various types of analog media—including books, VHS tapes, records, and more—collected and contributed by NYC TOHP members. For a curated list of reading materials with links to further information, please scan the QR code here.

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MEET THE PARTICIPANTS KATE BORNSTEIN

Kate Bornstein (any pronouns) is an author, actor, and performance artist. For over 30 years, she has been writing award-winning books on the subject of nonbinary gender. Bornstein maintains a career in theater, making her Broadway debut at the age of 70 in the summer of 2018, co-starring in Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men. Her 2006 book, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws propelled Bornstein into an international position of advocacy for marginalized youth. She has earned two citations of honor from the New York City Council.

CASSILS

CASSILS (they/them) is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Cassils’ art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle, and survival. For Cassils, performance is a form of social sculpture: drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’ work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment. Recent solo exhibitions at HOME Manchester, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Perth Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NYC; Institute for Contemporary Art, AU; Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts; Bemis Center, Omaha; MU Eindhoven, Netherlands. Awards include: the National Creation Fund; a 2020 Fleck Residency from the Banff Center for the Arts; Villa Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, United States Artist, and Guggenheim fellowships; and a Creative Capital Award. Cassils was also a Princeton Lewis Artist Fellowship finalist. Associate Professor in Visual Studies, University of Toronto.

CEYENNE DOROSHOW

Ceyenne Doroshow (pronounced Kai-Ann, lady/she) is a compassionate powerhouse performer, activist, organizer, community-based researcher, and public figure in the trans and sex worker rights movements. She is Founder and Executive Director of GLITSINC (Gays and Lesbians Living In A Transgender Society), an organization she created in 2015 to provide holistic care to LGBTQ sex workers and the whole LGBTQIA-TGNC and BIPOC communities. Speaking appearances at The Desiree Alliance, Creating Change, SisterSong, Harm Reduction Coalition and the International AIDS Conferences, Toronto Pride, MOMA/PS1’s Sex Workers’ Festival of Resistance, and Creating Change Conference, 2022.

Doroshow has been featured in articles in Vogue, Vice, GQ, The Wall Street Journal, Coveteur, among others. TV/film: OZ (Showtime); Red Umbrella Diaries; Miss Major; PRIDE: A Netflix Documentary; Stroll (HBO). Books: Cooking in Heels; memoir Out of the Fire and into the Pen (forthcoming). Podcast: Tea & Crumpets with Shear Avory. Board member of SWOPUSA, SWOP Behind Bars, Lysistrata, SOAR Institute, Caribbean Equality Project, NYU Law, Nowadays, Transgender Justice of San Francisco, the Leslie-Lohman Museum, ILGA, NAC, NSWP North American Representative, and more.

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ELI ERLICK

Eli Erlick (she/her) is an author, activist, and PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 2011, she co-founded Trans Student Educational Resources, a national organization dedicated to transforming the educational environment for trans students. In the years that followed, Erlick has been at the forefront of the transgender movement. Her forthcoming book Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History, 1850-1950 (Beacon Press, 2024), investigates what we learn from 30 underreported trans narratives that radically shift the popular knowledge of gender history. Her second book, Belonging Through Exclusion: Understanding the Transgender Far-Right (University of Chicago Press, 2025) uses over one hundred interviews with transgender members of the far-right to explore the development of their political identity, ways to effectively shift their political beliefs, and why past efforts to change their ideologies have failed.

CECILIA GENTILI

Cecilia Gentili (she/her) is the award-winning author of Faltas, actress on FX’s hit series POSE, and renowned activist for transgender and sex worker rights. She owns and leads Trans Equity, a nationally recognized consulting firm that provides cultural programming, advocacy, policy building. and strategic advising for organizations, government agencies, brand partners, and community. Her ongoing legacy of community advocacy, storytelling and activism has been monumental in protecting federal rights from the US Supreme Court, raising millions in funding for trans rights, and building foundational programs for trans and sex work communities to thrive in.

