NEW YORK, NY.- This winter, MoMA PS1 presents a series of public programs including performances, convenings, and talks by artists and scholars, details of which are newly announced and included below. As part of the major exhibition Ceremonies Out of the Air: Ralph Lemon, a program of six collaborative performances will continue through March. The Museum also inaugurates Winter Talks, a lecture series with distinguished speakers pushing forward critical discourse on issues urgent for artists, scholars, and cultural workers. As part of the March Open House program, artist DonChristian Jones presents Gotham Ball, a celebratory kiki ball to conclude their exhibition The Sumptuous Discovery of Gotham a Go-Go. All events are open to the public and free with RSVP.
“Building on the enthusiastic reception of recent scholarly lectures at the museum, including those of Silvia Federici, Jack Halberstam, and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, we’re excited to launch Winter Talks, a unique offering within the cultural landscape of New York that invites our audiences into critical conversations with leading thinkers of our time,” said Ruba Katrib, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1. “This year, I’m very excited to welcome Malcolm Harris and Catherine Liu, whose work deals with issues critical to artists and cultural workers today, continuing PS1’s history as a space for learning and cutting-edge ideas.”
The inaugural Winter Talks series invites the public into a forum on social issues that are urgent for artists, scholars, and cultural workers. On January 23, theorist and critic Malcolm Harris delivers a lecture on social movements designed to avert climate disaster. On March 6, critical theorist Catherine Liu discusses shortcomings of the “trauma script,” the idea of publicizing trauma to engender political expression and action.
The Ceremonies Out of the Air performance program includes several world and New York City premieres of Ralph Lemon’s newest works, which anchor the exhibition’s explorations of generosity, mortality, devotion, Blackness, and joy. These performances feature interpretations of Untitled (The greatest [Black] art history story ever told. Unfinished), Lemon’s layered and colorful series of works on paper, by Will Rawls and Saidiya Hartman. The events also include the world premiere of Low, which marks an unfolding of twenty years of collaboration between Ralph Lemon and dancer Darrell Jones. Tickets are released two weeks prior to each event. For more info and to reserve, visit mo.ma/lemon.
SCHEDULE
Winter Talk: Malcolm Harris
January 23, 7 p.m.
On January 23, theorist and critic Malcolm Harris delivers a lecture on social movements necessary to avert climate disaster. Drawing on material put forth in his upcoming book What's Left: Three Paths
Through the Planetary Crisis, Harris navigates histories of capital within visual art, tech, and environmental discourse. He is the bestselling author of books including Palo Alto: A History of
California, Capitalism, and the World (Little, Brown and Company, 2023), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials (Little, Brown and Company, 2023); and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of History (Melville House, 2020). As a journalist and critic, Harris offers materialist analysis that challenges prevailing narratives about the cultural development of the United States, advancing Marxist readings of labor geographies within a global economic context.
In Proximity
January 16, 18, 19*, 2025
*Brass Band only
Originally commissioned for the exhibition Bruce Nauman: Contrapposto Studies at Palazzo Grassi - Punta della Dogana, In Proximity makes its US premiere at MoMA PS1. Developed from Lemon’s research into movement, text, and sound in non-dance spaces, the performance extends his dialogue/argument with the performative sculptural practice of artist Bruce Nauman. The work features an original score and sound design realized in collaboration with Philip White. At MoMA PS1, In Proximity includes a prelude by the Brass Band, who virtuosically abstract music from the New Orleans jazz tradition.
Performers: Darrell Jones, Lysis (Ley), Jimena Paz, Samita Sinha
Brass Band: Bantu Al-Abu, Warren “Trae” Crudup III, Kalia Vandever, Chris Ryan Williams
Untitled (The greatest [Black] art history story ever told. Unfinished), Interpreted
February 15, 2025 | Will Rawls
March 8, 2024 | Saidiya Hartman
For these talks, invited guests respond to Ralph Lemon’s narrative epic, Untitled (The greatest [Black] art history story ever told. Unfinished) (2015–), a layered and colorful series of works on paper. Lemon notes the series deals “with charged places, architecture, and people historically and presently, and also in some sort of illusory future, and none of that is going to stop.” Participating artists, writers, theorists, and performers will each read or “interpret” Lemon’s abstract narrative from their distinct point of view.
Low
February 20 and 22, 2025
The world premiere of Low marks an unfolding of twenty years of collaboration between Ralph Lemon and dancer Darrell Jones. The duet embodies a physical exploration of the energy that comes after exertion, in the wake of performance—the transition from fury and exhaustion to something beyond.
Performers: Ralph Lemon, Darrell Jones
Ceremonies Out of the Air
March 1, 2025
Ceremonies Out of the Air encompasses an artist talk by Ralph Lemon that concludes several narrative ideas in the films and objects of the Walter Carter Suite, on view in the exhibition. This world premiere features an extended solo performance by dancer Darrell Jones.
Performers: Ralph Lemon, Darrell Jones
Winter Talk: Catherine Liu
March 6, 2025
Critical theorist Catherine Liu discusses shortcomings of the “trauma script,” the idea of publicizing trauma to engender political expression and action. A prominent critic of liberalism, Liu discusses the value of trauma within the cultural realm and the decomodification of mental health. She is the author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class (University of Minnesota Press, 2021) and The American Idyll: Academic Anti-Elitism as Cultural Critique (University of Iowa Press, 2011). Liu’s scholarship offers a means to critique the ideological frameworks of cultural industries today, addressing elite capture and the obfuscation of political struggle.
Rant #6
March 22, 2025
MoMA PS1 presents Rant #6, the latest (and perhaps final) iteration of Ralph Lemon’s collaborative work that debuted in 2019. Each performance is conceived as what Lemon calls “a very loud site-specific sound, movement, voice, Brown/Black body cultural experiment in rage, freedom and or ecstasy…”In Rant #6, voice, text, and trance movement collide into a whirlwind of exhaustion and emphatic resistance.
Performers: Kevin Beasley, Dwayne Brown, Paul Hamilton, Darrell Jones, Ralph Lemon, Lysis (Ley), Mariama Noguera-Devers, Okwui Okpokwasili, Angie Pittman, Samita Sinha, and invited guests
Gotham Ball
March 29, 2025
DonChristian Jones: The Sumptuous Discovery of Gotham a Go-Go extends the artist’s ongoing practice of world-building, where fruitful encounters and performances may happen at any moment, at times programmed and at others by chance or necessity. Jones and friends will stage the Gothami Ball, a kiki ball held in honor of Jones’s queer and trans artist community in NYC. Rooted in kinship and collaboration, much like Jones’s artistic practice, the ball will conclude their Adobe residency.
