We Who Feel Differently - Home

♥

October 12, 2012

"Battleground States," Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City —A small installation of "We Who Feel Differently" was included in the group exhibition and Carlos Motta gave an artist talk.

 
 
Battleground States (OCT 5, 2012-JAN 5, 2013) brings together artists who critically engage with the discourse of visual culture and gender studies. Through video, sculpture, installation, and photography, these works explore ideas of how figuration and identity are connected.

Battleground States analyzes the space between traditional gender duality by exploring alternative forms such as the third gender, a generally foreign concept in Western culture. In their non-Western roles, these alternative identities denote a space for possibility and transcendence. The exhibition moves towards notions of the “post-gender” as a way to better understand how our cultural diversities open up interpretations of a third space.

Artists: Daniel Albrigo, Absalon, Bas Jan Ader, Matthew Barney, Tobias Bernstrup, Robin Black, Nayland Blake, AA Bronson, Heather Cassils, Nicole Eisenman, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jonathan Horowitz, Trishelle Jeffrey, Amy Jorgensen, Asma Kazmi, Terence Koh, Annie Leibowitz, David Levine, Matt Lipps, Georges Minne, Carlos Motta, Takashi Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Bertrand Planes, Genesis Breyer P-orridge, Dean Sameshima, Jack Smith, Trevor Southey, David Wojnarowicz, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Guido van der Werve.

↑Top  

♥

October 6, 2012

"Show and Tell: Nayland Blake, Carlos Motta and Larry Rinder in Conversation," Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco— In the context of the exhibition Nayland Blake: Free! Love! Tool! Box!

♥

September 6, 2012

"Collective Reading: Chitra Ganesh, Andrea Geyer, Thomas Lax, and Alex Segade," New Museum, New York —This was the closing Thursday Night Event from "Museum as Hub: Carlos Motta: We Who Feel Differently" at the New Museum.


In "Collective Reading"— Chitra Ganesh, Andrea Geyer, Thomas Lax, Carlos Motta and Alex Segade read passages from some their favorite queer texts. What has been the role of literature in shaping queer lives?

Collective Reading
Download audio file (mp3) 


Chitra Ganesh reading passages from James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room"


Alex Segade reading passages from Christopher Marlowe's "Hero and Leander."


Thomas Lax reading passages from Lonely Christopher's "The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse."


Andrea Geyer reading passages from Gertrude Stein's "Portrait of Mabel Dodge."

Carlos Motta reading passages from David Wojnarowicz's "Postcards from America: X Rays from Hell."

 
Q & A with the artists and the audience.

↑Top 

♥

August 23, 2012

"Other Arrangements: An Evening of Screenings Selected by Frédéric Moffet," New Museum, New York

 

“Other Arrangements” was a film program organized by Frédéric Moffet. The selection of short films and videos offered historical and philosophical perspectives on queer folks’ struggles with traditional concepts of marriage and family, while exploring alternative avenues based on friendship, community, and contacts with strangers.

Frédéric Moffet introduced and contextualized his selection of videos and was later joined by artists Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay and Oli Rodriguez for a Q & A and conversation. 

Frédéric Moffet Lecture and Q&A with Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay and Oli Rodriguez
Download audio file (mp3)

Prologue: The Faithful by Frédéric Moffet (2012) 
Originally shot on 16mm at Touché, Chicago’s oldest leather bar, The Faithful is a two-channel film that explores cruising and bars as the historical locus of queer community.


 
Chapter 1: The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd by Arthur Ginsberg and Video Free America (1970–75) 
A first attempt at reality TV shot on a Portapak, the video follows the ups and downs of Carel, a feminist porn actress and experimental filmmaker, and Ferd, a bisexual junkie, as they are planning to get married to each other. Issues of intimacy, dependency, and personal growth clash with the conventional expectations for a young married couple and make everyone’s experience a sheer living hell.

 
Chapter 2: Danny by Stashu Kybartas (1987) 
Kybartas chronicles his friend Danny’s return home in an attempt to reconnect with his homophobic family while facing his imminent death from AIDS-related illnesses. The videomaker can’t help but wonder why Danny didn’t remain in the care of his friends instead, in an environment freed from secrets and shame.

