Making Space at the Armory releases full schedule of public events for Symposium: Sound & Color – The Future of Race in Design, January 14 & 15, 2023

Session topics include Anti-Racist Design Pedagogy, The Future of Theater Design in XR, Afrofuturism and Design for Live Performance, Culturally Specific Design, and more

New York, NY – Thursday, January 5, 2023 – Park Avenue Armory announces the full schedule of public events Symposium: Sound & Color – The Future of Race in Design, an interdisciplinary forum exploring how race matters in creative design for live performance, especially in the current moment of creative, technological, and cultural unrest. Hosted by lighting designer and co-organizer Jane Cox, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, set designer Mimi Lien, and sound designer and composer Mikaal Sulaiman, this event will include a series of conversations and interventions on Saturday, January 14, 2023 and Sunday, January 15, 2023, intended to allow artists, intellectuals, and designers to explore lighting, sound, costume, and set design, as well as augmented reality, as sites of innovation, magic, and transformation.

Full schedule listed below:

Saturday, January 14, 2023

1:00pm – 2:00pm

Opening Conversation
Veterans Room
Set designer Mimi Lien, lighting designer Jane Cox, and sound designer and composer Mikaal Sulaiman in conversation, moderated by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Creating a Collaborative Aesthetic Over Time
Veterans Room
Long-term collaborators costume designer Montana Blanco, set designer Adam Rigg, sound designer Palmer Hefferan, and puppet designer and fabricator James Ortiz discuss their collaborative history and work on The Skin of Our Teeth, moderated by director Lileana Blain-Cruz.

3:00pm – 4:00pm

Presentation of Micro-Commissions
Presented in collaboration with Design Action
Second Floor Historic Company Rooms
Commissions by Barrymore-nominated scenic designer Marie Laster; designer and artisan Danielle DeLaFuente and sound designer Nina Field; queer, nonbinary interdisciplinary artist Gylanni Carrington; Mexican scenic and costume designer Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez; sound designer and composer Elliot Yokum; and lighting designers Christina Tang and Alex Vásquez Dheming.

Space for Informal Conversations
Second Floor Hallway

4:00pm – 5:00pm

Conversations Between Generations
Veterans Room
Actor, playwright, and director Ruben Santiago-Hudson in conversation with lighting designer and educator Victor En Yu Tan sharing the experiences of working in culturally specific theaters with younger artists. Moderated by Puerto Rican scenic designer and Head of Scenic Design at DePaul University Regina García.

Teaching Design and Production through an Anti-Racist Lens
Board of Officers Room
Costume designer and Princeton faculty member Sarita Fellows and Head of Lighting Design Training at NYU Tisch Jeanette Yew in conversation with University of Rhode Island Professor Christine Mok.

 

 

Sunday, January 15, 2023

1:00pm – 2:00pm

The Future of Theater Design in XR
Presented in collaboration with Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Veterans Room
Korean director, artist, and producer Scarlett Kim and director Mei Ann Teo in conversation with new media artist and creative technologist LaJuné McMillian; multidisciplinary artist and performer Justin Hicks; costume designer Dede Ayite; Ojibwe and Oneida writer, actor, and interdisciplinary artist Ty Defoe; and dancer Raja Feather Kelly.

Black Sound Artists Round Table
Board of Officers Room
Sound designer and composer Mikaal Sulaiman in conversation with composer, sound design artist, and musician Justin Ellington; Ghanaian interdisciplinary artist Jojo Abot; vocalist, composer, and performance artist Holland Andrews; and duo Mendi Keith Obadike.

2:00pm – 3:00pm

Afrofuturism in Conversation with Design for Live Performance
Veterans Room
Park Avenue Armory Curator of Public Programming Tavia Nyong’o in conversation with director Shariffa Ali and Taiwanese scenic designer You Shin Chen.

Culturally Specific Design
Board of Officers Room
New York City Center Encores! Producing Creative Director Clint Ramos in conversation with theatrical lighting, projection, and puppetry designer Jeanette Yew. Moderated by Diep Tran, Editor-in-Chief of Playbill.

3:00pm – 4:00pm

Presentation of Micro-Commissions
Presented in collaboration with Design Action
Second Floor Historic Company Rooms
Commissions by Barrymore-nominated scenic designer Marie Laster; designer and artisan Danielle DeLaFuente and sound designer Nina Field; queer, nonbinary interdisciplinary artist Gylanni Carrington; Mexican scenic and costume designer Rodrigo Hernandez Martinez; sound designer and composer Elliot Yokum; and lighting designers Christina Tang and Alex Vásquez Dheming.

Space for Informal Conversations
Second Floor Hallway

4:00pm – 5:00pm

Darkness and Light: Lighting Design Onstage
Presented in collaboration with Princeton University’s CreativeX
Veterans Room
Lighting designers Itohan Edoloyi, Stacey Derosier, Alejandro Fajardo, and Alan Edwards in conversation, moderated by symposium host, Director of the Princeton University Theater program, and lighting designer Jane Cox.

Costume Design Conversation
Board of Officers Room
Hosted by costume designer and founder of Black Trans Liberation Qween Jean with costume designers Dominique Fawn Hill and Devario D. Simmons.

 

Ongoing Presentations

Movement Portraits
19K
by LaJuné McMillian

Documentation of the performance work rasgos asiáticos
An intimate story about the fluidity of borders and time, Virginia Grise’s site-specific performance installation (documented here) rasgos asiáticos examines migration and displacement, and unearths hidden histories in the confluence of China, Mexico, and the United States. Created in collaboration with designer Tanya Orellana, rasgos asiáticos is a constructed space for personal and political excavation, revealed through inherited stories, fragmented memories, historical re-imaginings, and recurring dreams.

