Isabel Sandoval and Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky will join McKenzie Wark for a conversation about the art and everyday cultures of trans women, past and present. We’ll conclude with a poetry reading from Drew Pham.
In this talk
A conversation about the art and everyday cultures of trans women, past and present. How do we communicate with each other? How do we pass on what we learn to sisters to come? What are the arts of femininity that we borrow and invent? How does something like the trans feminine exist in different cultures and times and how those connections be understood without erasing differences? One day we might have comprehensive histories and theories about the art of the trans woman (broadly defined). This conversation brings together three scholars, artists and writers to share what they know, what we can learn and how to navigate some of the complexities of thinking and living the aesthetic dimension of our lives.
Isabel Sandoval is a New York-based Filipina filmmaker. She is the first transgender director to compete at the Venice and BFI London film festivals with the New York-set trans immigrant drama Lingua Franca. Her noir-inflected debut feature Señorita had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival. This was followed by the Marcos-era nun drama Apparition, considered a contemporary Philippine film classic, which won awards at the Deauville and Hawaii film festivals after premiering in Busan. Her feature film Lingua Franca premiered on Netflix in the United States in 2020.
Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky
Courtesy of Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky
Rosza Daniel Lang/Levitsky is a cultural worker and organizer based at Brooklyn’s Glitter House. Writing on trans and queer politics has appeared through Visual AIDS, HowlRound, Eyshet Chayil, and in the Lammy-winning anthology Glitter and Grit. Current projects include: Real Life Experience, recovering trans women’s political and cultural writings 1974-2000; Critical Reperformance, re-bodying classic and neglected performance scores as an analytic practice and to keep them a living repertoire [www.criticalreperformance.org]; and Koyt Far Dayn Fardakht, a Yiddish anarchist punk band [www.koytfilth.band]. Founding member of Survived & Punished NY (abolitionist organizing to free criminalized survivors of gendered violence), and other organizing projects.
McKenzie Wark
Photo credit: Z. Walsh
McKenzie Wark is the author, among other things, of Reverse Cowgirl (Semiotexte 2019) and Capital is Dead (Verso 2019). She teaches at The New School.
The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we’re fortunate to have
Drew Pham
reading.
Drew Pham
Courtesy of Drew Pham
Drew Pham is a Vietnamese queer, transgender writer, a child of war refugees, and adjunct English lecturer at CUNY Brooklyn. She previously served in the US Army and was deployed to Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division. She serves as an editor at The Wrath-Bearing Tree.
The New Social Environment — Daily conversations with artists, writers, filmmakers, poets around the world where we discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.
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