Art Festival NYC

Broadening the traditional concept of “queer” (in) art, the Queer New York International Festival returns to Abrons for a fourth year with a diverse slate of artists from around the world, including Ivo Dimchev (Bulgaria), Joshua Monten (Switzerland), Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens (US) and Bruno Isakovic (Croatia). Curated by Zvonimir Dobrović.

(NYC Premiere)
Wednesday, September 16

Join SexEcologists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens and explore twenty-five ways to make love to the Earth and find your E-spot (ecosexy spot).

(NYC Premiere)
Wednesday, September 16
a MixNYC Partnership Presentation

Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story is the true tale of the two San Francisco “ecosexual” artist-lovers who join forces with environmental activists in trying to stop a destructive form of mining. The documentary injects an otherwise dire situation with sexy fun and surprising activist strategies, such as a performance-art marriage to the mountains.

(US Premiere) Thursday, September 17 Dimchev returns to the festival with his new performance Facebook Theater. This interactive theatrical experiment has actors articulate a text simultaneously created by a Facebook audience.

(US Premiere)
Friday, September 18

The exceptional performer Ivo Dimchev gives one of his live concerts at the festival. His enormous musicality and his remarkable vocal gift are part of all of his productions. For this event, he has selected 15 songs from his performances, detached them from their original context, presenting them as independent, individual opuses.

(United States)
Friday, September 18

Social Health Performance Club will present an evening of performances that engages the problematics of framing work as queer—aesthetically and personally. Simply put, SHPC asks: what is “queerness” in this context? How do their individual lived experiences relate to it? How does their presence in this festival, on this night, situate them as/among the marginalized or subaltern and relate those categories with queerness?

(NYC Premiere) Saturday, September 19 Jarman (all this maddening beauty) is a solo performance work inspired by avant-garde, queer filmmaker Derek Jarman. Evocative poetry, lush new music and multimedia landscape combine to create a theatrical event exploring the meaning of beauty and art.

MAX STEELE (United States)
(NYC Premiere)
Sunday, September 20

The Good Daughter is a solo cabaret/music performance examining the relationship between queer identity, power, and gender. Max Steele utilizes pop music, punk rock, and performance art to reverse-engineer drag performance, performing songs written by women about female identity, and articulating a female voice against a culture of late-capitalist, globalist white-supremacist patriarchy.

MMAKGOSI KGABI (South Africa)
Shades of a Queen (US Premiere)
Curated by Marýa Wethers
Monday, September 21

Shades of a Queen is a coming-of-age, coming-to-self, coming-out piece exploring the identity constructs of an African Queer child. The creative process was based on personal experiences and challenges in the journey to coming out both literally and metaphorically. Her Majesty the Queen (a.k.a. Mmakgosi, which translates to ‘‘The Mother of the Chief“) battles with stepping out of the house and out of the closet.

Bruno Isaković (Croatia)
(World Premiere)
Tuesday, September 22-Saturday, September 26

Disclosures is a performance that invites different people to share their stories, fears and confidences, demystifying borders of privacy and nakedness as they strip away their clothes.

KAIA GILJE / LORENE BOUBOUSHIAN (United States)
Know What Smokes (US Premiere)
Wednesday, September 23