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Reception to follow. 

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required. RSVP beginning Tuesday, September 26, at 9 a.m.

USC Students, Staff, and Faculty: RSVP
USC Alumni: RSVP
General Public: RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
How do you perform gender? This intersectional, interactive event combines video, images, talks, exercises, questions, and tweets, to reveal a broad spectrum of gender possibilities beyond the simplistic binary. Writer/performer Kristina Wong will emcee a multidisciplinary evening featuring projections of short videos and postcards by artists including as Cassils, Shizu Saldamando, Ovarian Psycos, and Meena Nanji; scholarly reflections by Karen Tongson, Amelia Jones, and Valorie Thomas; and a theatrical workshop led by Anita Dashiell-Sparks. With performance artists Amitis Motevalli, Reanne Estrada, and Anne Bray as your guides, get ready to encounter others’ performances of gender and respond by reporting back how gender performs you.

The event will feature work by visual artists April Bey, boychild, Cassils, Chan and Mann, Roya Falahi, Alexandra Grant, Micol Hebron, Thinh Nguyen, Ovarian Psycos, and Shizu Saldamando, and video artists Adebukola Bodunrin, Mail Order Brides, Gloria Morán, Meena Nanji, and Caress Reeves.

About the Participants:

Anne Bray
works at the intersection of public space and media art as a hybrid artist and director of the nonprofit media arts organization Freewaves. She teaches art at Claremont Graduate University and cinema in USC’s Media Arts & Practice Program. (Twitter, USC profile)

Anita Dashiell-Sparks is an associate professor of Theatre Practice and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the USC School of Dramatic Arts. She has performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, and at regional venues such as the Mark Taper Forum and the Geffen Playhouse. 

Reanne Estrada is the creative director of Public Matters and a central collaborator in Mail Order Brides. Her visual art practice includes drawing, sculpture, media production, graphic design, and social practice.

Amelia Jones is the Robert A. Day Professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. A curator, theorist, and historian of art and performance, her recent publications include Seeing Differently: A History and Theory of Identification and the Visual ArtsPerform Repeat Record: Live Art in History, co-edited with Adrian Heathfield; and Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories, co-edited with Erin Silver.

Amitis Motevalli, who works in many mediums, including sculpture, video, performance, and collaborative public art, was born in Iran and moved to the United States in 1977, before the revolution. She is equally known as an artist and for her work in educational justice. In 2014, she oversaw the LA/Islam Arts Initiative.

Valorie Thomas is an associate professor of Africana studies and English at Pomona College. She curated the 2015 exhibition and symposium Vertigo@Midnight: New Visual AfroFuturisms & Speculative Migrations and organized the 2016 and 2017 events Healing Ways: Decolonizing Our Minds, Our Bodies, Ourselves. She originated the theory of African Diasporic Vertigo. (Twitter)  

Karen Tongson is an associate professor of English and gender studies at USC and the author of Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries as well as the forthcoming Why Karen Carpenter Matters. You can hear Tongson on the weekly Pop Rocket Podcast hosted by Guy Branum. (Twitter)

Kristina Wong is a performance artist, comedian, and writer. Her most notable touring show, Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, looked at the high rates of depression and suicide among Asian American women. (Facebook, Twitter)

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Organized by Anne Bray (Cinematic Arts), Holly Willis (Cinematic Arts), and Alison Trope (Communication and Journalism) in partnership with Freewaves.

Event Details

  • Yijin Wang
  • Amari Page
  • Jiani Shi
  • Ying Guo

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