This collection of Shaw’s solo performance scripts evokes a 54-year-old grandmother who looks like a 35-year-old man (in her classic Menopausal Gentleman); a mother’s ambivalent ministrations to a daughter she treated like a son (in the raw You’re Just Like My Father); Shaw’s love for her biracial grandson, for whom she models masculinity (in the musically punctuated To My Chagrin); and a mapping of her body’s long, bittersweet history (in the lyrical Must: The Inside Story, a collaboration with the UK’s Clod Ensemble).

The book also includes a selection of Shaw’s other classic monologues and an extensive introduction by Jill Dolan, Professor of English and Theater and Dance at Princeton University and the blogger behind The Feminist Spectator website.

Hosted by MC Lois Weaver with Peggy Shaw
   

Featuring special guests, performances & readings

October 12, 2011
8pm drinks in the lounge
9pm readings and performances downstairs

FREE Admission / Ca$h Bar

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street
New York, New York, 10002

*Please note that I will be one of the special guests at this event presenting a digital archive of Split Britches’ performance work.

Into the Neon, rather than attempting to present a smooth and sparkling surface of collective cohesion or queer monoculture, exists as a living space, where the work of twelve artists will breathe-maybe rapid, maybe muted, maybe deep.

As visual artists involved in the convergence of community and art, as a loose network of friends of friends, we present this self-curated show, which stands in conversation with the art being bought and sold next door.

The works included range in approach from conceptual to object-based to process-oriented, taking shape as installation, video, photography, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, performance.

As our work comes together in this space for the first time at Into the Neon, we cannot predict, but only witness, the conversation that will emerge. Like an artist roundtable, our pieces await the start of the show to begin to speak. We hope not only to mark our moment, but to project beyond it. We invite the public into our process(es); we invite you to share our vulnerability, our movement, our living archive.

Additional programming includes two curated evenings of performance art, performART I & II, a film screening in conjunction with MIX NYC, a poetry reading, and an inter-generational dialogue. Ritual performances mark the opening and closing events.

This exhibition is supported by chashama.  Since 1995, chashama has championed the movement to repurpose vacant properties in New York City; recycling them as artist studios, galleries, theaters, performance and experimental presentation venues, while simultaneously invigorating the surrounding community with an influx of innovative programs, culture, creativity and commerce.

January 27, 2011 – February 19, 2011

Created by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver

Running time: 45 minutes

An Under the Radar Special Event

Saturday, January 8 and 15 at 11pm
Sunday, January 9 and 16 at 2pm

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002

*Please note that I am only assisting with the performance and production of the show.

This conference aims to promote and strengthen interdisciplinary dialogue about the changing role and place of religious discourses and practices in the wake of the transformations wrought by neoliberal globalization upon communities, societies and polities across the Hemisphere. This event is part of a multi-year project on ‘Religion and Politics in the Americas’ funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. Starting from the understanding that conceptions and models of “pluralism” or “secularism” vary across national contexts and regional geographies, we want to focus our attention on the ways in which the retraction of the state and the unrestrained acceleration of economic forces and market logics—neoliberal globalization—have transformed the experience of religiosity as well as the role and influence of religion across the Americas. As religious life has become increasingly channeled through the complex mechanisms of a neoliberal marketplace, the market has increasingly taken on roles and functions previously occupied by the state across broad social arenas. These transformations have not only affected discrete areas of social and economic policy, such as health care, education and security, but have also given rise to new private-public interfaces such as faith-based initiatives and discourses of volunteerism that have supplanted the discourses of rights. This shift has also required the production of new kinds of subjects, emblematized by the shift from citizen to consumer. We are particularly interested in the ways in which religious diversity has been variously enabled, foreclosed, harnessed and even commodified by the neoliberal state. In this context, we also wish to explore how public debates over gender and sexuality serve as flashpoints illuminating the wider workings of the state’s ongoing negotiation with religion and religious difference. Sexuality and sexual life more broadly connect individuals to the state as citizens, to the market as consumer-laborers, and to the supposedly traditional values represented by religion. But how this happens, and with what policy implications on a range of issues, will not be the same in every national context.

