CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Welcome to Park Avenue Armory. It is with great anticipation that we present Canto de Todes, a profound and immersive 12-hour musical work by Dorian Wood, whose visionary approach to performance honors the laborers who built and maintain spaces like the Armory. In this multi-movement composition, Wood has created a sonic landscape that intertwines her human voice with vast choral arrangements, using sound as a vessel for collective remembrance. Canto de Todes is a tribute to those who are often unseen but nevertheless essential to the creation and sustaining of institutions, inviting us to reflect on the work that make such transformative experiences possible.
We are also thrilled to partner with the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP), an international membership organization dedicated to advancing the critical study of contemporary art across multiple disciplines. ASAP’s mission is to foster scholarly dialogues and creative collaborations that highlight art’s capacity to shape and transform the present moment. To mark their annual meeting—which occurs across the city this weekend and has taken Audre Lorde’s motto “Poetry is not a Luxury” as a conference theme—with this keynote event at the Armory aligns with our public program’s goals to make the arts accessible. We look forward to sharing this experience with you and fostering a space for reflection, engagement, and conversation. Throughout the day, sessions from ASAP will be occurring throughout our historic rooms: all are welcome to attend and participate. In addition to Canto de Todes and the on-site ASAP sessions, I would like to highlight two other features of our program. ¿Que hora es en el reloj del mundo?, a new work created for this occastion, is a deeply collaborative audiovisual work by the collective Tierra Narrative. This looping piece, assembled from contributions by nine artists, activists, and filmmakers from across the Americas, explores the question posed by Grace Lee and James Boggs: “What time is it on the clock of the world?” This is a question we will be posing in various ways in the coming season, and we are delighted to launch it with this new commission. Through a zine-like editing process, the work captures an asynchronous yet choral reflection on the contemporary moment, addressing themes of grief, resistance, collective struggle, and the specificity of place. The film weaves together visuals of landscapes and places with voices from queer, trans, African, Palestinian, Maya, and Latinx diasporas, presenting a mosaic of voices that spans across the hemisphere. Grounded in the landscapes and lived realities of its contributors, this work offers a powerful meditation on the intertwined forces of oppression and resilience.
The Armory sits one block away from East 68th Street, which has been named Audre Lorde Way in honor of the influential poet, activist, and Hunter College alum. Curated by Michael Gillespie, An Empowered Cinema: Film Notes on Audre Lorde brings together a series of shorts and feature films that embody the creative and political spirit of Audre Lorde. Moving through documentary, political, and experimental cinema, each film offers a distinct engagement with Lorde’s legacy, transforming her ideas into speculative visual form. From Lana Lin’s The Cancer Journals Revisited, which reflects on Lorde’s personal journey with illness, to Pratibha Parmar’s Emergence, a snapshot of feminist activism in the 1980s, these films render Lorde’s thinking with a crucial texture of empowerment and freedom. This program highlights how cinema not only reflects but actively enacts Lorde’s radical calls for transformation and liberation.
A heartfelt thank you to Amber Musser, Co-Chair of ASAP-15 and Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, for her leadership and support, as well as to the entire ASAP team of volunteers whose dedication made today possible. We are deeply grateful to all the artists and scholars who contributed their talents and insights to making this day.
— Tavia
Nyong’o, Curator of Public Programming at Park Avenue Armory
MAKING SPACE AT THE ARMORY CANTO DE TODES / SONG FOR ALL
saturday, october 19, 2024 from 11am to 11pm
created and performed by singer and performance artist Dorian Wood
featuring performances by Adrian Gonzalez Cortes , Mizu Issei , Alexander Noice , Ethan Philbrick , Riven Ratanavanh , and Titilayo
with film installations by Michael Gillespie and Tierra Narrative
presented in collaboration with the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Thompson Family Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Shubert Foundation, Wescustogo 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, Mary W. Harriman Foundation, the Reed 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 is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature as well as the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Adrienne Adams. Making Space at the Armory is made possible with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF). Cover image by James Ewing.
