JACK Partners On A Timely New Festival Tackling Censorship

JACK will present UNDOXX: A Series for Untangling Censorship, curated and organized by zavé martohardjono, Maya Simone Z., and Jamie Chan, November 6 - 23, 2024.

Tickets: Sliding Scale tickets available at https://www.jackny.org/undoxx-2024, hello@jackny.org

About the Festival

Across three weeks, UNDOXX will present performances, films, and new media works, conversations, teach-ins, and resource-sharing events for artists seeking tools to navigate the shifting landscape of censorship in the arts. Censorship of artists in the U.S. is currently surging as a powerful force, yet it is not unprecedented. By bringing together global majority artists, queer artists, marginalized artists who have understood its inner workings for generations, UNDOXX will spark conversation and generate resources for artists and audiences in the U.S. to understand censorship in the arts, its history, and its current evolutions. UNDOXX will make space for people to learn in community and present work by censored artists as their primary intervention.  

FESTIVAL ARTISTS & SCHEDULE:

November 6th at 7:30pm: Collective Reading and Conversation with Sister Sylvester 

November 6th - 22nd: FIREWALL Internet Cafe by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee
Gallery Hours: November  9, 10, 13, 16, 17, and 22 from 12-7pm. 

November 8th at 7:30pm: NCAC Teach-in on Censorship in the Arts in the U.S. and Opening Reception 
  
November 13th at 7:30pm: New Media Works by Bleue Liverpool, Fina Ferrara, Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, and Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre. 
  
November 15th - 17th at 7:30pm: THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END by Mette Loulou von Kohl and ALTAR EGO by Nora Alami 

November 21st at 6:00pm: Contemporary Dance Workshop with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

November 22nd at 7:30pm: Screenings of 3 x 13 and Losing it by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre 

November 23rd at 2:00pm: Community Dabke Workshop with Yaa Samar Dance Theatre 

PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS:

Wednesday, November 6th at 7:30pm:

Collective Reading and Conversation with Sister Sylvester

Join Sister Sylvester for a collective reading from handmade books that are part of the artist's performance The Eagle and the Tortoise. The Eagle and the Tortoise tells the story of a young student from Turkey who became an icon of leftist resistance, an armed militant, a political prisoner, and finally, a proxy soldier in an American war. It traces the history of the aerial view—in art, mythology, journalism, and warfare—to make the case for other ways of looking. Collective reading will feature one chapter from the book, and open into a conversation with Sister Sylvester facilitated by undoxx curators on censorship the artist and collaborators encountered in presenting The Eagle and the Tortoise.

Sister Sylvester is a multimedia artist based in New York and Istanbul. In collaboration with Deniz Tortum she created the VR documentary Shadowtime ('23), which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and continues to tour to festivals including IDFA, GIFF, Thessaloniki Film Festival, and SXSW; and the film Our Ark which premiered at IDFA ('21) and has screened at festivals internationally. In her live work she creates visual essays and books that become performances as well as spatial narratives that play with spoken and written text to create communal reading experiences. Her work has been called ‘genuinely subversive' by Time Out NY; ‘imaginative and original' by New York Times; ‘pulse-raising' by Exeunt Magazine, ‘perplexing' by Theaterscene, ‘apocalyptic' by artforum, and ‘otherworldly, intimate, off-kilter, queer artistic org*sm' by Life Magazine, Greece.

Wednesday, November 6 - Friday, November 22nd:

FIREWALL Internet Cafe by Joyce Yu-Jean Lee

Drop by JACK's lobby during open gallery hours to view FIREWALL Internet Cafe, an interactive software program created by artist Joyce Yu-Jean Lee. Laying bare limits to Internet freedom, FIREWALL is a software which compares image search results from Google in the U.S. with Baidu in China. Visitors can search for internet images through FIREWALL and, with side-by-side results from the two browsers, vote on perceived censorship in the search results. Each vote is archived in a public research database through this socially engaged research project. Visualizing the urgent and rapidly-evolving issue of Internet censorship, FIREWALL offers users first-hand interaction with information manipulation on the Internet. The work explores user's perception of censorship, a key consideration for netizens in the U.S. amidst legislative debates over federal bans on the cultural content leader and Chinese app TikTok. 