 
Chapter 3: The Papi Project and The Baseball Project by Oli Rodriguez 
Oli Rodriguez comes from a supportive and loving queer family. His work explores the reinvention of the self through investigations of childhood and family dynamics. In “The Baseball Project,” Rodriguez infiltrates a local baseball-training program for eight-to-twelve-year-olds to re-experience his childhood as a boy. He watches the video of the training with his mother while gossiping about the adventure. Subsequently, he re-enacts the footage with a group of gender-ambiguous queer artists creating a utopian space free of the usual pressure of heteronormativity found in organized childhood sports. In “The Papi Project,” Rodriguez tries to hook up with his late bisexual father’s sexual partners through posting on Craigslist and other chat rooms. His father passed away in 1993 due to AIDS-related complications when Rodriguez was only a child.

 
Chapter 4: Legacy by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (2010) 
Cruising in an enchanted forest, a mirror-masked flâneur encounters a series of oracles, each with forgotten wisdom to impart to him through song. Borrowing the words and voices of gay elders—from British essayist Quentin Crisp to pop icon Jimmy Somerville to founding Radical Faerie Harry Hay—Legacy weaves together a spiritual manifesto for queer men, reigniting a battle cry for personal and collective metamorphosis.

↑Top 

July 19, 2012

30 Years in, 30 Years Out: AIDS Activism Today by QUEEROCRACY and Visual Aids, New Museum, New York

Successful activism can be seen as the action of many around a host of related issues. Behind every iconic speech, memorable image, and oft-repeated slogan are a plethora of moments involving numerous individuals with various skills, passions, and agendas. For thirty-plus years, AIDS activists have been rallying around medical treatment for those living with HIV, a cure, and an end to the injustice that exasperates the harm of HIV, and makes some people more at risk of transmission.


Megan Mulholland, Michael Tikili, Cassidy Gardener, Camilo Godoy and Theodore Kerr led the event.

 Members of the audience read sentences compiled from texts about HIV/Aids 

QUEEROCRACY and Visual AIDS facilitated a process of what it takes to create an action. An emphasis was placed on the communicative and community aspect of activism. The goal was to ensure that all those who want to participate in current AIDS activism can begin to find their place of empowerment within the ever-growing and multifaceted movement. Participants were also invited to join the free QUEEROCRACY bus to Washington DC on July 24 to demand, in a major collective action, that we can end AIDS at the 2012 International AIDS Conference Mobilization.


The audience in small groups discussed what Aids meant to them and wrote those thought on Post-its


The Post-its were compiled on the theater's north wall

 


The leaders explained "bird-dogging"

QUEEROCRACY is a NYC-based grassroots organization working to promote social and economic justice through direct action, community engagement, education, and art. They commit to challenging institutional injustice locally and globally within a queer framework, building a sustainable movement to confront and transform the intersecting issues our communities face.

Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.

↑Top 

♥

June 21, 2012

"We Who Feel Differently: Thursday Night Programs": "Book Launch for Against Equality: Don't Ask To Fight Their Wars and Disastrous Inclusion, the Spring 2012 'We Who Feel Differently Journal,' guest edited by Ryan Conrad," New Museum, New York

The New York launch of Against Equality's second anthology, Don't Ask to Fight Their Wars, and Disastrous Inclusion: Critical Reflections on the Legacy of DADT, the Spring 2012 issue of We Who Feel Differently Journal, featured a discussion with editor and Against Equality co-founder Ryan Conrad.

Don't Ask to Fight Their Wars collects pieces by contemporary radical voices critical of the mainstream gay community’s uncritical approach to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). It features an introduction by the inimitable Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and essays by writers—Bill Andriette, Kenyon Farrow, Larry Goldsmith, Jamal Rashad Jones, Cecilia Cissell Lucas, Erica R. Meiners, Mr. Fish, Yasmin Nair, Tamara K. Nopper, and Therese Quinn—from Against Equality's digital archives on LGBT investments in militarism. This archival anthology asks why the historically left/radical anti-war critique of war does not extend to DADT and the issue of queers in the military.