SCHEDULE
11:00AM 12:00PM 1:00PM 2:00PM 3:00PM 4:00PM 5:00PM 6:00PM 7:00PM 8:00PM 9:00PM 10:00PM 11:00PM
11:00am–12:00pm Canto de Todes Movement 1
12:00pm–10:00pm Canto de Todes Movement 2 with pop-up performance by Riven Ratanavanh
12:00pm–6:30pm ¿Que hora es en el reloj del mundo? / What time is it on the clock of the world? Curated by Tierra Narrative 1:30pm–6:30pm An Empowered Cinema: Film Notes on Audre Lorde Curated by Michael Gillespie
1:30pm–3:00pm Catastrophic Forgetting
3:15pm–4:45pm Break, rest, build –poetic measures of care and creation
1:30pm–3:00pm with/hold: performing temporalities of luxury
3:15pm–4:45pm Ecopoetics Workshop
5:00pm–6:30pm Not a Luxury But Which Luxuriates: Experimental Translation De Luxe
5:00pm–6:30pm The Luxury of Painting the Archive?: Rascuache Artist Illustrating Deportation Stories at the US-Mexico Border
10:00pm–11:00pm Canto de Todes Movement 3
FIRST FLOOR ROOMS
SECOND FLOOR ROOMS
SECOND FLOOR
ABOUT CANTO DE TODES
CANTO DE TODES / SONG FOR ALL
BY DORIAN WOOD
VETERANS ROOM & LIBRARY
Canto de Todes is a 12-hour composition and installation, inspired by a lyric of the late Chilean singer and songwriter Violeta Parra. The project emphasizes the urgency of folk music as a vessel for social change. A genre-defying canon of songs arriving as a long-durational spatial experience, the work is divided into three movements – the first and third movements are hour-long chamber pieces influenced by folk, popular and experimental music. The second movement is a 10-hour
pre-recorded piece unfolding throughout multiple spaces. Canto de Todes upends the expectation of the rigidness often associated with witnessing chamber music performances by offering a welcoming space that allows for individuals to project their personal, communal joys and traumas. Canto de Todes is a touring work that “mutates” with every incarnation, inviting collaborations with artists local to each hosting city. The presentation at Park Avenue Armory includes documentation of past works by Alberto Méndez Sena, Carmina Escobar, Dieu-Thao Duong, Digliana Sena Adames, Dylan McLaughlin, Elena Powell, Erin Brandt, Julián Fallas, Kafele Williams, Luis Díez, Maria Reyes Vazquez, Milagros Matos, Rachel Tobin, Ricardo Montilla, Roco Córdova, Rossin Nova, and Sir Beauregard Elliot.
ABOUT THE FILM INSTALLATIONS
AN EMPOWERED CINEMA: FILM NOTES ON AUDRE LORDE CURATED BY MICHAEL GILLESPIE
19K
This film program enacts a confluence in the spirit of Audre Lorde’s work and its invocation for the “ASAP/15: Not a Luxury” conference. Moving through documentary, political, and experimental cinemas/ modalities, each film models a distinct engagement with Lorde’s work as a creative and political invitation. In total, this concentration of shorts and features showcases how film speculatively and generatively renders Lorde’s thinking. The films in this program encounter Lorde’s work with textures that are crucial to and capacious in the work of empowerment and freedom.Works include Lana Lin’s The Cancer Journals Revisited (2018), Pratibha Parmar’s Emergence (1986), Sonali Fernando’s The Body of a Poet: A Tribute to Audre Lorde (1995), Jennifer Abod’s The Edge of Each Other’s Battles (2002), and A Litany For Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde by Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkinson (1996).
¿QUE
HORA ES EN EL RELOJ DEL MUNDO? / WHAT TIME IS IT ON THE CLOCK OF THE WORLD?