Joyce Yu-Jean Lee is a visual artist who combines video, glass sculpture, and interactive installation with social practice and institutional critique. Her artwork examines how media, technology, and culture shape notions of truth and understanding of the "other." She recently exhibited at The Delaware Contemporary and Kreeger Museums; and her artwork has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hong Kong Free Press, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic and on BBC Radio. She received grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; Arts Mid-Hudson, Asian Women Giving Circle; Franklin Furnace Fund, Maryland State Arts Council and The Walters Art Museum; and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower and Hamiltonian Artists. Her project about Internet censorship, FIREWALL, garnered backlash from Chinese state authorities in 2016 and has been presented at the Hong Kong Center for Community Cultural Development, Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ), and the Oslo Freedom Forum in New York, Norway, and Taiwan. Joyce received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Pratt Institute in NYC.

Saturday, November 8th at 7:30pm:

NCAC Teach-in on Censorship in the Arts in the U.S.

Join Elizabeth Larison, Director of the Arts & Culture Advocacy Program at the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), for a teach-in on recent art censorship in the U.S. Larison will explore examples including the silencing of artists making work that critiques police brutality, the military-industrial complex, and more. This teach-in will offer artists tools to define censorship in the U.S. context, identify its mechanisms, and understand factors that lead to self-censorship. Case examinations and subsequent discussion will equip participants with a deeper understanding of the relational and institutional work needed to protect artistic freedom. 

Elizabeth Larison is Director of the Arts & Culture Advocacy Program at the National Coalition Against Censorship, leading initiatives to advise and educate artists, writers, playwrights, as well as curators and other cultural intermediaries, in how to address the presentation of controversial works. Larison is also an active member of Don't Delete Art, a collaboration between free speech organizations and activists working to defend the freedom of artistic expression online. Prior to joining NCAC, Elizabeth earned a BA in Human Rights and a MA in Curatorial Studies, and worked in curatorial, programmatic, and directorial capacities for arts organizations and venues such as Flux Factory, the Park Avenue Armory, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and apexart.

Wednesday, November 13th at 7:30pm:

New Media Works by Bleue Liverpool, Fina Ferrara, Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, and Joyce Yu-Jean Lee

Join us for a night of incisive and emotionally resonant new media works. Work include: Joyce Yu-Jean Lee's documentary short, FIREWALL which tells her story of facing censorship while producing a new media work exposing the limits of Internet freedom. Bleue Liverpool's newest expanded cinematic essay ARTICLE 19___ responds to international cultural workers facing McCarthyist-style sanctions on their freedom of expression. Fina Ferrara's visceral short film SARAH, delves into vulnerability and the complexity of processing grief. Ferrara created SARAH, a performance on video, as part of her healing journey after undergoing an abortion. In Monterrey, Mexico abortions are illegal, and open discussion of reproductive justice and artworks about it are suppressed. Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre's multivocal collection of short films, 3 x 13, features a dance film performed by Palestinian artist Samaa Wakim, choreographed by Samar Haddad King, and directed by Eimi Imanishi. Wakim recounts a daily bus ride to Haifa University and the assumptions of fellow passengers and questions of safety which arise in the time of a trip, offering an intimate glimpse into her inner and outer worlds as a Palestinian woman.

Fina Ferrara is a Mexican performance and video artist. She started her artistic career as a professional classical ballet dancer at the age of 10. Seeking to exploit her interpretative skills, she later incorporated contemporary dance and theater into her training. Exploring movement is a fundamental element in her work. In 2010, she decided to step out of the stage and interact intimately with the audience, performing in art galleries, museums, and art fairs. Producing video art is her secondary, though equally strong, form of expression. As a multidisciplinary artist, she creates sculpture, photography, painting, and installation, and composes original music for her own work, collaborating with other artists as well. Ferrara's work has been exhibited in London, Paris, New York, Venice, Rome, Madrid, Marbella, Turkey, Colombia, Brazil, Chicago, and, of course, Mexico. She has been awarded the Power of Creativity Art Prize and Faces of the Peace Art Prize by Contemporary Art Curator Magazine, in 2021 and 2022 respectively, the International Prize Leonardo da Vinci, The Universal Artist, in 2023, and selected as one of the Top Contemporary Artists to watch in 2024 by Contemporary Art Curator Magazine. For Fina, performance is an ongoing act of collective self-evolution.