GRIFFIN HANSBURY

Griffin Hansbury (he/him) is an award-winning and internationally published psychoanalyst working in private practice in Manhattan.

He was the first analyst to publish as openly transgender and his writing on trans has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA), Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

He is also the author of Feral City: On Finding Liberation in Lockdown New York (a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction) and Vanishing New York (both written as Jeremiah Moss), as well as the forthcoming novel Some Strange Music Draws Me In.

ABRAM J. LEWIS

Abram J. Lewis (any pronouns) is a founder of the NYC Trans Oral History Project, faculty in Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Williams College, and a candidate in psychoanalytic training. Some of Lewis’ professional and personal interests include the politics of storytelling and narrative, community-driven oral history, magic, banjos, and altered states of consciousness.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

TIAMAT LEGION MEDUSA

Following a difficult childhood in Arizona and Texas and early HIV/ AIDS diagnosis (now U=U), Tiamat Legion Medusa (it/its), born Richard Hernandez and now known as Legion, left its position as a banking vice president pursue life as a modified individual. Its goal is to become the world’s first living and breathing half-human-halfreptilian reptoid. Legion is a voice for the modified community and those subject to prejudice and discrimination because they are transgender or modified in some way. Formerly known as the dragon lady, it is on a mission to educate people about life as an extremely modified person in today’s world. Legion has been on Tosh.0 and Caso Cerrado, and has done interviews in Colombia, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Ecuador, the Dominican Repulic, and throughout South America. It is featured in Shatter Your Senses and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Legion is working on its first Guinness World Record for the person with the most horns in the world. Legion is proud and happy to slither around the face of the Earth with his head and rattles out in the air, enjoying the freedom to be they want in this world.

CARLOS MOTTA

Carlos Motta (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia, he/him) has an upcoming mid-career survey exhibition at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in 2024. He presented survey exhibitions at Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO, 2023) and the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2022). His work was included in Signals: How Video Transformed the World at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2023) the 58th Carnegie International (2022), Film at Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real (2021), and the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020). His work is in the permanent collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Guggenheim Museum, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, amongst many others. He was a Penn Mellon Just Futures Initiative Grant grantee (2023), Rockefeller Brothers Fund Grant grantee (2019), was awarded The Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise (2017), The Pinchuk Art Centre’s Future Generation Art Prize (2014), and a Guggenheim fellowship (2008). He is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice in Fine Arts at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

XCSN (XIOMARA SEBASTIÁN CASTRO NICULESCU) XSCN (Xiomara Sebastián Castro Niculescu, she/her) is a performer, video artist, writer, and organizer from New York, by way of immigrants from Ecuador and Romania. Her previous work attempted to touch up against fragments of what could be called a “trans history” without imposing coherence. Her current work lies in the present, molding weapons from such fragments. Using writing and performance, she pursues a figure she calls the Tranny—a myth, a puncture, a narrative form for the material experience of being a racialized transsexual hooker. As XSCN, she claims her status as tranny, as threat, as Other—she seeks revenge. Her previous works have been reviewed in Artforum and featured at MoMA PS1, Performa, the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, and Visual AIDS. Her first book project, a collection of essays on and for the Tranny, is forthcoming from Pink Jacket Press in late 2024.

NYC TRANS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

The New York City Trans Oral History Project (NYC TOHP) is a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories, organized in collaboration with the New York Public Library. The archive documents transgender resistance and resilience in New York City. It works to confront the erasure of trans lives and to record diverse histories of gender as intersecting with race and racism, poverty, dis/ability, aging, housing migration, sexism, and the AIDS crisis. NYC TOHP privileges the insights of vulnerable trans communities fighting the structural dismantling of public benefits, housing insecurity and homelessness, policing, and surveillance. Recorded interviews with trans New Yorkers are accessible via major listening platforms. The organization welcomes new contributions from volunteer interviewers and narrators. Anyone who identifies as trans / gender non-conforming and as a sometime resident of New York City is invited to contribute an interview.

