The Long Table is a dinner party structured by etiquette, where conversation is the only course.
The project combines theatricality and models for public engagement. It is at once a stylised appropriation and an open-ended, non-hierarchical format for participation. Both of these elements – theatrical craft and political commitment – are mutually supporting in this widely and internationally toured work. The (often-feminised) domestic realm here becomes a stage for public thought.
Everyone in the room has the power (and imperative, with the communal interest for a more satisfying discussion) to shift the direction of conversation, to mediate moments of tension and to make space for voices less easily heard. This format was named and organized as “the long table” by Lois Weaver.
More informaiton below about some of the participants of the long table discussions held at the Stamps Gally on Nov. 1st:
Tony WhitfieldTONY WHITFIELD is a multi-media artist, designer, and educator who, from 1976 to 2000, was an influential member of the public and non-profit sectors in NYC’s arts community. His experience ranges from Associate Director of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council where he produced to Senior Policy Analyst for Cultural Affairs in the Office of the Manhattan Borough President, to Performance Curator at Just Above Midtown Inc. and Director of Printed Matter Inc. Having relocated to Detroit in 2020, he has managed, developed and curated projects for the Ruth Ellis Center and the Alger Theater. Born in 1954 in North Philadelphia, Whitfield is a 2023 Kresge Artist Fellow and a 2023 Creator of Culture award winner from the Kresge and Hudson Webber Foundations, and recipient of grants from the Jerome and Camargo Foundations. Currently, he is an Emeritus Professor at The New School University in NYC where he taught at Parsons School of Design for 27 years and served in roles including Chair of the Product Design Department, and Associate Dean for Civic Engagement and Social Justice Issues, and teaches at School of Visual Arts in NYC and has been a Teaching Fellow at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hill, MI. In 2024, Whitfield presented Considering a Young Man, at Wasserman Projects in Detroit and is exhibiting in the National Design Museum at the Cooper Hewitt’s 2024-5 Triennial in the installation of the Black Artist and Designer’s Guild in the Carnegie Library. His artworks were shown, in 2022 and 2024 cumulatively, at six venues in the exhibitions of Mighty Real Queer Detroit. Throughout the COVID pandemic, he was an online curator and facilitator for Village Berlin’s STRETCH Festivals. His theater work has been shown by La MaMa, ETC in NYC. Presenters of work include, in solo shows HOWL! Happening in NYC, the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano (ICPNA) in Lima, Peru, Centre LGBTQ in Paris; and in group exhibitions in galleries and museums, Village in Berlin, NYC’s Museum of Art and Design, Leslie Lohman Museum, and The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History in New York and Philadelphia, and design exhibitions in the US, Italy and Japan in the 1990’s. His video installation, Paris,1938, was featured in Paris’ NUIT BLANCHE 2017. Whitfield has also published seven artists’ books, and writes about art, new media, film, performance art and design.
Nicole MarroquinNicole Marroquin is a transdisciplinary artist and educator who explores youth resistance movements, belonging and spatial justice through histories of Black and Latinx Chicago. She recently presented projects at the American Association of Research Librarians Annual Conference, University of Pittsburgh, New School, Newberry Library, Harold Washington Public Library, Midwest Archives Conference, DePaul Museum of Art, Columbia College, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, the Poetry Foundation, MICA, Archivist Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, Northwestern University, the Kochi Biennale in Kerala India, Museum of Contemporary Art, Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan, College Art Association, University of Chicago, University of Illinois and the Art Institute of Chicago for the symposium The Wall of Respect and People’s Art Since 1967. Her essays have been published in the Visual Arts Research Journal, Counter Signals, Chicago Social Practice History Series, Organize Your Own: The Politics and Poetics of Self-Determination Movements, Revista Contratiempo, The Quarantine Times and AREA Chicago Magazine. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Mexican Art, DePaul Museum, and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum. She has won multiple Propeller Awards, a 3Arts Make a Wave grant, an Envisioning Justice grant from Illinois Humanities, the Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz Women of Excellence Award for her work in her community and in 2020 was the recipient of the USA Fellowship. In 2019 she began a social media project called Chicago Raza Research Consortium and she is a member of the justseeds and Chicago ACT artist collectives. She is Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.
Allyson MitchellAllyson Mitchell’s individual and collaborative art practice uses sculpture, performance, installation, and film to explore feminist and queer ideas. These articulations have resulted in a fat activist group called Pretty Porky and Pissed Off, a coven of lesbian feminist Sasquatch monsters and a room-sized Vagina Dentata.
Recently, Mitchell and core collaborator Deirdre Logue presented Killjoy's Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House (Toronto, London, Los Angeles and Philadelphia). This project is an expansive and maximalist queer nightmare of epic proportions.
Mitchell and Logue directed the F.A.G Feminist Art Gallery in Toronto and satellite spaces from 2010-2020. Currently, they are developing FAR Feminist Artist Residency on 64 acres of conservation protected land in Ontario Canada. Allyson Mitchell is an Associate Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University.
Joey QuiñonesJoey Quiñones is a fiber and ceramic artist. Their work focuses on African American and Caribbean history, as well as the intricacies of Afro-Latinx identity. They were selected as an Emerging Artist of 2020 by Ceramics Monthly, an Augusta Savage Grant recipient by the National Sculpture Society, and an Annual Prize Finalist by Manifest Gallery. Their work has been shown at venues such as the Belger Arts Center, Manifest Gallery, the Akron Art Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center, the Crocker Museum, the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, and the Winterthur Museum. In the 2024-2025 academic year they will serve as the McAndless Distinguished Professor Chair at Eastern Michigan University. They have an MFA in Studio Art from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa. They have had residencies at Vermont Studio Center, the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, and the Arts/Industry residency in Foundry at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. They are currently the Artist-in-Residence/Head of the Fiber Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI.
