My name’sound (work-in-process)

In this BRIClab residency, Pioneers Go East Collective will work on their new piece, My name’sound.

My name’sound is a dance-theatre and film installation inspired by thought-provoking literary icon James Baldwin’s Artist Manifesto. More broadly, it is based on the writing of BIPOC Queer artists and literary geniuses such as Baldwin, Audrey Lorde and Lorraine Hansberry and their lesser-known Queer themed essays and works. A meditation on creative agency and Queer identity, we create a space of inclusion to celebrate cross-cultural and contemporary stories of resilience and otherness, juxtaposed against censorship and isolation.

My name’sound investigates our role as artists and how our everyday struggles affect our creative paths. Baldwin’s Manifesto on the artist’s responsibility and the intimacy and sensuality of “Giovanni’s Room” will launch a passionate exploration of the history, empowerment, and visibility of the LGBTQ experience in pursuit of artistic freedom. In a 1984 interview journalist Goldstein noted that writing “Giovanni’s Room” was “enormously risky and that his publisher suggested that he “burn” Giovanni’s Room because the theme of homosexuality would alienate him from his readership”, to which Baldwin replied, “The alternative was worse. If I hadn’t written that book, I would probably have had to stop writing altogether.”

Artistic Statement

By reframing and subverting American cultural icons and stereotypes, we call attention to the ongoing history of violence against LGBT people. We celebrate the queer body, as a physical, emotional and intellectual complex entity, to address matters of self-enlightment, trauma, and social justice. Working across a range of performance modes and media, to deploy personal reflections as a means of underscoring how the experiences of the individual and that of their community are inevitably bound together, hinting at the potential for collective action.

My name’sound (film still) by Pioneers Go East Collective. Featuring Joey Kipp and Daniel Diaz. Photo credit: Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte

Collective

Creative team
Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte (creative director/ filmmaker)
Philip Treviño (production designer)
Kryssy Wright (production designer)
Mark Tambella (installation designer)
Mert Erdem (cinematographer/editor)
Michael Wilson (2nd camera op/ special effects)
Bryan Baira (sound designer: Film)
Jo Wiegandt (stage manager)
Kate Zibluk (assistant production)

Performance Artists

Daniel Diaz (writer, performer / film performance artist)
syd island (musician/ vocal composer)
Vanessa Rappa (musician, performance artist)
Symara Johnson (choreographer/dancer)
Doron Perk (choreographer/dancer)
Matt Chilton (saxophone/ sound designer)
Agosto Machado (film performance artist/ writer)
Joey Kipp (dance-maker/ film performance artist/ writer)
Richard Morales (film performance artist/ writer)

History of our projects working collectively

Photo: Jon Burklund

Pioneers Go East Collective (the collective) is a radical Queer performance and video-art group based in New York City. We examine LGBTQ stories of vulnerability and courage combined with popular culture to facilitate communal meaning and advocate for cultural integrity. Since 2015 the collective is led by BIPOC artists and LGBTQ advocates Daniel Diaz, two-times Bessie recipient Philip Treviño, dance-maker and video-maker Bree Breeden, and Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte. In residence at La MaMa ETC and Judson Church, the collective explores contemporary performance and multimedia storytelling to portray same-gender-loving experiences, memory, and marginalization, that resonate with contemporary lives. In 2022 we received two a BRIC ARTS MEDIA residency, and a Center for Performance AiR (Artists-in-Residence). Widely presented in NYC over the past 7 years at La MaMa, Judson Church, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Chez Bushwick, Center for Performance Research, St Ann’s Warehouse, Exponential Festival, The LGBT Center, Ars Nova, Performance Mix/New Dance Alliance, Chashama, and Goethe Institut. The collective has received NYSCA (2020-22); NEA (2021-22); Puffin Foundation; Contemporary Arts Foundation (2019), LMCC grants (2011-2018); Mertz Gilmore (2020-22); LMCC’s Process Space Residency (2014-15); New Vic LabWorks Artists Associates (2015-16). The collective’s work has been critically lauded, with The New York Times highlighting our presentation of LUCKY STAR as a Critic’s pick for their “5 Things to do this Weekend” feature, while CULTUREBOT lauded the production as “a joyful, dreamlike meditation, past, future, and present in an intimate, luscious spacetime loop.” The New Yorker, ALL ARTS, Time Out New York, Dance Enthusiast, and American Theatre Magazine have highlighted Pioneers Go East Collective favorably in their publications. www.pioneersgoeast.org