UNDOXX
November 6th - 23RD
Curated and Organized by zavé martohardjono, Maya Simone Z., and Jamie Chan
Across three weeks, UNDOXX will present performances, films, and new media works, conversations, teach-ins, and resource-sharing events for artists seeking tools to navigate the shifting landscape of censorship in the arts. Censorship of artists in the U.S. is currently surging as a powerful force, yet it is not unprecedented. By bringing together global majority artists, queer artists, marginalized artists who have understood its inner workings for generations, UNDOXX will spark conversation and generate resources for artists and audiences in the U.S. to understand censorship in the arts, its history, and its current evolutions. UNDOXX will make space for people to learn in community and present work by censored artists as their primary intervention.
NOVEMBER 6th at 7:30Pm
Collective Reading and Conversation with sister sylvester
Join sister sylvester for a collective reading from handmade books that are part of the artist’s performance The Eagle and the Tortoise. The Eagle and the Tortoise tells the story of a young student from Turkey who became an icon of leftist resistance, an armed militant, a political prisoner, and finally, a proxy soldier in an American war. It traces the history of the aerial view—in art, mythology, journalism, and warfare—to make the case for other ways of looking. Collective reading will feature one chapter from the book, and open into a conversation with sister sylvester facilitated by undoxx curators on censorship the artist and collaborators encountered in presenting The Eagle and the Tortoise.
November 8th at 7:30PM
NCAC Teach-in on Censorship in the Arts in the U.S.
Join Elizabeth Larison, Director of the Arts & Culture Advocacy Program at the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), for a teach-in on recent art censorship in the U.S. Larison will explore examples including the silencing of artists making work that critiques police brutality, the military-industrial complex, and more. This teach-in will offer artists tools to define censorship in the U.S. context, identify its mechanisms, and understand factors that lead to self-censorship. Case examinations and subsequent discussion will equip participants with a deeper understanding of the relational and institutional work needed to protect artistic freedom.
November 6th - 22ND
INSTALLATION:
FIREWALL Internet Cafe by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
Drop by JACK’s lobby during open gallery hours to view FIREWALL Internet Cafe, an interactive software program created by artist Joyce Yu-Jean Lee. Laying bare limits to Internet freedom, FIREWALL is a software which compares image search results from Google in the U.S. with Baidu in China. Visitors can search for internet images through FIREWALL and, with side-by-side results from the two browsers, vote on perceived censorship in the search results. Each vote is archived in a public research database through this socially engaged research project. Visualizing the urgent and rapidly-evolving issue of Internet censorship, FIREWALL offers users first-hand interaction with information manipulation on the Internet. The work explores user’s perception of censorship, a key consideration for netizens in the U.S. amidst legislative debates over federal bans on the cultural content leader and Chinese app TikTok.
November 13th at 7:30PM
New Media Works by Bleue Liverpool, Fina Ferrara, Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, and Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
Join us for a night of incisive and emotionally resonant new media works. Work include: Joyce Yu-Jean Lee’s documentary short, FIREWALL which tells her story of facing censorship while producing a new media work exposing the limits of Internet freedom. Bleue Liverpool’s newest expanded cinematic essay ARTICLE 19_ responds to international cultural workers facing McCarthyist-style sanctions on their freedom of expression. Fina Ferrara’s visceral short film SARAH, delves into vulnerability and the complexity of processing grief. Ferrara created SARAH, a performance on video, as part of her healing journey after undergoing an abortion. In Monterrey, Mexico abortions are illegal, and open discussion of reproductive justice and artworks about it are suppressed. Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre’s multivocal collection of short films, 3 x 13, features a dance film performed by Palestinian artist Samaa Wakim, choreographed by Samar Haddad King, and directed by Eimi Imanishi. Wakim recounts a daily bus ride to Haifa University and the assumptions of fellow passengers and questions of safety which arise in the time of a trip, offering an intimate glimpse into her inner and outer worlds as a Palestinian woman.
