TOBARON WAXMAN
CURATORIAL PROJECTS (2004 - PRESENT)

OBJECT - BODY: UNEXPECTEDLY ECSTATIC

"Dear Guest,

You are invited to OBJECT BODY: UNEXPECTEDLY ECSTATIC. Three artists of different genres take new works for a test drive, with the companionship of an intimate audience.

I'm thinking about movement and agency, as a red thread between three motion/movement based performances. Additionally, "OBJECT-BODY: UNEXPECTEDLY ECSTATIC" seeks to cross-genre pollinate, as a way to grow new audiences and support artists at critical moments in the process of developing an artwork.

Excerpts of new movement/dance performance works will be performed by:

Leslie Freeman (burlesque & human anomaly/sideshow artist, and disability activist)
Kenya Robinson (visual artist)
Jesse Zaritt (dancer/choreographer)

The performances will be followed by a brief conversation and light refreshment.

Each of these artists has a gestural, live art practice which includes unique relationships to fixity, to objects and to motivity. Each artist will show an excerpt of a work in progress. "OBJECT-BODY: UNEXPECTEDLY ECSTATIC" is curated by artist Tobaron Waxman.

You are invited to join the artists as companions in critical engagement. Leslie Freeman, Kenya Robinson and Jesse Zaritt, are three artists each of whom I have had conversations with about embodied gesture and agency that permanently changed me. You are invited to enjoy some cross-pollination with us. "OBJECT-BODY: UNEXPECTEDLY ECSTATIC" is my last curatorial offering in USA before I move to Germany for the year. I hope you can join us.

Yours sincerely,
Tobaron Waxman

Studio Maya is a wheelchair accessible space. (in washroom no ramp or transfer bars)
Reservation required, via Facebook or email tobaron@ hotmail.com
*With your reservation please indicate whether you require a chair, or if you are comfortable to sit on the floor, or if you need space for your wheelchair.
Pay what you wish."

Curatorial statement, work descriptions and artists bios available upon request.

Photo documentation of the performances by Nogga Schwartz:

LESLIE FREEMAN: "One: Striptease for Floor Dance"

Leslie Freeman

KENYA ROBINSON: "Sack of Stars"

Kenya (Robinson)

JESSE ZARITT: "Object/abject study"

Emerging photo artist Nogga Schwartz is an invited guest artist participant. (this is more than just an over artspeaked way to say he's taking photos of the work) Rather than attend as a passive observer, Nogga will engage the evening as a photo artist. 

THE INTERGENERATIONAL LGBT ARTISTS RESIDENCY (2013 - ongoing)

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ILGBTArtistResidency

"There is a need and a shared vision of intergenerational Queer community, for a future inspired by a critical engagement with our queer histories, rather than by assimilation. Whether you are 'emerging', 'established', or an inbetweenster, please consider applying! During the 2 week residency there will also be presentations that are free and open to the public, I truly hope to see you there." (from the application announcement.)

While an artist is still alive, it is imperative to create opportunities to connect new dots, cross-pollinate, have intergenerational conversations, be students together, argue. This is a reciprocity and investment simultaneously.

The inaugural INTERGENERATIONAL LGBT ARTIST RESIDENCY took place in August 2013 and was funded by the Ontario Arts Council. For two weeks, five Queer artsists of a range of ages, gender identity and medium were provided room and board and studio space at Artscape Gibraltar Point, a retreat centre on the Toronto Island. Applications were selected by an esteemed panel of Canadian artists, also reflecting a range of Queer, cultural and professional arts experience. Canadian and international curators, artists and thinkers were invited to join the residents for catered meals on the island, and to give studio visits. The residency concluded with a catered open house event, which included live art and discussion, and ended watching the sunset on the beach.

Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency Tumblr

TOPOGRAPHIXX (2011 - 2014)

TOPOGRAPHIXX 2: Therapeutic Citizen (2013).
Curated by Tobaron Waxman. (currently in progress)

With TOPOGRAPHIXX 2: Therapeutic Citizen I'm thinking about biopolitics, healthcare, and inhabitance vs citizenship as determined by access to wellness. If you're aware of artworks asking related questions, video art especially, by artists on a queer-trans spectrum, please let me know about it. :)

Nguyen defines therapeutic citizenship as "a biopolitical citizenship, a system of claims and ethical projects that arise out of the conjugation of techniques used to govern populations and manage individual bodies", which may not always fit well with the local identities of those who at the receiving ends of biomedical treatment regimes ([[29]: p.126]. Nguyen V: Antiretroviral Globalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic Citizenship. In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Edited by Ong A, Collier S. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing; 2005:124-144.)