All interviews are accessible to the public and part of the Creative Commons license for free and open use. Most of our interviewers are transcribed. NYC TOHP uses an expansive tagging system to identify keywords and terms. The archive is a volunteer organization, founded in 2014 through deep conversation with community organizations.

A broad network of peer to peer interviewers and many others have donated their time and experience to build this archive. Over the years this project has flourished from the support and participation of many volunteers and core organizers. Our project has been supported by partnerships with the New York Public Library and the Digital Transgender Archive and by funding from the Trans Justice Funding Project.

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D’HANA PERRY

D’hana Perry (they/he) is a DJ and new media artist who co-founded the queer music and art collective, KUNQ (2009 – 2018). Together, they honed a unique production style by sampling sounds directly connected to their cultural and sub-cultural roots along with current events, critical theory, and a diverse range of music genres.

Their collective work continues to influence underground electronic music production and queer nightlife in NYC and beyond. Perry’s media work has been featured at various universities and art venues, including at the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the IFC Center. Perry is also a trans health access expert, having worked for The Fenway Institute, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, and most recently at Folx Health.

EARLY SHINADA

Early Shinada (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work converges collective moments of witness around live relays of history. An active wisher of bonds, they are a committed collaborator and community organizer.

AVIVA SILVERMAN

Aviva Silverman (they/them) is an artist and activist working in sculpture and performance. Their practice utilizes religion, gendernonconformity, miniatures, and nonhuman actors to investigate technologies of spiritual and political surveillance. Silverman has exhibited at numerous galleries and museums including MoMA P.S.1, Atlanta Contemporary, and the Swiss Institute. Their work has appeared in Artforum, The New Yorker, BBC Radio, and Art in America. As the NYCTOHP’s Director of Operations, they have collaboratively co-developed an independent archive of trans oral history, facilitating oral history trainings, launching its independent website, supporting the collection’s migration to the NYPL’s Special Collections, and contributing over 30 interviews to the archive.

SANDY STONE

Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone (she/her) is Professor Emerita and Founding Director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin, Wolfgang Kohler Professor of Media and Performance at the European Graduate School, Fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, Banff Centre Senior Artist, 2023 Inductee in the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and star of an in-production feature film. Her archives are going to Harvard Radcliffe Schlesinger Library for the History of Women. Stone has been a neurologist, social scientist, author, cultural theorist, and performer. She is a recording engineer who has produced and/or engineered over 100 albums.

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DAO X. TRAN

Dao X. Tran (she/her) was born in Mỹ Tho—but made in the USA. She is passionate about democratizing the stories being heard and finds a curiosity about our world essential. She is the Editorial Director at the nonprofit Voice of Witness, uplifting and amplifying the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice.

Dao is also on the editorial board of Haymarket Books. When not marking up manuscripts—or scouting projects and partnerships—she is raising a spirited teenager and a poodle-terrier-shih-tzu on the land of Carnarsie and Munsee Lenape peoples in Brooklyn.

DORIAN WOOD

Dorian Wood (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her intent of “infecting” spaces and ideologies with her artistic practice is born from a desire to challenge traditions and systems that have contributed to the marginalization of people. Wood is a recipient of a 2023 LA County Performing Arts Recovery Grant, a 2023 NALAC Fund for the Arts grant, a 2020 Creative Capital Award, and a 2020 Art Matters Foundation grant. In 2023, Wood premiered Canto de Todes, a 12-hour chamber music composition.

She has also released over a dozen recordings, most recently the album Excesiva (Dragon’s Eye Recordings, 2023).

RICKY SALLAY ZOKER, AKA YATTA

ricky sallay zoker (also known as YATTA, they/them) is a Sierra Leonean-American vocalist, producer, and multimedia artist. Characterized by textural electronic sounds, looped vocals, and rooted in improvisation, humor, and surprise, they have a playful, intuitive approach to sound and performance. Over the years, they have shared the stage with artists like Beverly Glenn Copeland, Laraaji, and The Sun Ra Arkestra, creating multimedia performances that tour nationally and internationally. They have presented installations and performed at Les Urbaines, MOCA, Roulette, The Kitchen, RedCat, MOMA, The Tate, and The Getty.

PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Margaret Hewitt Assistant Design, Audio Installation Buffy Curatorial Assistant Jahdiel Rodriguez Stage Manager Slant Rhyme Production Assistant

SPECIAL THANKS

T4Tapes; Figa Films; VTape; Gavilán Rayna Russom, Voluminous Arts Deep thanks to everyone who helped make the NYC Trans Oral History Project’s Idea Lab residency possible, including Alex Buholt, Darian Suggs, Alejandra Ghersi, Maggie Hewitt, Tavia Nyong’o, Early Shinada, Buffy, Aidan Nelson, Sam Cortez, Claire Marberg, Mollie Goldstrom, Ag Mon, Elana June Margolis, and to Jeanne Vaccaro and Abram J. Lewis for founding the project.

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

ABOUT PUBLIC PROGRAMMING Park Avenue Armory’s Public Programming series brings diverse artists and cultural thought-leaders together for discussion and performance around the important issues of our time viewed through an artistic lens. Launched in 2017, the series encompasses a variety of programs including large-scale community events; multi-day symposia; intimate salons featuring performances, panels, and discussions; Artist Talks in relation to the Armory’s Drill Hall programming; and other creative interventions, curated by professor and scholar Tavia Nyong’o.

Highlights from the Public Programming series include: Carrie Mae Weems’ 2017 event The Shape of Things and 2021 convening and concert series Land of Broken Dreams, whose participants included Elizabeth Alexander, Theaster Gates, Elizabeth Diller, Nona Hendryx, Somi, and Spike Lee, among others; a daylong Lenape Pow Wow and Standing Ground Symposium held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the first congregation of Lenape Elders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; “A New Vision for Justice in America” conversation series in collaboration with Common Justice, exploring new coalitions, insights, and ways of understanding question of justice and injustice in relation moderated by FLEXN Evolution creators Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and director Peter Sellars; Culture in a Changing America Symposia exploring the role of art, creativity, and imagination in the social and political issues in American society today; the 2019 Black Artists Retreat hosted by Theaster Gates, which included public talks and performances, private sessions for the 300 attending artists, and a roller skating rink; 100 Years | 100 Women, a multiorganization commissioning project that invited 100 women artists and cultural creators to respond to women’s suffrage; a Queer Hip Hop Cypher, delving into the queer origins and aesthetics of hip hop with Astraea award-winning duo Krudxs Cubensi and author and scholar Dr. Shante Paradigm Smalls; the Archer Aymes Retrospective, exploring the legacy of emancipation through an immersive art installation curated by Carl Hancock Rux with performances by mezzo soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Aaron Diehl, presented as one component of a three-part series commemorating Juneteenth in collaboration with Harlem Stage and Lincoln Center as part of the Festival of New York; legendary artist Nao Bustamante’s BLOOM, a cross-disciplinary investigation centered around the design of the vaginal speculum and its use in the exploitative and patriarchal history of the pelvic examination; and Art at Water’s Edge, a symposium inspired by the work of director and scholar May Joseph on artistic invention in the face of climate change, including participants such as Whitney Biennale curator Adrienne Edwards, artist Kiyan Williams, Little Island landscape architect Signe Nielsen, eco-systems artist Michael Wang, and others.

Notable Public Programming salons include: the Literature Salon hosted by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose participants included Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Jeremy O. Harris; a Spoken Word Salon co-hosted with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; a Film Salon featuring the works of immersive artist and film director Lynette Wallworth; “Museum as Sanctuary” led by installation artist and Artist-in-Residence Tania Bruguera, curated by Sonia Guiñansaca and CultureStrike, and featuring undocu-artists Julio Salgado and Emulsify; a Dance Salon presented in partnership with Dance Theater of Harlem, including New York City Ballet’s Wendy Whelan and choreographer Francesca Harper, among others; and Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation, exploring Black visual complexity and spirit, led by visionary artist Rashaad Newsome and featuring Saidiya V. Hartman, Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Ms.Boogie, Puma Camillê, and others.

