NYC TOHP’s residency launched with a discussion group hosted by The Center Archive and OutHistory’s First Tuesday Queer History Meetup (October 3) led by the iconic scholar Jonathan Ned Katz, who has published five books on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender U.S. history. On the evening of October 3 t-boy picnic presented ”Transmasculine Futures”, a conversation bringing together those who identify with transmasculinity and on Oct 4th, TransEquity hosted an evening of performances, Born with Red Ink: stefa marin alarcon and Cecilia Gentili, as well as a screening of Born with an Extra Rib.

During the second week of NYC TOHP’s residency, Jewish Currents hosted “How to Build a Radical Archive: Oral history and the people who make it,” convening Black and Jewish oral historians for a conversation on diasporic archival work, moderated by Ari Brostoff (October 11). Queer|Art and the NYC TOHP revived the Flashback Series with an intergenerational conversation between Fran Tirado and Connie Fleming on Oct 12. Finally, two separate experimental dances entitled “Exult and open:dance figure” by Reed Rushes & Kate Williams, and Josie Bettman were performed on October 13.

Additional on-site activations included a film screening room curated by Xiomara Sebastián Castro Niculescu, entitled “Corpus Immundus: Notes from the Underside,” which is “a love letter, an audiovisual ode to trannies, travestis, hookers, and street queens - to those threateningly opaque and sensuous figures lurking in the shadows of trans history,’ too filthy for its sanitizing embrace.” T4Tapes, a DIY Brooklyn-based collective that creates cassette compilations by and for trans people, curated a sound room. Lastly, a sound installation was on view from October 10-14th created by Aviva Silverman, entitled, “Angelic Hosts''. The piece is a manifestation of the digital collection of the NYC Trans Oral History Project in which the artist has suspended 36 auditory excerpts from 36 narrators - stories bridging time and space, reaching towards Olam ha Ba (Hebrew for “The World that is Coming,” understood to be a world of harmony, peace and justice.) Visitors were invited to hold these illuminated orbs, each containing a unique story, connecting the listener to the legacy illuminated through the collection. More information about these installation can be read on the Park Avenue Armory’s site.

This residency is presented in conjunction with MUTANT;DESTRUDO, the Armory’s new commission by the multifaceted artist and creator Arca that continues her practice of addressing themes of psychosexuality, science fiction, and gender identity.