Dancing to the Music of You is a multidisciplinary collaboration between a team of queer NYC-based artists and organizations including InfraSound, ChamberQUEER, sculptor Jeremy Martin, sound designer Alex Ring Gray, and lighting designer Madeline Whitesell. It will be a synthesis of gallery exhibition, sound-art installation, and musical performance taking place on May 3rd, 2024 at The Lesbian, Gay, Bixsexual, and Transgender Community Center (The Center).
This project explores the concept of the queer body: what it means to live and work as a queer artist, how we conceptualize queerness through fashion, posture, and movement, and how we build community around our shared experience of queer embodiment. The collaborating artists will examine these themes through sculpture, lighting and sound design, and musical composition.
Sculptor Jeremy Martin will install his JUSTAPOSE series at The Center, creating two new sculptures for this iteration. JUSTAPOSE is a set of ambiguous paper sculptures inspired by exaggerated fashion silhouettes, exploring ways humans pose in public spaces to feel seen, or upset conformity through their appearance and actions. JUSTAPOSE investigates how these liminal, paper objects mirror Martin’s own experience as a queer person of color through their ability to shape-shift or code-switch depending on the societal dictates of the environments they occupy. Martin will photograph participating artists’ poses, inspired by conversations about how they perform appearance and actions in society daily, which will form the basis for the new sculptures.
In collaboration with Martin, composer Alex Ring Gray will devise an interactive sound installation (CODE-SWITCH) to co-exist with the sculptures, featuring live processing manipulation of audience members voices. Lighting design by Madeline Whitesell will leverage her synaesthesia to translate the visual-sonic world of the performances in real time.
World premieres by composers Sam Kaseta and Alex Ring Gray (Sweet William (Child 106) for Luke Paulino and Daniel Schreiner) will be performed alongside curated works from ChamberQUEER and InfraSound, activating the space at 8:00 pm. The evening will conclude with the whole complement of artists in an improvisation upon the sculptures, soundscape, and lights culminating in a celebratory synthesis of artistic mediums.