Quills Fest VR World Pop Up
Presented by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Colonel’s Room
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival mount a pop-up version of their Quills Fest VR World, a transmedia sandbox that radically expands access to the transformational power of storytelling and imagines a multimodal future of theater. Pop-up works include XR and AR projects in multiple phases of development—from prototypes and works-in-progress to fully completed projects—that boldly explore liveness, interactivity, and immersive storytelling

 

TICKETING

Day passes at $45 (plus fees) and weekend passes at $60 (plus fees) are available for purchase online at armoryonpark.org and by phone through the Park Avenue Armory Box Office at (212) 933-5812, 10am to 6pm Monday through Friday. In person box office hours may vary.

SPONSORSHIP

Bloomberg Philanthropies is the Armory’s 2023 Season Sponsor.

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, GRoW @ Annenberg, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation. Additional support has been provided by the Armory’s Artistic Council.

ABOUT PUBLIC PROGRAMMING AT THE ARMORY

Park Avenue Armory’s Public Programming series brings diverse artists and cultural thought-leaders together for discussion and performance around the important issues of our time viewed through an artistic lens. Launched in 2017, the series encompasses a variety of programs including large-scale community events; multi-day symposia; intimate salons featuring performances, panels, and discussions; Artist Talks in relation to the Armory’s Drill Hall programming; and other creative interventions.

Highlights from the Public Programming series include: Carrie Mae Weems’ 2017 event The Shape of Things and 2021 convening and concert series Land of Broken Dreams, whose participants included Elizabeth Alexander, Theaster Gates, Elizabeth Diller, Nona Hendryx, Somi, and Spike Lee, among others; a daylong Lenape Pow Wow and Standing Ground Symposium held in the Wade Thompson Drill Hall, the first congregation of Lenape Elders on Manhattan Island since the 1700s; “A New Vision for Justice in America” conversation series in collaboration with Common Justice, exploring new coalitions, insights, and ways of understanding question of justice and injustice in relation moderated by FLEXN Evolution creators Reggie (Regg Roc) Gray and director Peter Sellars; the 2019 Black Artists Retreat hosted by Theaster Gates, which included public talks and performances, private sessions for the 300 attending artists, and a roller skating rink; 100 Years | 100 Women, a multiorganization commissioning project that invited 100 women artists and cultural creators to respond to women’s suffrage; a Queer Hip Hop Cypher, delving into the queer origins and aesthetics of hip hop with Astraea award-winning duo Krudxs Cubensi and author and scholar Dr. Shante Paradigm Smalls; the Archer Aymes Retrospective, exploring the legacy of emancipation through an immersive art installation curated by Carl Hancock Rux and featuring a concert performance by mezzo soprano Alicia Hall Moran and pianist Aaron Diehl, presented as one component of a three-part series commemorating Juneteenth in collaboration with Harlem Stage and Lincoln Center as part of the Festival of New York; and legendary artist Nao Bustamante’s BLOOM, a cross-disciplinary investigation centered around the design of the vaginal speculum and its use in the exploitative and patriarchal history of the pelvic examination.

Notable Public Programming salons include: the Literature Salon hosted by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, whose participants included Lynn Nottage, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Jeremy O. Harris, a Spoken Word Salon co-hosted with the Nuyorican Poets Cafe; a Film Salon featuring the works of immersive artist and film director Lynette Wallworth; “Museum as Sanctuary” led by installation artist and Artist-in-Residence Tania Bruguera, curated by Sonia Guiñansaca and CultureStrike, and featuring undocu-artists Julio Salgado and Emulsify; a Dance Salon presented in partnership with Dance Theater of Harlem, including New York City Ballet’s Wendy Whelan and choreographer Francesca Harper, among others; and Captcha: Dancing, Data, Liberation, a salon exploring Black visual complexity and spirit, led by visionary artist Rashaad Newsome and featuring Saidiya V. Hartman, Kiyan Williams, Dazié Rustin Grego-Sykes, Ms.Boogie, Puma Camillê, and others.

Artist Talks have featured esteemed artists, scholars, and thought leaders, such as: architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in conversation with Ai Wei Wei, moderated by Juilliard president Damian Woetzel; director Ariane Mnouchkine and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner in conversation with New Yorker editor David Remnick; director Ivo van Hove in conversation with James Nicola, Artistic Director of New York Theater Workshop; artist William Kentridge and his collaborators Philip Miller and Thuthuka Sibisi in conversation with Dr. Augustus Casely Hayford, Director of the Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art; Lehman Trilogy director Sam Mendez and adapter Ben Powers in conversation with playwright Lynn Nottage; artist and composer Heiner Goebbels in conversation with composer, vocalist, and scholar Gelsey Bell; choreographer Bill T. Jones in conversation with architect Elizabeth Diller and designer Peter Nigrini, moderated by vocalist and performance artist Helga Davis; and composer, librettist, and director Michel van der Aa in conversation with conceptual and performance artist Marina Abramovic.

www.armoryonpark.org

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Media Contacts
For more information or to request images, please contact:
Tom Trayer, tomtrayer@armoryonpark.org or (212) 933-5801
Allison Abbott, aabbott@armoryonpark.org or (212) 933-5834