November 15th - 17th at 7:30PM
Mette Loulou von Kohl: THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END
THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END is a new performance by Mette Loulou von Kohl. Centering queer sensuality, pleasure, and fantasy, von Kohl satirically comments on the counter-terror industry of the Zionist State. THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END is a multivocal, multimedia solo performance in which the artist proposes Palestinian futurity to challenge and destabilize settler colonial projects and identities.
Nora Alami: ALTAR EGO
ALTAR EGO stages altars for kindred, mythic, and discarded selves. Meditating on relationships to power and internalized racial, colonial logics, ALTAR EGO transforms the gaze of the altar to manipulate vantage points that place the sacred alongside the desecrated. Alami’s performance tenderly unsettles portals of surveillance and (anti)care. ALTAR EGO asks, how do we sustain feeling deeply?
Photo Care of the Dance Iniatiative
November 21th at 6:00PM
Contemporary Dance Workshop with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre taught by Zoe Rabinowitz and Samar Haddad King
Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) views technique as a means of furthering our bodies as instruments for creative expression. This contemporary dance workshop starts with an anatomically mindful warm-up, and evolves through guided improvisation scores. Blending contemporary dance and theater to explore themes from YSDT repertory works, this dance workshop draws on visualization, improvisation, and play to facilitate an experiential, process-driven environment that empowers participants and meets them where they are in their practice. YSDT’s goals as educators are to provide new tools for creative expression, validate individuals through empowered choice-making, honor diverse perspectives and abilities, and center the power of storytelling in pursuit of social justice.
November 22ND at 7:30 PM
Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre: 3 x 13
3 x 13 explores the singularity of the individual and the universality of the human experience. Comprised of 12 short films with original music by Lou Tides, 12 artists from around the globe share a journey of transformation that deeply marked their lives. These personal accounts of parenthood, loss, race, exile, dreams both realized and abandoned, all find expression through a common choreography for body and camera, offering an intimate glimpse into the performers’ inner and outer worlds. The work culminates in an interactive 13th film that unites all 12 journeys in a virtual ensemble that invites audiences to chart their own course across 5 languages and 8 countries: Cuba, Egypt, France, Mali, Mexico, Palestine, South Korea, and the US. 3 x 13 was produced by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and created by award-winning Director Eimi Imanishi and Choreographer Samar Haddad King.
Samaa Wakim & Samar Haddad King: LOSING IT
In Losing It, Palestinian choreographer Samaa Wakim asks herself how experiencing war impacts her identity and how intergenerational trauma manifests in her own body. Losing It dives into the artist’s memories of growing up under occupation, exploring various realities she lives in, fear, and the fantasies she created out of fear and hope in order to survive. Losing It is about unstable worlds that disintegrate and warp, and Wakim’s perspective from within a world where reality and fantasy blur. Palestinian-American artist Samar Haddad King performs a live score featuring field recordings taken throughout Palestine since 2010. King’s soundscape—layered with traffic sirens, dabke music, prayer recitations, and bombs—weave together with Wakim’s vocals blending resonances that cause fear with ones that provide solace. Emblematic of the power of dance and sound to activate political awakening, Losing It is a precise, stark, and textural portrait of how past and present cloud the future.
Photo by Heather Cromartie
November 23rd at 2:00PM
Community Dabke Workshop with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre
Join Mohammed Smahneh (aka Barges) of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) for a workshop on dabke, a Levantine folkloric dance traditionally used in cultural moments of celebration and resistance. This Dabke Workshop blends contemporary dance and theater with traditional dabke tools (including rhythm, footwork, unison movement) to invite improvisation and play within the traditional form. This workshop starts with an anatomically mindful warm-up and builds skills including technique, strength, stamina, rhythm and improvisation. The practice of dabke is inherently intertwined with social justice movements, and conversations around the use of dance and art in social justice movements will also be incorporated into this event. YSDT honors diverse perspectives and abilities of workshop participants and will offer new tools for creative expression.