Chris E. VargasChris E. Vargas is a transdiciplinary artist whose work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical & institutional memory and popular culture. He earned his MFA in the department of Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011 and his BA in the Film & Digital Media department from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006. He is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award, a 2020 John S. Guggenheim fellowship, and a 2024 Latinx Artist Fellowship. From 2008-2013, he made, in collaboration with Greg Youmans, the web-based trans/cisgender sitcom Falling In Love...with Chris and Greg. With Eric Stanley, Vargas co-directed the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-length sequel Criminal Queers (2015) Vargas is also the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, a critical and conceptual arts & hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape.Deirdre LogueFor the past 20 years, the film and video work of Canadian artist Deirdre Logue has focused on the self as subject. Using 'performance for the camera' as a primary mode of production, her compelling self-portraits investigate what it means to be a queer body in the age of anxiety.
Logue has been prolific and steadfast in her engagement with the moving image and has subsequently produced upwards of 60 short films and videos as well as some of this country's most celebrated video art installations including Enlightened Nonsense (1997-2000), ten hand- processed performance-based works about childhood worries; Why Always Instead of Just Sometimes (2003-2007), twelve works that are reflections on aging, breaking down and reparation; Id's Its (2012), an ambitious suite of thirteen installations exploring the richness of our malfunctions and Euphoria's Hiccups (2013) an intentionally intense, site specific work incorporating upwards of 20 small video screens, still imagery, sound and psychoactive plants; cross-pollinating Logue's tendencies towards obsession and addiction with contemporary thinking on healing, landscape and mindfulness.
Esther Newton
Esther Newton is a founder of and leading scholar in LGBTQ studies. She has taught at Purchase College of the State University of New York, the University of Paris VII, Paris, France and the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). She was active in Second Wave Feminism, Gay Liberation and the Lesbian/Feminist movements. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Hebrew, Polish and Slovak. She is the subject of Jean Carlomusto’s documentary, Esther Newton Made Me Gay.
Larry LaFountain-StokesLawrence (Larry) La Fountain-Stokes is a Puerto Rican writer, scholar, and performer. He is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the author of Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), Escenas transcaribeñas: ensayos sobre teatro, performance y cultura (Isla Negra Editores, 2018), and Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2021). He coedited Keywords for Latina/o Studies (New York University Press, 2017) with Deborah R. Vargas and Nancy Raquel Mirabal. His books of fiction include Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails (2009) and Abolición del pato (2013). Larry performs in drag as Lola von Miramar since 2010 and has appeared in several episodes of the YouTube series Cooking with Drag Queens. He is currently writing a book on contemporary Puerto Rican performance.
Clare Croft
Clare Croft is a writer, a dance historian and theorist, a dramaturg and curator, and someone who dances. She is the author of Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life and the editor of The Essential Jill Johnston Reader, both out from Duke this month. She is also the editor of Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings, the founder and curator of the EXPLODE queer dance festival, and the author of Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange. Clare is Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan.Ksenia M. Soboleva
Dr. Ksenia M. Soboleva is a New York based writer and art historian specializing in queer art and culture. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with a dissertation titled "Fragments: Art, AIDS, and Lesbian Identity in the United States." Her writings have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, Artforum, Hyperallergic, as well as various monographs and exhibition catalogues. She has curated exhibitions at Candice Madey Gallery, La MaMa Galleria, and Assembly Room. Soboleva was the 2020-2021 Vilcek Curatorial Fellow at the Guggenheim Museum, and the 2022-2024 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Gender and LGBTQ+ History at the New York Historical Society. Currently, she is working on a book project titled "Friendship as a Way of Art: Queer Identity and Visual Citation," and co-editing the first monograph on TRIAL BALLOON, a 1990s gallery and project space that highlighted lesbian artists.. She teaches at the New School and NYU.
Audrey Banks
Audrey Banks is a graduate student in the Arts Administration program at the University of Michigan-Flint, specializing in creating inclusive and transformative spaces for queer artists. As an interdisciplinary artist, Audrey’s work bridges the gap between the university campus and the Flint community, fostering collaboration and dialogue through art. Her projects center around themes of resilience, identity, and self-expression, particularly within the LGBTQIA+ community. Audrey has curated and led exhibitions that spotlight marginalized voices, using her artistic and administrative skills to build platforms where queer art can thrive, connect, and inspire.Moe Angelos
Moe Angelos is a theatre artist and writer. She's one of the OBIE-Award winning Five Lesbian Brothers and has been a member of the Wow Café Theatre in NYC since 1981. She's a main collaborator with The Builders Association, making media-infused performances that have toured all over the universe that is accessible to non-billionaires. She has collaborated with many downtown NYC luminaries including Holly Hughes, Lisa Kron, Anne Bogart, Lois Weaver, Kate Stafford, Carmelita Tropicana, Brooke O’Harra, Half Straddle, New Georges and The Ridiculous Theatrical Company. She has been a mentor in Queer/Art/Mentorship several times and in Toronto, her work has been presented at FADO Centre for Performance Art and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. She is currently developing a piece with the Builders about artificial intelligence's insidious influence on the democratic process, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. During Covid-19, she appeared on Zoom, Twitch and Streamyard and currently, by day, she works in United Scenic Artists 829 painting scenery and helping make Hollywood dreams come true. Moe is not on the socials so don't try to click and subscribe but if you're curious ask ChatGPT about her.
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