 

“Against Equality: Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars” provides a hitherto unavailable set of critiques on a subject that has rarely been approached with as much candor and nuance. Defying the prescriptive logic of “gay is good” that permeates mainstream gay politics, it seeks to interrogate the place of the military in a queer imagining of the world and simultaneously challenges the mainstream left to question its signing on to the damaging militarism of contemporary gay politics.

Copies of the new anthology, as well as the collective's first anthology Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, will be available for purchase at the event. Proceeds from book sales subsidize our books-into-prisons policy of providing Against Equality books at no cost to LGBTQ prisoners.

againstequality.org/stuff/against-equality-dont-ask-to-fight-their-wars/

Disastrous Inclusion: Critical Reflections on the Legacy of DADT, the Spring 2012 issue of We Who Feel Differently Journal, features a combination of five new and archival texts reflecting on gay and lesbian investments in militarism in the United States, from the early days of DADT to the present moment in the Spring of 2012. Texts by: Karma Chávez, Ian Finkenbinder, LAGAI, Tamara K. Nopper, and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Guest editor: Ryan Conrad

♥

June 7, 2012

"We Who Feel Differently: Thursday Night Programs": "Jeannine Tang and Reina Gossett with Eric Stanley and Chris Vargas: Love Revolution Not State Collusion," New Museum, New York

As transgender issues, artists, and theory have received greater recognition in contemporary art discourses and institutions since the 2000s, activist Reina Gossett and art historian Jeannine Tang discussed the role of art and artists in recent movement building and how contemporary art figures in critical trans politics today. The event featured a screening of the film Criminal Queers (2012), and was followed by a conversation with filmmakers Eric A. Stanley and Chris Vargas.

Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation. By expropriating the "prison break" genre, the question of form and content collapses into a rhythm of affective histories as images of possibility materialize even after possibility itself is foreclosed. Follow Yoshi, Joy, Susan, and Lucy as they fiercely read everything from the Human Rights Campaign and hate crimes legislation to the non-profitization of social movements.Criminal Queers grows our collective liberation by working to abolish the multiple ways our hearts, genders, and desires are confined.



Presentation - Jeannine Tang, Art Historian
Download audio file (mp3)



Panel Discussion - Reina Gossett, Community Organizer; Jeannine Tang, Art Historian; Eric Stanley andChirs Vargas, Filmmakers
Download audio file (mp3)



 





 

↑Top 

♥

May 31, 2012

"We Who Feel Differently: Thursday Night Programs":  "Sketchy Walk" by Juan Betancurth and Todd Shalom, New Museum, New York

Photos of cruisers by Todd Shalom

For “Sketchy Walk” participants met at a historic and still-active cruising point on the Bowery. They singly explored both anachronistic and current urban symbols and rituals that facilitate sexual encounters. Betancurth and Shalom incorporated stories from Carlos Motta’s and Joshua Lubin-Levy’s book Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public into the walk, as the group had the opportunity to intimately realize its past repression and potential joy in the present.

An account of the experience by one of the participants:

"Dear Todd and Juan, Sketchy Walk was a rich experience for me. So interesting to hear that for some participants and "performers" it was equally stimulating, but for others a disappointment. I enjoyed tapping into my long dormant cruising skills (I am married with child) in order to experience the city, its residents, and their stories in a new way and exciting to make connections with strangers that at times felt natural, uncomfortable, or indeed sketchy. My encounters were nonsexual, even the not-so-subtle conversation with a guy who offered me poppers, asked if I had any dick shots on my phone, and proceeded to show me a video of him dancing in his underwear. There was one moment when I was truly getting confused about the staged and the real. I'm still not 100% sure whether or not some of the guys I met were officially part of the walk. After 5 chats, I felt emboldened and dangerously excited at one moment to chat with guys hanging out in front of the Bowery Mission but came to my senses. Thank you and bravo!" 



