Courtesy the Artists is a shifting collective based in New York, organized by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, who started the project when moving from LA to New York in 2012.
The collective has taken on prompts and performed at a range of institutes, and is now convening as part of the On Your Marx festival to consider the question of Popular Revolt, asking their collaborators (and audiences): How would you act in a Social Democracy? Learn more about the Popular Revolt performers:
Miguel Gutierrez | Latasha N. Nevada Diggs | Ryan McNamara | Seung-Min Lee | Alison Kizu-Blair
Plus, read more about Gaines & Segades’ other collective, My Barbarian, in an Indefinite Article by Fred Moten.
Courtesy has worked with trained performers in the past, but one of the interesting things about Occupy, and about student protest more generally, is how it asks you to put your body into a situation that’s fairly unfamiliar in order to create change. It doesn’t require an expertise, and that’s interesting for us to explore here.
Curation as collaboration was the ethos behind The Meeting… Gaines and Segade were much more than masters of ceremony, but performed alongside the artists and musicians they invited. At times The Meeting felt more like a jam session than anything else, following the improvisatory and ensemblic ethos of experimental jazz.
This is the structure of the song; this is Malik and Alex’s structure. Duet as genre; love affair as collective action. Your song’s lyrics are acts of seeking and longing: She is everywhere — at the roses fair, grounded — but nowhere to be found. Like blackness. Like love… Here, he can be she can be you can be you.
Meanwhile, revisit last season’s Office Hours interview with Alexandro Segade and the creative team behind RIOT.
Office hours with THISISPOPBABY and Alexandro Segade!
Office hours with THISISPOPBABY and Alexandro Segade!
Posted by NYU Skirball on Monday, February 12, 2018
Before the show, do your homework! Read Brecht’s “He Said Yes/He Said No” – one of the texts being used as a shared source text for performers.
Nothing is more important to learn than agreement.
Many can say yes; at the same time there is no agreement.
Many are not even asked, and many
May be agreeing to error. Therefore:
Nothing is more important to learn than agreement.