The ideal format for TOPOGRAPHIXX is a workshop-screening in which invited local activists, advocates, social workers, theorists, and others who deal / work with health/wellness issues and trans rights come together. Both curated artists and invited guests have included sex workers and sex work advocates. No one of the participants or viewers is presented as an 'expert', rather, each person present is responsible for their own contribution to the viewing. All the invited participants give a short presentation of their topic, as it overlaps with the themes addressed by TOPOGRAPHIXX. Then we have the screening, which is followed by a 'Lois Weaver Longtable' - a non-heirarchical discussion format at a long table, with food provided. In this way the format of the screening is intersectional, and the trans person is not limited to the role of entertainer.

TOPOGRAPHIXX: Trans in the landscape (2011). Curated by Tobaron Waxman.

An international program of video art concerned with landscape, border, zone and territory, in a transgender spectrum. TOPOGRAPHIXX presents a number of short films and videos which engage a variety of geographies and sites both natural and urban with political and esthetic strategies that harken back to feminist concerns with landscape, while simultaneously pushing forward into new territories of transfeminist representation. These works are in synch with my thoughts and aspirations for curation of work by trans people as well as the cultivation of a more intersectional discourse around gender, border trauma, territory and power.

Click here to see a trailer for "TOPOGRAPHIXX: Trans in the Landscape", as well as descriptions of the tapes.

Screening history:

• Chinese University of Hong Kong, May 2014
• Central European University, Sixteen Days Against Gender Based Violence. Budapest. 11/30/12
  
• La Mutinerie, Paris. 10/30/12
  
• Babel2 - Independent Biennale of Critical Housing. Rome, 5/20/12
  
• MIXNYC/ Brooklyn Academy of Art and Dance: OUT LIKE THAT! Festival - Bronx, NYC, 6/14/12

Press:
"...a crucial door-opening key was Tobaron Waxman's curation of shorts, "TOPOGRAPHIXX: Trans in the landscape". ... the subtle poetic seduction of open bodies loving and becoming one with the landscape of a world-metropolis; urban and rural at the same time. Rather than present a dialectical opposition against the territory, TOPOGRAPHIXX envisions a new emotional strategy of bodies opening to the territory, inhabiting it. In this perspective a queer body can be the in/out gate of the political development of contemporary cities, putting at stake both the homonationalism through pinkwashing and the turbogentrifications afflicting areas defined "queer" in a Western metropolis." Francesco Palmieiri aka WARBEAR, programmer/theorist, BaBel2 - Biennial of Critical Housing, Rome. (http://prettyqueer.com)

TOPOGRAPHIXX Tumblr

RADICAL DRAG: Transformative Performance (2008)
Curated by Stefan St-Laurent and Tobaron Waxman.
Gallerie SAW Gallery, Ottawa, Canada.

GenderFluXXXors UnCoded (2004)

"I'm very big with shadows, ya know. I can slip in and out of 'em like wind through a fence." Anybodys - West Side Story (Act II sc. 2)(1961)

Whose bodies are documented in the archive? "GenderFluXXXors UnCoded" is a performance lecture of clips from the history of transmasculine erotic film and video, from the 1980s to present day.

The lecture has been presented in 4 different versions:

• "GenderFluXXXors Uncoded". Originally commissioned by Lisa Ganser for the Flaming Film Festival, Intermedia Arts Minneapolis, with the focus on images of people of colour (2004)
• "GenderFluXXXors Uncoded: an FTM SuPornova". Le Petite Versailles, NYC, curated by Peter Cramer and Jack Waters; with live internet video chat with Eliza Steinbock in Amsterdam ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) (2005)
• "GenderFluXXXors Uncoded 3.0" Videotage, Hong Kong, curated by Dr. Katrien Jacobs, with live translation by curator and activist Denise Tang (2006)
• "Genderfluxxxors 4.0, for Susan Stryker, in the future everyone will be transsomatechnic for 15 minutes", video (15 min) and limited edition fine art prints. Proceeds from sale go to Kat and Boyd. Produced with assistance from Toronto Arts Council and Harvestworks NYC.

Proceeds from the performance and sale of fine art prints are collected in support of Kat Grant and Boyd Kodak, whose health and extensive personal archive of trans related media were destroyed by environmental toxic disaster when a City of Toronto construction crew broke a pipe under their house. They lost all their belongings, including a lifetime's worth of archived international video, audio, film and periodicals representing the TS/TG experience. They continue to require frequent hospitalizations and they remain uncompensated by government / civic authorities. They have made a series of reality based comic books about these events, which can be seen here.

Shannon Bell taught in the name of Annie Sprinkle to dedicate ones orgasm. In the spirit of that teaching, GenderfluXXXors Uncoded is dedicated to the memory of the late Chance Ryder, the first "male hermaphrodite pornstar" …a person ahead of his time. Urgent message from Cat and Boyd, May 1, 2008.