Artist Talks have featured esteemed artists, scholars, and thought leaders, such as: architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron; directors Ariane Mnouchkine, Sam Mendez, Ivo van Hove, Peter Sellars, and Robert Icke; playwrights Tony Kushner and Lynn Nottage; choreographer Bill T. Jones; visual artists Ai Wei Wei and Julie Mehretu; composers Michel van der Aa, Tyshawn Sorey, and Heiner Goebbels; scholars Gelsey Bell and Emily Greenwood; Juilliard president Damian Woetzel; New Yorker editor David Remnick; artist William Kentridge; Dr. Augustus Casely Hayford, Director of the Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art; vocalist and performance artist Helga Davis; conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramović; and baritone Davóne Tines, among others.

NEXT IN THE SERIES SEASONS OF DANCE december 3

With diversity moving into the mainstream and modern dance at a crossroads, pioneering artistic directors, choreographers, and dancers gather to explore the intersection between creative vision and cultural context in the art form. Among this series of demonstrations and interactive conversations, Thomas F. DeFrantz moderates a consideration of the living legacy of Pina Bausch and a celebration of the diversity of contemporary dance flourishing in Africa today. He is joined by Jorge Puerta Armenta, Germaine Acogny, Malou Airuado, dancers from the company of The Rite of Spring, and others.

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory

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ABOUT PARK AVENUE ARMORY Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory supports unconventional works in the performing and visual arts that cannot be fully realized in a traditional proscenium theater, concert hall, or white wall gallery. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory provides a platform for artists to push the boundaries of their practice, collaborate across disciplines, and create new work in dialogue with the historic building. Across its grand and intimate spaces, the Armory enables a diverse range of artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience epic, adventurous, relevant work that cannot be done elsewhere in New York.

The Armory both commissions and presents performances and installations in the grand Drill Hall and offers more intimate programming through its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; its Artists Studio series curated by Jason Moran in the restored Veterans Room; Making Space at the Armory, a public programming series that brings together a discipline-spanning group of artists and cultural thought-leaders around the important issues of our time; and the Malkin Lecture Series that features presentations by scholars and writers on topics related to Park Avenue Armory and its history. In addition, the Armory also has a year-round Artists-in-Residence program, providing space and support for artists to create new work and expand their practices.

The Armory’s creativity-based arts education programs provide access to the arts to thousands of students from underserved New York City public schools, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and outside-the-box creative processes. Through its education initiatives, the Armory provides access to all Drill Hall performances, workshops taught by Master Teaching Artists, and in-depth residencies that support the schools’ curriculum. Youth Corps, the Armory’s year-round paid internship program, begins in high school and continues into the critical post-high school years, providing interns with mentored employment, job training, and skill development, as well as a network of peers and mentors to support their individual college and career goals.

The Armory is undergoing a multi-phase renovation and restoration of its historic building led by architects Herzog & de Meuron, with Platt Byard Dovell White as Executive Architects.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Chairman Emeritus Elihu Rose, PhD Co-Chairs Adam R. Flatto Amanda J.T. Riegel President Rebecca Robertson Vice Presidents David Fox Pablo Legorreta Emanuel Stern Treasurer Emanuel Stern

Wade F.B. Thompson, Founding Chairman, 2000-2009

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Marina Abramović Abigail Baratta Joyce F. Brown Cora Cahan Hélène Comfort Paul Cronson Jonathan Davis Tina R. Davis Jessie Ding Sanford B. Ehrenkranz Roberta Garza Kim Greenberg Andrew Gundlach Samhita Jayanti Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Edward G. Klein, Brigadier General NYNG (Ret.) Ralph Lemon Jason Moran Janet C. Ross Joan Steinberg Peter Zhou Avant-Garde Chair Adrienne Katz Directors Emeriti Harrison M. Bains, Jr. Angela E. Thompson

