DISCOTROPIC | Alien Talk Show

Thursday, October 22, 2015, 6:30 - 9pm

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niv Acosta. Photo by Amos Mac

niv Acosta. Photo by Amos Mac

Bring Your Own Body, an exhibition focusing on transgender artists and archives, presents a free, public event.

In DISCOTROPIC | Alien Talk Show (2015) niv Acosta seizes on an elementary medium of transgender exposure—television and the confessional culture of the talk show—to explore the relationships between science fiction, disco, astrophysics, and the black American experience. In collaboration with performers Monstah Black, Justin Allen, André D. Singleton (aka Brohogany Opulence), and Ashley Brockington he tapes a talk show to revisit past futures and claim a fantastical site of possibility. DISCOTROPIC is episodical and has premiered earlier episodes as a part of New Museum’s Triennial ‘Surround Audience’ 2015 as well as in the Museum of Contemporary African Diasooran Art’s (MoCADA) Brooklyn Soul Festival ‘Black August’ 2015.

Doors open at 6:30. Taping begins at 7:00.

niv Acosta is an award winning and nationally acclaimed multi-medium artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His intersectional identities as transgender, queer, and black-dominican have continuously inspired his community based work. niv’s work and thought leadership has been featured in many publications including Performance Journal, VICE, Brooklyn Magazine, Apogee Journal and more. His performance work has shown at various spaces nationally including The Kimmel Center (Philly), Human Resources (L.A.), MOMA PS1, Studio Museum, New York Live Arts, New Museum, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Danspace Project among many. niv has collaborated with artists Deborah Hay, André Singleton, Monstah Black, A.K. Burns, Andrea Geyer, Ralph Lemon, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Larissa Velez-Jackson. 

Located at 41 Cooper Square, on Third Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets.

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.