CURATED BY TIERRA NARRATIVE, 2024
COLONEL’S ROOM
What time is it on the clock of the world? Is it just 8:30pm on the evening of July 4, 1973? What is time? Is it just the measurement of the distance traveled by the hands of a gigantic clock? How do we estimate time in terms of the evolution and development of humanity?.... We are all changing all the time, and our development never takes place in a straight line. Every one of us advances in a certain direction; then we find ourselves confronted with unanticipated contradictions or obstacles. Some of us charge ahead anyway-–trying to bulldoze away the obstacles. Others stop to reflect. Some of us drift backwards. But whether we drift backwards,
charge ahead, or stop to reflect, eventually we must confront reality again in its new form. Then we have the opportunity to make another choice as to which way to go, and to begin anew the process of struggle which is the only way that anything or anyone advances.
James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (1973)
Tierra Narrative asked nine activists, filmmakers, artists, and writers from across the Americas to answer a question repeatedly posed by James and Grace Lee Boggs in their lifetimes: “What time is it on the clock of the world?” We encouraged contributors to respond in the immediacy of the moment, by drawing from their past material or via more direct address. Through a “zine”-like editing process led by Génesis Mancheren Ab’äj, we assembled excerpts of these contributions alongside our own into looping asynchronous channels. The first screen weaves between real-time and dream-time across geographies, while the audio acts as a topline. The second channel is the “second hand” against the nonlinear clock of the first screen. We are grateful to the contributors, whose offerings take choral temperature of the present: Alexis Aceves Garcia, Carolina Ebeid, Nery Gonzalez, mónica teresa ortiz, Luciana Serrano, Eduardo Say, Jenni Torres, Amada Torruella, and Father Venus.
For a bilingual transcript and brief contributor bios, visit https:// tierra-narrative.com/clock-of-the-world or scan the QR code:
ABOUT THE PANELS
1:30PM – 3:00PM
CATASTROPHIC FORGETTING
COMPANY E
Catastrophic Forgetting, a term borrowed from the study of artificial intelligence, points to the delicate balance between sensitivity and stability. Join artists Zeynep Abes, Chantal Eyong, and Luke Fischbeck from the University of Southern California as they use different forms of media, including choral performance, recorded sound, animation, crocheting, and point cloud data, as mnemonic devices to contradict and subvert hegemonies that perpetuate catastrophic forgetting and mastery over time. Each technique disrupts the archetypal archive and presents a uniquely generative tool for exploring the consequences of catastrophic forgetting, and the capabilities of generative remembrance.
3:15PM – 4:45PM
BREAK, REST, BUILD – POETIC MEASURES OF CARE AND CREATION
COMPANY E
Inspired by Audre Lorde’s poem “Construction,” this panel gathers artists, poets, and scholars with multidisciplinary practices who occupy simultaneous roles of caregiving and receiving in the realm of illness and disability. Participants Sara Joan MacLean and Ashleigh Allen from the University of Toronto and Mexican-American filmmaker, performer, and writer Cathy de la Cruz consider the questions: When is the best time to build and create? Faced with ever accelerating forces of destruction, what season of our individual and collective life cycles do we find ourselves in now? What phases and methods of construction, resistance, and demolition, are we called upon to plan, incite, or begin?
5:00PM – 6:30PM
NOT A LUXURY BUT WHICH LUXURIATES: EXPERIMENTAL TRANSLATION DE LUXE
COMPANY E
The Toronto Experimental Translation Collective (TETC) invites attendees to engage in the disruption of linear processes, unsettling cycles of production/reproduction and opening onto forms of luxuriating in the illegible, the unspectacular, the improvisatory. Through a series of exercises and meditations, the group leads participants to embodied experiences of everyday luxuries: observation, listening, gestural interpretation, somatic transcription. [notice about having to move / ADA accommodations]
WITH/HOLD: PERFORMING TEMPORALITIES OF LUXURY
COMPANY D
“with/hold” is a performative roundtable that unfolds as a choreography of sharing a meal together, breaking bread communally, that is a different type of time making and being-with that focuses on the slowness of unfolding. This roundtable draws on the legacies of Black feminisms and women of color feminisms and asks, “What does it mean to be with each other in communion?” Participants include Assistant Professors at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Maria Gaspar and Anna Martine Whitehead, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia Particia Nguyen, and Estelle Lebowitz Artist in Residence at Rugters’ Douglass College Amina Ross
ECOPOETICS WORKSHOP COMPANY D
This two hour micro-workshop introduces audiences to the collaborative nomadic gathering by inviting them to gather with artists, poets, scholars, and scientists to think and make together at the nexus of poetics and ecology. Residency participant Brent Cox and poet and researcher on contemporary Indigenous and Latinx poetry Brooke Bastie lead audience members in a one-hour participatory seminar followed by a one-hour creative exercise, interrogating how luxury and labor intersect.