 

↑Top 

♥

May 16- September 9, 2012

"We Who Feel Differently" Exhibition at the New Museum, New York 








"Triangle" from "Shapes of Freedom" (2012). Acrylic paint and etched mirror on wood. 8.5 x 12.5" each. Audio narration by Ari Shapiro.                                                                          

         


"A Timeline of Queer Migrations" (newsprint) and "A New Discover: Queer Immigration in Perpective" (2011), collaborative works with Queerocracy. 

↑Top 

♥

May 4-5, 2012

"We Who Feel Differently: A Symposium" at the New Museum, New York

We Who Feel Differently: A Symposium asked both what is at stake and what is made possible by embracing difference as a queer strategy within contemporary art, politics, and society. The two-day symposium was conceived by Performance Artist and Scholar Raegan Truax and Artist Carlos Motta and was moderated by Ann Pellegrini, Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE AND AUDIO DOCUMENTATION

Download the Program Notes (PDF) here

FRIDAY MAY 4, 4pm-8pm

We Who Feel Differently: A Symposium began Friday afternoon with a keynote lecture by Norwegian Trans Activist, Sexologist and Professor, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad. Pirelli Benestad’s talk was followed by a panel discussion between Julian Carter, Tiger Howard Devore, and Reina Gossett, which was organized with a lens toward gender and specifically in conversation with trans and intersex experiences, histories and movements.  A performance by Malik Gaines followed the Friday panel.  

Welcome - Eungie Joo, New Museum Curator of Education and Public Programs
Download audio file (mp3)
 

"We Who Feel Differently: The Project" - Carlos Motta, Artist
Download audio file (mp3)
 

"We Who Feel Differently: A Symposium"- Raegan Truax, Performance Artist and Scholar
Download audio file (mp3)   

Opening Remarks - Ann Pellegrini, Director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University 
Download audio file (mp3)  

Keynote Lecture: "Bi, Between, and Beyond: A Multicolored Flash of Gender" - Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad, Trans Activist and Professor of Sexology, University of Agder, Norway
Download audio file (mp3)  



Panel: "Genderfull Lives, Genderfull Politics"- Introduction of panelists by Ann Pellegrini 
Download audio file (mp3)   

"Y'all Better Quiet Down! Disruptive Discourses in Movements for Gender Self-Determination,"Reina Gossett, Community Organizer
Download audio file (mp3)   

 
 
"The Preservation of Difference" - Tiger Howard Devore, Psychologist and Certified Sex Therapist
Download audio file (mp3)    


 
"Wrong Bodies and Erotic Connection"- Julian Carter, Associate Professor of Critical Studies, California College of the Arts
Download audio file (mp3)   



Questions from the audience- All panelists
Download audio file (mp3)   


 
"Gay Marry Me"- Performance by Malik Gaines
Download audio file (mp3)   

SATURDAY MAY 5, 12-4PM

On Saturday, the keynote lecture was given by José Esteban Muñoz, author of Cruising Utopia: The Politics and Performance of Queer Futurity and Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Muñoz’s talk was followed by a panel discussion with Mathias Danbolt, E. Patrick Johnson, Heather Love and Emily Roysdon that engaged questions of queer memory, art and politics. A moderated roundtable discussion between all of the symposium panelists, speakers, and attendees concluded the event. 

 
Welcome - Eungie Joo, New Museum Curator of Education and Public Programs
Download audio file (mp3)



"We Who Feel Differently: The Project" - Carlos Motta, Artist
Download audio file (mp3) 



"We Who Feel Differently: A Symposium"- Raegan Truax, Performance Artist and Scholar
Download audio file (mp3)   


 
Keynote Lecture: "The Wildness of the Commons" - José Esteban Muñoz, Professor of Performance Studies, NYU
Download audio file (mp3)  



Panel: "Queering Difference: Memory, Art, and Politics"- Introduction of panelists by Ann Pellegrini 
Download audio file (mp3)   


 
"What Difference Does It Make? Queer Feeling Now" - Heather Love, Author of Feeling Backwards: Loss and the Politics of Queer History
Download audio file (mp3)    