Confirmed speakers include:

Ana Amuchástegui (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana)
Roberto J. Blancarte (Colegio de México)
Susana Cook (Independent artist)
Rafael de la Dehesa (City University of New York),
Emerson Giumbelli (Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro)
Marcial Godoy-Anativia (New York University),
Macarena Gómez-Barris (University of Southern California)
Janet Jakobsen (Barnard College)
Peter Kulchyski (University of Manitoba)
Leda Martins (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)
Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan University)
Bethany Moreton (University of Georgia)
Kemy Oyarzún(Universidad de Chile)
Ann Pellegrini (New York University)
Anthony Petro (New York University)
Reverend Billy (The Church of Life After Shopping)
Jesusa Rodríguez (Resistencia Creativa)
Pablo Semán (IDES/Colegio de México)
Peggy Shaw (Split Britches)
Winnifred Sullivan (University of Buffalo)
Diana Taylor (New York University)
Moysés Zúñiga Santiago (Independent photojournalist)

View the Conference Program here.

*Please note that I will be assisting the political cabaret performer Jesusa Rodríguez and perform a minor part in her production.

November 4-5, 2010
Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

Saturday, September 25, 2010 from 1PM-5PM

FAB! 4 Festival
East 4th Street (between Bowery and 2nd Avenue)
New York, New York 10003

Download the press release for the 2010 HOT! Festival.

Why a “Queer” Festival?

While the term “queer” has successfully been appropriated by commerically successful programs like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” we use the term to refer to an orientation that is distinct from the assimilationist and consumerist trends within the LGBT community. Penny Arcade says “queer is anyone who has exprerienced a period of isolation and exclusion so profound that they could never exclude anyone else.” This squares with a post-Stonewall political analysis that found the linked sources of our oppression and consequently demanded reaching out to others who also experienced oppression or exclusion in various ways. Call it ‘the triumph of niche marketing’ perhaps, but that progressive analysis seems too frequently absent from much of the activity not only in the LGBT community but other minority communities as well. While undeniably painful, the upheaval of the present moment does offer hope for those working for progressive social change on any number of issues, and it is here that our queer voices and perspectives are vital within the larger LGBT community. HOT! Festival provides a platform for art and ideas that embody progressive and uniquely queer voices.

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THE FURY OF THE GODS

An exercise in Pop Blasphemy. An ecclesiastical experiment in Heathenism. A sharp biting satire that skewers the sacred.

Written and performed by Susana Cook

Sound design by Julian Mesri

With Performative Interventions by Homo-genius, Kiebpoli Calnek, Zoe Malcolm, Flora Mendoza, Helaine Gawlica, Zena Bibler and Rey Asher Jonah Grosz.

Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 9:30PM

Dixon Place
161A Chrystie Street
New York, NY 10002

2010 ARTISTS: Aimée Lutkin, Ariel Federow (Ariel Speedwagon), Chelsea Johnson-Long, Clark Stoeckley, Claudia Sofia Garriga Lopez, Giovanni Varga, Heather Morowitz, Helaine Gawlica, Jonathan McCrory, Julián Mesri, Kira Neel, Laura Botero Camacho, Pablo Varona Borges, Ricardo Gamboa, Tiffany Ferguson.

INSTRUCTOR: George Emilio Sánchez

2010 Workshop Leaders and Guest Speakers:
Peggy Shaw, Susana Cook, Leo Martín, Reverend Billy, Savitri D, Pamela Sneed, Universes, Karina Casiano, Karen Finley, Karina Claudio Betancourt, Fulana, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Silvia Fernandez.

A reception will follow.