THE LUXURY OF PAINTING THE ARCHIVE?: RASCUACHE ARTIST ILLUSTRATING DEPORTATION STORIES AT THE USMEXICO BORDER COMPANY D
This workshop delves into the powerful narrative of deportation stories at the US-Mexico border through the lens of Rascuache artistry. Rascuache art, rooted in the Chicano and Mexican-American experience, has long served as a conduit for expressing the complexities of identity, migration, and social justice. This workshop will explore the intersection between protest art, activism, and digital humanities through the introduction of the El Paso del Norte Mural Project. Workshop leaders include project assistants Kevin Dutan and Ariel Morales and Assistant Professor in Chicano/a/x Studies at Baruch College Lizbeth De La Cruz Santana
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
DORIAN WOOD
Dorian Wood (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist who “infects” spaces and ideologies with her artistic practice, borne from a desire to challenge traditions and systems that have contributed to the marginalization of people. Wood has performed at worldwide institutions including The Broad, REDCAT, Museo Nacional Del Prado, Teatro de la Ciudad Esperanza Iris, Museum Folkwang, Pacific Standard Time, and the Fusebox, Cruilla, WorldPride Madrid, Moers, and Cully Jazz festivals. Recent works include: chamber orchestra tour tribute to Chavela Vargas, XAVELA LUX AETERNA; tribute to the singer Lhasa De Sela, LHASA; Mares Ocultos, a multimedia chamber music project exploring the nature of male heterosexuality, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Virginia Commonwealth University; and the world premiere of Canto de Todes at REDCAT. As a visual artist, Wood has created illustrations and video installations that have been exhibited in galleries around the world, including Vincent Price Art Museum; La Carboneria; Fierman Gallery; and the Queer Biennial. Short films include The angel, Disappearing, American Savagery, FAF, The World’s Gone Beautiful, PAISA, O, and La Cara Infinita, among others. Awards: LCPA Recovery, City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Project, Art Matters Foundation grants; NALAC Fund for the Arts and Creative Capital awards; and MacDowell, Loghaven, Building Bridges Art Exchange, Etopia, Centro de Arte y Tecnologia, FUGA program, and MASS Gallery residencies. Recent albums: You are clearly in perversion (Astral Editions, 2023) and Excesiva (Dragon’s Eye Recordings, 2023).
ADRIÁN GONZALEZ CORTÉS
Adrián Gonzalez Cortés is a multifaceted Spanish musician, known for his work as a cellist, pianist, and music composer for audiovisual media. Notable orchestral appearances include performances at El Amor Brujo alongside La Fura dels Baus and ADDA Sinfónica and the Games & Symphonies concert with Akira Yamaoka. Other genre work includes tango performances with Candi and el Trío Compadron; indie-rock performance as a member of Moon Crackers; and folk, contemporary, and improvisatory music with artists like Alberto Montero, Carmina Escobar, and Dorian Wood. Cortés writes scores for film and video games, working with Super Mega Team, EP Games, and filmmakers Leandro Sosa and Esmeralda Berbel, among others. Recent projects include Nom Nom: Cozy Forest Café, Sensus, and NOX: Chapter 1.
MIZU ISSEI
MIZU builds expansive soundscapes through her singular cello playing. Her stratiform style of composition, melding self-recorded layers of her instrument with electronic manipulation and experimental production, explores themes of transformation and the infinite possibilities within queerness. MIZU’s two self-produced albums, Forest Scenes and Distant Intervals, received critical praise and attention from platforms such as Pitchfork, NOWNESS Asia, Bandcamp Daily, New Sounds, Stereogum, and Them. She also recently scored the music for 4 | 2 | 3, a full-length contemporary dance production by choreographers Baye & Asa, which premiered at The Baryshnikov Arts Center in Spring 2024.