Joyce Yu-Jean Lee (see above)

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) creates invigorating performance and education programs that expand access to - and promote understanding through - the arts. Founded in 2005 by Samar Haddad King in NYC, YSDT has a repertoire of 30+ original works performed across NYC, regionally, and abroad in 18 countries across four continents. Since 2011, the company has worked transnationally between NYC and Palestine, and is committed to uniting diverse artists and audiences in the creative process, rooted in the belief that art should be liberating, transformative, and accessible to all. For more information, visit: www.ysdt.org.

Bleue Liverpool is a Caribbean-American fluxus Intermedia arts practitioner. She is second-generation Lesser Antillean of the island nations Grenada, St. Vincent, and Haiti. Liverpool grew up in a port city, is talented at geometry and has inherited Movement(s). Her work is informed by multicultural anti-colonial feminist discourses, afro-surrealism, Situationist afro-marxism, and the Nègritude/Créolité movement. Liverpool holds an MFA in film/video from Bard College (2022), New York, U.S.A. She was The Mary Ellen Mark Memorial Scholar for the certification program in New Media Narratives at The International Center Of Photography (2018) in New York City. Liverpool attended Université Paris VIII St. Denis Vincennes for Cinema Studies and Brooklyn College for Documentary Film Production. Her candidacy in the practice-based doctoral program at Goldsmiths University of London in the Visual Cultures department will commence in September 2025. 
 

Thursday, November 15th - 17th at 7:30pm:

Mette Loulou von Kohl: THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END

THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END is a new performance by Mette Loulou von Kohl. Centering queer sensuality, pleasure, and fantasy, von Kohl satirically comments on the counter-terror industry of the Zionist State. THERE ARE NO WORDS, SO MAY IT BE THE END is a multivocal, multimedia solo performance in which the artist proposes Palestinian futurity to challenge and destabilize settler colonial projects and identities.

Mette Loulou von Kohl was born from the orange at the center before the new world came. She is a cultural worker, community organizer, and wanderer. von Kohl employs her art as a tool in the struggle to end the colonization of Palestine. She is an alum of EmergeNYC, a former Macdowell Colony Fellow, and Jerome Foundation AIRspace Resident. von Kohl has performed nationally and across Europe. She exists in two places at once.

Nora Alami: ALTAR EGO

ALTAR EGO stages altars for kindred, mythic, and discarded selves. Meditating on relationships to power and internalized racial, colonial logics, ALTAR EGO transforms the gaze of the altar to manipulate vantage points that place the sacred alongside the desecrated. Alami's performance tenderly unsettles portals of surveillance and (anti)care. ALTAR EGO asks, how do we sustain feeling deeply?

Nora Alami is a Moroccan-American experimental dance artist and creative producer. Dance is her tool for conducting research, building community, and organizing politically. Her artistic works research nostalgia for a sense of belonging never quite experienced and join disparate realities through sensuality, embodiment, and materiality. She has been awarded MANCC Forward Dialogues 3, New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Choreographic Residency, CUNY Dance Initiative, BRIClab: Performing Arts Residency, JACK Artist Residency, and Rest and Restore at The Petronio Center. Her choreography has been presented at LaMaMa Moves!, Danspace Project's DraftWork series, Triskelion Arts, Houston Metropolitan Dance Center, Center for Performance Research, New York Live Arts, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, River to River Festival, and toured with Jadd Tank at the 2018 Focus on Mediterranean Choreography platform in Italy. She holds a Masters degree in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Nora loves to collaborate across disciplines. Reach out to connect at thenoralami@gmail.com or @noralami on Instagram.

Thursday, November 21st at 6:00pm:

Contemporary Dance Workshop with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre taught by Zoe Rabinowitz and Samar Haddad King

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) views technique as a means of furthering our bodies as instruments for creative expression. This contemporary dance workshop starts with an anatomically mindful warm-up, and evolves through guided improvisation scores. Blending contemporary dance and theater to explore themes from YSDT repertory works, this dance workshop draws on visualization, improvisation, and play to facilitate an experiential, process-driven environment that empowers participants and meets them where they are in their practice. YSDT's goals as educators are to provide new tools for creative expression, validate individuals through empowered choice-making, honor diverse perspectives and abilities, and center the power of storytelling in pursuit of social justice.

