Featured Event
Downtown Artists: Neighborhood Tour
11/16/2024
11AM
Conversations
Readings from Lost & Found: A Preview of Danspace Project’s Platform 2016
Cover Image:
Cover design by Judith Walker for Danspace Project’s Platform 2016:_ Lost & Found_ catalogue
In 2010, the New Museum hosted a residency with choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones to support the reconstruction of THEM, a seminal work of experimental performance examining intimacies and violence between men, made amidst the rising tides of the AIDS epidemic in the mid-’80s. Through the process of reconstructing and transmitting THEM to a younger generation of dancers, Houston-Jones and collaborators excavated many unregistered details about the work and the context in which it was originally created, while uncovering powerful resonances with the present.
This fall, in pursuit of similar excavations, Houston-Jones, with Will Rawls, curates Platform 2016: Lost & Found, the eleventh edition of Danspace Project’s celebrated Platform series, which will take a closer look at the impact of AIDS on generations of dance artists. The New Museum is pleased to host a special evening of readings previewing the release of the Lost & Found catalogue, edited by Houston-Jones, Rawls, and Jaime Shearn Coan. Contributors Houston-Jones, Theodore Kerr, Linda Simpson, and Julie Tolentino will read selections from the catalogue and engage in a conversation moderated by Judy Hussie-Taylor, editor-in-chief of the Danspace Project publication series.
Houston-Jones notes that Platform 2016: Lost & Found will “try to recover the loss of a generation of mentors, role models, and muses [to consider the] effect that absence has had on the current generation of artists.” The Platform will place particular emphasis on countering the historical perception that HIV/AIDS is a disease that has primarily impacted white gay communities. Hussie-Taylor comments, “In Lost & Found, the curators have kept in mind those who have been disproportionately impacted by AIDS in the United States which was, and continues to be, gay, bisexual, transgender, and female African Americans and Latinx.”
The Lost & Found catalogue is the eleventh published by Danspace Project since 2010. Contributors include: niv Acosta, Penny Arcade, Marc Arthur, Tyler Ashley, AUNTS, Arthur Avíles, John Bernd, Archie Burnett, C.Carr, Travis Chamberlain, Jaime Shearn Coan, Peter Cramer, Douglas Crimp, Eduardo C. Corral, DarkMatter, Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Talya Epstein, Karen Finley, Dan Fishback, Nan Goldin, Neil Greenberg, Miguel Gutierrez, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Denise Roberts Hurlin, Bill T. Jones, Niall Noel Jones, Deborah Jowitt, John Kelly, Theodore Kerr, Kia Labeija, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Tim Miller, Eileen Myles, Willi Ninja, Eiko Otake, iele paloumpis, Nicky Paraiso, Marissa Perel, Stephen Petronio, Will Rawls, Joan Retallack, Jen Rosenblit, Sarah Schulman, Lucy Sexton, Linda Simpson, Danez Smith, Pamela Sneed, Sally Sommer, Muna Tseng, David Thomson, Julie Tolentino, Larissa Velez-Jackson, Jack Waters, Jeff Weinstein, Reggie Wilson, and Eva Yaa Asantewaa.