Friday, June 18, 2010 at 7:00PM

Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, NYU
20 Cooper Square, Fifth Floor
New York, NY 10003

The Artist Is Absent

NYC Artists to Present Alternative Abramović Retrospective

The Artist Is Absent Honors Performance Art Pioneer as MoMA Show Closes

Curated by Daniel Lang/Levitsky, Ariel Speedwagon & Quito Ziegler

May 29, 2010 – 10:00 am to 1:00 am

25CPW Gallery – 25 Central Park West, New York, NY

For more information email: curators@theartistisabsent.com

On the occasion of the closing weekend of Marina Abramović’s retrospective The Artist is Present, a group of NYC artists and performers will present reperformances of some of Abramović’s best-known works at 25CPW gallery under the title The Artist is Absent.

The show, curated by Ariel Speedwagon, Daniel Lang/Levitsky & Quito Ziegler, will give New Yorkers the opportunity to experience works by Abramović and Abramović/Ulay in a context closer to their original presentation.

The works included will center on the physically and emotionally intense performance pieces through which Abramović has been most influential, including “Imponderabilia,” “Freeing the Voice,” and “Rhythm 0.”  The group of performers draws heavily from the queer, transgender and BDSM/leather/kink communities, whose connections to Abramović’s work are frequently alluded to but rarely made explicit.

The Artist is Absent presents an alternative approach to reperformance than the one displayed at the MoMA, performing her works sequentially rather than in crowded galleries; by performers with a more varied and contrasting group of bodies; placing the exchange between audience and performer at the heart of the work.  The curators’ challenge to the MoMA’s retrospective aims to preseve the vitality and energy of Abramovic’s work and honor her achievements as a pioneer both of performance art and of re-performance.

Why Hemispheric New York?

New York City is a space of transformation in which expressive practices from throughout the Americas come into contact and combine into new artistic forms. The constant encounters and collisions of African-, Native-, Asian-, Latino- and European- American cultures that define the City, combined with the multiple political and counter-cultural movements that have flourished on its streets, are a key source of the artistic and activist innovation that has long characterized New York City. Experimental performance, hip-hop and salsa are powerful examples of the hemispheric fusions that the City’s neighborhoods have incubated. Anti-consumerism activism like Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping, artistic interventions such as the Guerilla Girls and Fulana’s If You Fear Something, You’ll See Something poster campaign are examples of the innovative conjunction of art and political protest. Drawing on this vitality, the program enables young activists/performers to work with leading practitioners in the field, to take interdisciplinary leaps, and to develop their own strategies to use performance for social change.

Between April and June, the selected participants will take part in weekly workshops led by George Emilio Sánchez as well as by invited artists/activists such as Reverend Billy and Savitri D, Karen Finley, Universes, Fulana, Pamela Sneed, Peggy Shaw, Leo Martín, and others. One of the goals of this series is to work in all five boroughs in New York City. We ask applicants to define social issues that are important to them and to find a bridge to communities around those issues. Past participants have explored themes of racism and racial stereotypes; LGBTQ rights; war and human rights; gender and sexual violence; religion; and gentrification, among others. They have created performance pieces around these issues, interviewed members of various communities, and led workshops in community programs (such as GLOBE/Make the Road New York), etc.

The program is divided into three phases. Phase 1: every Saturday 10am-2pm from April 3rd to May 8th, participants will work closely with George Emilio Sánchez in developing performance and activist strategies, such as Boalian techniques, performance art, and site-specific interventions. Phase 2: intensive daily sessions from May 15- 22, participants will work closely with leading activists, artists and scholars, and will explore specific tactics for work in the field (street performance, interviewing, videotaping, seeing other people’s work, etc.). Phase 3: every Saturday from May 29th to June 12th participants will develop their work with communities of interest throughout the City (hopefully in the five boroughs), building on the strategies explored during the workshops. Final event (June 18th): participants will share their strategies and experiences in a public forum.

Click here to see the schedule of events.