Screening | Performance Space New York

Generative/Unproductive

With live performances and video interventions by The Glad Scientist, Catrileo + Carrión Community, Theo J Rose, Riven Ratanavanh, Pau Aran Gimeno, stefa marin alarcon, Erica Schreiner, Grace Byron, Samay Arcentales Cajas, Anto Astudillo , and more.*

Generative/Unproductive is not oxymoronic: generative implies an openness that allows for the creation of endless variations of knowns or unknowns—rather than the outcome-focused goals pushed by productivity. In this encounter of moving image, poetry and live performance, Anto Astudillo invites a diverse group of artists of trans, non-binary, epupillán (two-spirit) and queer experience, to collaborate and be part of a multidisciplinary conversation, anticipated as “unproductive”: generating a gender fluidity-advocating ephemeral experience that opposes property and capital ideals by offering a healing and intimate relationship with territory.

Generative/Unproductive brings living organisms (microorganisms and human beings) and varied media together to engage in expanded and contracted “cognitive interactions” -as described by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Each artist constructs variable landscapes where bodies interrelate across disciplines, proposing genderless and gender-variant perspectives that exude organic matter.

*Please note that the artist line-up of this event may change.

Screening of beDevil

Access Provision: Closed Captioning

Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child, Tracey Moffatt’s visually haunting film beDevil, delves into three tales that explore Indigenous relationships with the unseen world. This largely buried film is the first feature made by an Aboriginal Australian Woman. Each narrative brims with a sense of unease as the ghostly apparitions collide with the living to reveal the unsettling forces that shape our lives.

The film unfolds in three distinct but interconnected vignettes, each peeling back layers of the past to reveal the complex and often haunting relationship between identity and the enduring scars of colonialism and capitalism.

The screening is followed by a conversation with writer Sarah Fonseca.

Screening of The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland

Access Provisions: Closed Captioning

Anicka Yi presents The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland, a film by the Indigenous Karrabing Film Collective. The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland is a surrealist exploration of contamination, extractive capitalism, and its impact on human and non-human life. The film transports us to a landscape poisoned by the toxicity of Western colonization and capitalism, where Europeans can no longer survive outdoors. The film follows Aiden, a young Indigenous man who is able to survive long periods outdoors, as he comes up against two possible futures and pasts. Yi’s initial experience with the movie during the Hawai’i Triennial 2022: Pacific Century inspired profound inquiries about the deep time histories of colonialism, migration, and environmental resilience in the Pacific region.

The screening is followed by a conversation with Elizabeth Povinelli, Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University.

Living Room Concept

Angel Dimayuga (they/she) invites you to Living Room Concept an intimate and immersive dwelling that feels like your friend’s home. Over the course of the evening, guests will share, learn, and be fed (with a restaurant delivery by “Angel’s World.” )

The night will feature a sensory soundscape by Miho Hatori, a reading by Fariha Róisín, some of Dimayuga’s favorite clips as well as film screenings by Stephanie Comilang, Maggie Lee, and Andrew Thomas Huang. The films depict the search for a grounded sense of self and belonging through the disparate nature of the third culture experience in the global Asian diaspora.

Embracing the powers of interconnectedness and cross-pollination, Dimayuga invites their community to witness the potential of a world shaped by ancestral knowledge and queer systems of coexistence.

Cineclub Amora, La Mensajera y Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter

Cineclub Amora invites us to lovingly decompose ourselves in a transfeminist evening of oral tradition, Andean-Amazonian ritual, performative lecture with immigrant translanguage justice, and a warm-up for a dance class facilitated by hostess and messenger Galle. These performances will be complemented by a screening of Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter, a film of matrilineal and trans-species tribute directed by the acclaimed Aymara artist Chuquimamani Condori aka Elysia Crampton Chuquimia with an original score by their sibling Joshua Chuquimia Crampton.

Galle creates an immersive experience, transforming Cineclub Amora in the womb of Cosmic Mother Earth, where the screen is a portal/black hole to other non-linear dimensions, where collaboration is already happening between artists involved, and where interaction with the audience is stimulated by storytelling, dance, and somatic score.

Followed by a Q&A with Chuquimamani Condori and hostess/curator Galle.