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) (see above)

Zoe Rabinowitz is the Executive Director and a founding member of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre. Originally from Vermont, Zoe graduated from the Walnut Hill School for the Arts before earning her BFA in Dance from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, with additional studies at De Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Netherlands). Her own work for stage and film has been presented throughout the US, and abroad in Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Mexico, and South Korea. In recognition of her work as a leader in the non-profit field, Zoe was awarded a 2020 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Emerging Leaders Fellowship and selected as a New York Community Trust Leadership Fellow in the same year.

Friday, November 22nd at 7:30pm:

Screenings of Films by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

The screenings will be followed by a discussion on traditions of Revolutionary Dance moderated by zavé martohardjono.

3 x 13

3 x 13 explores the singularity of the individual and the universality of the human experience. Comprised of 12 short films with original music by Lou Tides, 12 artists from around the globe share a journey of transformation that deeply marked their lives. These personal accounts of parenthood, loss, race, exile, dreams both realized and abandoned, all find expression through a common choreography for body and camera, offering an intimate glimpse into the performers' inner and outer worlds. The work culminates in an interactive 13th film that unites all 12 journeys in a virtual ensemble that invites audiences to chart their own course across 5 languages and 8 countries: Cuba, Egypt, France, Mali, Mexico, Palestine, South Korea, and the US. 3 x 13 was produced by Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and created by award-winning Director Eimi Imanishi and Choreographer Samar Haddad King.

Losing It 

In Losing It, Palestinian choreographer Samaa Wakim asks herself how experiencing war impacts her identity and how intergenerational trauma manifests in her own body. Losing It dives into the artist's memories of growing up under occupation, exploring various realities she lives in, fear, and the fantasies she created out of fear and hope in order to survive. Losing It is about unstable worlds that disintegrate and warp, and Wakim's perspective from within a world where reality and fantasy blur. Palestinian-American artist Samar Haddad King performs a live score featuring field recordings taken throughout Palestine since 2010. King's soundscape—layered with traffic sirens, dabke music, prayer recitations, and bombs—weave together with Wakim's vocals blending resonances that cause fear with ones that provide solace. Emblematic of the power of dance and sound to activate political awakening, Losing It is a precise, stark, and textural portrait of how past and present cloud the future.

Samaa Wakim is a performer, choreographer and cultural manager based in Palestine. She graduated from the acting department of Haifa University. Performance credits include: I am Yusuf and This is My Brother (Shibir Hur and Young Vic Theater, London 2009); The Beloved, (Shibir Hur and Bush Theater, London, 2012); Exit & Ble Ble Bel (Khashabi Theatre, Palestine, 2011); Badke (A.M. Qattan foundation, KVS Theater, and Les ballets C de la B, Brussels 2012- 2017); bound (Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre and Sareyyet Ramallah, Ramallah, 2014); Against a Hard Surface (Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre Hamburg 2017); Modern Curses, co-directed and choreographed by Bashar Murkus and Wakim (Khashabi Theater, Haifa 2018); Last Ward (Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, Paris, 2018); The Cabaret (Khashabi Theatre, Haifa, 2018); The Father (Al Jawal Theater, Haifa, 2021); LOSING IT, co-creat ed with Samar Haddad King (Festival Theaterformen, Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, Khashabi Theatre, Hannover, 2021). She is a production manager of Haifa Independent Film Festival 2019 & 2023 and member of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (since 2014) and Khashabi Theatre (since 2008).

Samar Haddad King is a writer, choreographer, and composer and Artistic/Founding Director of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT); King graduated from the Ailey/Fordham BFA program (NYC). King's work has been performed in 19 countries on 4 continents, with commissions throughout the US and abroad including The Shed (NYC); Hubbard Street 2 (Chicago); Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival (Ramallah); The Walk with Littla Amal: Good Chance Theatre (Marseille) and St. Ann's Warehouse/The Walk Productions (NYC); /si:n/ Festival (Ramallah), among others. Awards/Fellowships include: 2023/24 Creative Capital Wild Futures Award, Prix des Jeunes Créateurs Palestiniens pour la Diversité des Expressions Artistiques (Palest'In & Out Festival, Paris); La Fabrique Chaillot Residency (Chaillot - théâtre national de la Danse, Paris); The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and Toulmin Creator (CBA/ National Sawdust, NYC). Theater and musical theater credits include Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, NYC), Hoota (Sard Theatre, Haifa) and We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theater, Boston) among others. 
  