ALEXANDER NOICE
Composer, guitarist, producer, and bandleader Alexander Noice is a founding member of multi-genre ensemble NOICE and art rock/ pink trio Falsetto Teeth. He has performed and toured throughout the US, Europe, Australia, Japan, and South America at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall, REDCAT, Blue Note Tokyo and Nagoya, the Troubadour, Roulette, Hammer Museum, and the MATA, Sonar Tokyo, the Monterey Jazz, Angel City Jazz, Desert Daze, and Green Umbrella festivals. He has collaborated with artists such as Wadada Leo Smith, Famoudou Don Moye, Vinnie Colaiuta, Greg Saunier, Vinny Golia, David Binney, Wild Up, and Daniel Rosenboom, among others. Albums include Music Made With Voices (debut, 2016); NOICE (2019, Orenda Records); and a forthcoming album on Innova Records. Residencies at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Loghaven.
ETHAN PHILBRICK
Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, performance artist, and writer. He holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University and has taught performance theory and practice at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, New York University, Wesleyan College, Yale University, and the New School. He is currently Performance Curator-in-Residence at the Poetry Project in New York. In 2023, Philbrick published Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence (Fordham University Press). He is part of the musical-theatrical project DAYS and has presented solo and collaborative performances at The Kitchen, NYU Skirball, Wesleyan Center for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum, and Pacific Film Archive, and Grey Art Museum.
RIVEN RATANAVANH
Riven Ratanavanh (b. 1996 in Bangkok, Thailand) is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist who works in performance, installation, and film. Exploring queer politics, diasporic memory, and trans imaginations, he investigates the embodied realms of power, gender, and race. He has performed original work at Performance Space, the Poetry Project, and the Center for Performance Research; and performed at the Amant Foundation and OCD Chinatown. His work has been featured by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London, the London Short Film Festival, Seattle Trans Film Festival, Otherness Archive, and the Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA).
TITILAYO AYANGADE
Cellist and photographer Titilayo Ayangade has spent over two decades performing on her instrument, appearing in orchestras, chamber ensembles, and commissioning new music. In addition to her work on cello, she has taken portraits of over 100 of today’s most preeminent classical musicians. Ayangade holds degrees from the University of Cincinnati-CCM and the University of Texas at Austin, and has studied with the Artemis Quartet in Belgium. With an internationally established presence as a star chamber musician, her robust career has included time as Strathmore Artist-in-Residence, cellist of the Thalea String Quartet, performances with Yo- Yo Ma and residencies at Newport Classical and Caramoor. Having lived all over the country, Ayangade currently calls New York City her home.
MICHAEL GILLESPIE
Michael Boyce Gillespie is author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film (Duke University Press, 2016) and Co-Editor of Black One Shot, an art criticism series on ASAP/J. His work focuses on Black visual and expressive culture, film theory, visual historiography, popular music, and contemporary art. His writing has appeared in Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971, ASAP/J, Film Quarterly, liquid blackness, Journal of Popular Music Studies, as well as other journals and collections. He was the consulting producer for The Criterion Collection releases of Deep Cover, Shaft, and Drylongso. He is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies in the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University.
TIERRA NARRATIVE
Tierra Narrative is a film and literary production house dedicated to counternarratives emerging from the Central American isthmus and its diaspora. Founded in 2017, TN creates, curates, and bolsters contemporary work that gives shape to cultural memory in a transnational context. The collective’s work has been supported and presented by the BFI London Film Festival, The Poetry Project, The Hemispheric Institute, Open Society Foundation, Centro de Cultura Digital Mexico City, Icaro Film Festival, and New Filmmakers LA. Tierra Narrative is Génesis Mancheren Ab’äj, Óscar Moisés Díaz, Kenia Guillén, Leslie Arely Martinez, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, and Frisly Soberanis.
ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF ARTS OF THE PRESENT
The Association for the Study of Arts of the Present (ASAP) celebrates the work of scholars and creative artists who speak to our moment. We investigate how the contemporary arts relate to past movements, and what legacy the contemporary arts will leave to the future. We believe in the power of the arts. We refuse the corporate division of the arts into disciplinary slivers: we create interdisciplinary dialogue. We reject the alienation of creative artists from the world of scholar-critics. We insist on poetic relation. As part of its annual activities, ASAP hosts conferences and symposia that bring internationally recognized scholars and creative artists together to discuss and debate the latest developments in the literary, visual, and performing arts. We run an annual book prize and a prize for the outstanding graduate student scholarship. Our scholarly journal–ASAP/Journal–is hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Press and presents the best new writing on the international, post-1960s arts.
PRODUCTION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Andrew Lulling Audio Engineer
Nathan Andrew Riley Stage Manager
Jim Petty Production A/V
Che Gossett Researcher
Special thanks to Jessica Mitrani, Kiki Kudo, and the Armory’s Education Department Youth Corps and Advisory Board
ABOUT PUBLIC PROGRAMMING AT THE ARMORY
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 and featuring a concert performance 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; 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; Symposium: Sound & Color – The Future of Race in Design, an interdisciplinary forum exploring how race matters in creative design for live performance hosted by lighting designer Jane Cox, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, set designer Mimi Lien, and sound designer and composer Mikaal Sulaiman and featuring collaborations with Design Action and Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Juke Joint, a two-day event spotlighting the history of the juke joint in Black American social history and its legacy in music and culture, including performances by Pamela Sneed and Stew; Hapo Na Zamani, a 1960s-style happening curated by Carl Hancock Rux with music direction by Vernon Reid, and presented in collaboration with Harlem
Stage; Hidden Conversations, a celebration of Dr. Barbara Ann Teer with National Black Theatre; and Corpus Delicti, a convening of artists, activists, and intellectuals imagines and enacts transgender art and music as a vehicle for dialogue across differences presented in collaboration with the NYC Trans Oral History Project
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; Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation, a salon exploring Black visual complexity and spirit, led by visionary artist Rashaad Newsome and featuring Saidiya V. Hartman, Kiyan Williams, Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Ms.Boogie, Puma Camillê, and others; and Seasons of Dance, a contemporary dance salon featuring conversations with “mother of contemporary African dance” Germaine Acogny, Tanztheater Wuppertal dancer Malou Airaudo, and dancers from The Rite of Spring / common ground[s] at the Armory.
Artist Talks have featured esteemed artists, scholars, and thought leaders, such as: actor Bobby Cannavale; architects Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Elizabeth Diller; artist and composer Heiner Goebbels; choreographers Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray, Bill T. Jones, and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; composers Philip Miller, Thuthuka Sibisi, Tyshawn Sorey, Samy Moussa, and Alexandra Gardner; composer and director Michel van der Aa; composer, vocalist, and scholar Gelsey Bell; conductors Amandine Beyer and Matthias Pintscher; designer Peter Nigrini; directors Claus Guth, Robert Icke, Richard Jones, Sam Mendez, Satoshi Miyagi, Ariane Mnouchkine, Ben Powers, Peter Sellars, Simon Stone, Ian Strasfogel, Ivo van Hove, and Alexander Zeldin; Juilliard president Damian Woetzel and Juilliard Provost and Dean Ara Guzelimian; musicians Helmut Deutsch, Nona Hendryx, Miah Persson, and Davóne Tines; New Yorker editor David Remnick; James Nicola, Artistic Director of New York Theater Workshop; performance artists Marina Abramović and Helga Davis; RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director and Chief Curator of Performa; playwrights Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Tony Kushner, Lynn Nottage, and Anne Washburn; Dr. Augustus Casely Hayford, Director of the Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art; visual artists Nick Cave, William Kentridge, Julie Mehretu, Julian Rosefeldt, Hito Steyerl, and Ai Wei Wei; and writers and scholars Anne Bogart, Robert M. Dowling, Emily Greenwood, and Carol Martin
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.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Chairman
Co-Chairs
President
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 institutions 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.
Avant-Garde
Directors