"Queer Preposterousness: We Who Feel Temporally Disoriented"- Mathias Danbolt, Editor ofTrikster - Nordic Queer Journal
Download audio file (mp3)     

"Group Work and Gay Power"- Emily Roysdon, Artist       
Download audio file (mp3)   


                            
"Archiving Memory: Performing SWEET TEA"- E. Patrick Johnson, Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies, Northwestern University
Download audio file (mp3)   

Questions from the audience- All panelists
Download audio file (mp3)   



Round table discussion with all panelists
Download audio file (mp3)   

↑Top 

♥

March and April, 2012 

Nosotros que sentimos diferente—San Juan (We Who Feel Differently in San Juan, Puerto Rico) A commission of the 3rd Poli/Graphic Triennial of San Juan

 
In march 2012, Carlos Motta brought together a group of Puerto Rican queer activists based in San Juan to discuss the history and present status of LGBTQ politics in Puerto Rico. Together with Eduardo Alegría, Yolanda Arroyo Pisarro, Claudia Cornejo, Javier Laureano and Angel Antonio Ruiz, they discussed the role that sexual and gender difference play in the local culture of the island and spoke about internal and external issues surrounding the LGBT Movement.

A group of students from la Escuela de Artes Plásticas that included Xavier Alvarez y Melanie Rivera, Rolando Carrasquillo, Joan Escalera Chaves, Edwin Muniz Marrero, José Eduardo Muñoz, Rey X Pérez, Rubén Rolando Solla, Roberto Tirado and Vedushka Sinned RF got together with Carlos Motta to process some of the themes discussed during the conversation and to conceive a graphic response using the form of the protest sign. Each student created a sign, all of which were displayed in the exhibition.

A video that documents the conversation amongst the activists was produced and presented in the exhibition as well. Watch it (in Spanish) here:

♥

November 10, 2011

Signified: An Interview about "We Who Feel Differently" 



I was Interviewed the webseries and multi-platform documentary "Signified" (Episode 5: Carlos Motta) about "We Who Feel Differently." Watch interview here

↑Top

♥

November, 2011

"We Who Feel Differently's" contribution to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's "The Air We Breathe," a book and exhibition that features projects by artists and poets that reflect on marriage equality. 

Buy the book here

↑Top

♥

September 26, 2011

"Some Notes on the Politics of Queer Affection, Based on the Experience of Making 'We Who Feel Differently' and 'Petite Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public.' Lecture at Pomona College Museum of Art, Clermont, California

 

Listen/download the lecture (mp4) here
Download transcription in PDF format here

↑Top

♥

May 20, 2011

"We Who Feel Differently" Book launch at Torpedo Bookshop, Oslo

Seminar and panel discussion about the role of difference within a social democracy with Heidi Eng (Professor, Diakonhjemmet University College), Carlos Motta, Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad (Trans Activist), Arne Skaug Olsen (Curator) and a lively audience.

Listen/download the audio from the event (mp4) here




Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad and Heidi Eng in conversation

↑Top 

♥

May 19, 2011

"We Who Feel Differently" Book launch at Gallery USF, Bergen

Panel discussion about the role of difference and queer subjects in Norway with Deniz Akin (Gender Researcher), Tone Hellesund (Researcher, Uni Rokkan Centre), Carlos Motta, Annika Rodriguez (Intl. Advisor for The Norwegian LGBT Association), Arne Skaug Olsen (Curator) and a lively audience.

Listen/download the audio from the event (mp4) here




Books fresh off the press!

Tone Hellesund, Annika Rodriguez, Deniz Akin and Carlos Motta



↑Top

♥

July 2010

"We Who Feel Differently" at Other Gallery, Shanghai 

Documentation of art installation, photos by Carlos Motta

Scholar Hongwei Bao wrote an essay titled "'We Who Feel Differently:' LGBTQ Identity and Politics in China" to accompany this exhibition. (Download PDF here)

↑Top 

♥

August, 2009

Installation of Posters from "We Who Feel Differently" at 2009 International Incheon Women Artists' Biennale, Incheon, South Korea
 

Documentation of installation on glass façade of the museum

↑Top