2009-2010 Vera List Center fellow Robert Sember and the sound collective Ultra-red facilitate a presentation and discussion between members of New York City’s House/Ballroom community and the New School’s Gender Studies Committee, whose members are invested in organizing cultural activities around issues of gender and sexual rights and redefining gender studies pedagogy.

The House/Ballroom community is an artistic kinship and social movement of primarily transgender and queer African-American and Latino men and women. Vogue’ology refers to the House/Ballroom community’s mimetic performance form, Vogue, originally inspired by poses in Vogue magazine. The New School Gender Studies has recently celebrated its return to the university program, dedicating itself to gender scholarship from the last four decades in the United States and the rest of the world.

The session involves processes of organized listening to pre-recorded elements and testimony presented by representatives from both groups. The sound objects and statements articulate the conditions under which both initiatives are unfolding and suggest terms and themes to guide future initiatives. The terms articulated in the course of listening are open for comment and debate by all.

Participants 
Chelsea Estep Armstrong, student at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts
Edgar Rivera Colón, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Katie Detwiler, student at Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts
Arbert Santana Evisu, performance artist, founder of House of Evisu
Father Michael Roberson Garçon, performance artist, House of Garçon
Ricky Price, Assistant to the University Registrar, The New School for Liberal Arts
Robert Sember, artist and 2009-2010 Vera List Center Fellow
Ann Snitow, Associate Professor, Lit and Gender Studies, Eugene Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts
Vivika Mugler Westwood, performance artist, House of Westwood

This event is presented as part of the Vera List Center’s program cycle, “Speculating on Change,” and is presented in affiliation with the subsequent exhibition, Vogue’ology, on view from November 17, 2010 to November 30, 2010.