Eimi Imanishi is an award winning Japanese American filmmaker who grew up in France.  Her short films include “Battalion To My Beat” (2016) which was shot in the Western Saharan refugee camps in Algeria and screened at over 50 festivals worldwide including Toronto International Film Festival, and won the Canal+ Award for Best International Short at Le Festival du Court Metrage de Clermont-Ferrand in 2017; and “One-Up” (2016), which won Best Narrative Short at IndieMemphis and was released online as a Vimeo Staff Pick film and won Short Of The Week. Imanishi is a 2018 Sundance Directing and Screenwriting Fellow, a 2018 Film Independent Directing Fellow, and a 2019 Time Warner Fellow.  She is developing her first feature film titled “DOHA - The Rising Sun”.

Saturday, November 23rd at 2:00pm:

Community Dabke Workshop with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre 

Join Mohammed Smahneh (aka Barges) of Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) for a workshop on dabke, a Levantine folkloric dance traditionally used in cultural moments of celebration and resistance. This Dabke Workshop blends contemporary dance and theater with traditional dabke tools (including rhythm, footwork, unison movement) to invite improvisation and play within the traditional form. This workshop starts with an anatomically mindful warm-up and builds skills including technique, strength, stamina, rhythm and improvisation. The practice of dabke is inherently intertwined with social justice movements, and conversations around the use of dance and art in social justice movements will also be incorporated into this event. YSDT honors diverse perspectives and abilities of workshop participants and will offer new tools for creative expression. 

Mohammed Smahneh (aka Barges), a self-taught hip-hop and contemporary dance artist, has won various break-dance battles in Palestine and performed in many international and local projects including: Badke, a co-production between KVS, les ballets C de la B & A.M. Qattan Foundation (2013-16, Belgium); B choreographed by Koen Augustijnen and Rosalba Torres (2017-2019, Belgium);  Nomads Dance Camp directed by Dina Abu Hamdan with choreographers Jorge Crecis, Taoufiq Izzediou, and Samar Haddad King (2014, Jordan); Naji Ali with Botega Dance Company directed by Enzo Celli (2009, Italy); and was a champion in Floor Wars Battle (2012, Denmark). Mohammed has been a member of YSDT since 2013. 
  
Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre (YSDT) (see above)

ABOUT THE CURATORS & ORGANIZERS:

zavé martohardjono (they/them) is a queer and trans artist of Indonesian descent living on unceded Lenape land aka Flatbush, Brooklyn. They have worked interdisciplinarily across performance, dance, film, social justice, and community organizing since 2009. 

Maya Simone Z. (they/them) is a New York City-based interdisciplinary artist and producer that creates performance-based work centering emotional and spiritual connections between ancestral memory, the body, and the Black diaspora's collective capacity to dream. 

Jamie Chan (she/they) is a painter whose work covers a range of subjects, from post-it notes to figurative excerpts of renaissance paintings and early baseball cards. Also a writer and curator, they are a member of the artist-run gallery Essex Flowers.

Program assistance and support is provided by Theo Armstrong (he/they), a Brooklyn- based performer, producer, arts administrator, and writer, often working through the drag alter ego of Luxury Bones.  

ABOUT JACK:

JACK is an award-winning multidisciplinary performance meets civic space in Clinton, Brooklyn. JACK was created to fuel experiments in art and activism, collaborating with artists and neighbors to build a more just and vibrant society. We present over75 shows a year in music, dance and theater and hosts conversations on issues that are vital to the local community. JACK's programming centers artists of color and those dedicated to our collective liberation. Learn more online @jackartsny and www.jackny.org

JACK is centered on the land of the Munsee-Lenapee people. As one small step of extending gratitude towards the indigenous communities whose lands we occupy, 5% of all box office proceeds will be redistributed to Lenni Lenapexkweyok a collection of Lenape matriarchs organizing to increase Lenape presence in their homeland immediately and in the long term. This effort is being stewarded by River Whittle, community liaison for Emily Johnson/Catalyst and the Branch of Knowledge.

JACK's programming is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with Mayor Eric Adams, Speaker Adrienne Adams and the City Council, NYC Department of Youth and Community Development with the support of City Council Member Crystal Hudson, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Assembly Member Phara Souffrant Forrest, Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, Emma A. Sheafer Charitable Trust, The Hyde & Watson Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, The Bains Family Foundation, The John Golden Foundation, Ridgewood Savings Bank, Jody Falco & Jeffrey Steinman in addition to many generous individuals.

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