Pierre Audi, Marina Kellen French Artistic Director

Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory | 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street

NEXT AT THE ARMORY RECITAL SERIES KATE LINDSEY & JUSTINA LEE october 16 & 17

THE RITE OF SPRING / COMMON GROUND[S] november 29 – december 14

Mezzo soprano Kate Lindsey is one of the most promising voices of her generation, receiving ovations from audiences in the world’s most presitigious opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Vienna State Opera, and Salzburg, Glyndebourne, and Aix-en-Provence festivals. She performs on a far more intimate stage with pianist Justina Lee in a chamber program that beautifully highlights her vivacious musicality, agile technique, and unmatched command of an audience. The program will include works by Schumann, Fauré, and Sondheim.

ARTISTS STUDIO THE AACM: POWER STRONGER THAN ITSELF, A TALK BY GEORGE E. LEWIS november 18 at 3pm

Founded on the virtually all-Black South Side of Chicago in 1965 and still active today, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians has played an unusually prominent role in the development of American experimental music, exploring an unprecedented range of methodologies, processes, and media.

Scholar-composer George E. Lewis, Professor of Music at Columbia University and an AACM member since 1971, presents an historical overview of the works of the famed collective.

THE REGGIE NICHOLSON PERCUSSION CONCEPT november 18 at 7pm & 9pm

Reggie Nicholson’s signature style and sound have made him one of the most inventive and inspirational drummer/percussionists of his generation, composing and improvising original music that showcases his formidable technique and considerable skill.

He performs some of his recent works and world premieres for percussion ensemble, displaying his “exquisite splashes of color and unmetered cascades on the drums” (Chicago Tribune) with his ensemble, the Reggie Nicholson Percussion Concept.

New York Premiere Faithful to Stravinsky’s visceral score, Pina Bausch’s monumental choreography is given a thrilling new life by a specially assembled company of 36 dancers from 14 African countries. Danced on a peat-covered stage, they clash and engage in a wild and poetic struggle of life, ritual, and sacrifice that pays tribute to her unparalleled genius. Rite is paired with a new work created, performed, and inspired by the lives of two remarkable choreographers, professors, and grandmothers: Germaine Acogny, the founder of the Senegalese École des Sables who is widely considered to be “the mother of contemporary African dance,” and Malou Airuado, who performed leading roles in many of Bausch’s early works as a member of Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

This poetic and tender antidote to Rite reflects their shared histories, emotional experiences, and common ground.

ARTISTS STUDIO AMINA CLAUDINE MYERS CHORAL WORKSHOP december 17

Prodigious pianist, organist, vocalist, composer, and improvisationist Amina Claudine Myers is a visionary in the areas of composition for vocal choirs and instrumental ensembles, composing a wide range of works that distinctly blend traditional influences from spiritual, gospel, and jazz, to extended forms and improvisations.

The multi-talented trailblazer leads a vocal workshop for aspiring singers and the general public to perform some of her original compositions.

DOUBLE BILL: GEORGE LEWIS / AMINA CLAUDINE MYERS december 18

MacArthur fellow George Lewis gives the US premiere of his Blombos Workshop (2020) for piano and Assemblage (2013) for nonet, performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble on a special double bill with Amina Claudine Myers.

Myers is joined by her trio and actress, vocalist, and playwright Richarda Abrams to perform Stay in the Light, a partly notated, partly improvised composition that highlights her spiritual connection to the universe and reinforces positivity, faith, and love for all living things.

ARMORY PUBLIC TOURS various times

Get an insider’s look at the Armory with a guided walking tour of the building. Explore from the soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall to the extraordinary interiors designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Herter Brothers, and others, and learn about the design plans by acclaimed architects Herzog & de Meuron.

armoryonpark.org | @ParkAveArmory

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