Trans* Temporal Resistances
Curated by
Emji Saint Spero
Leila Weefur
In collaboration with
TurkxTaylor Initiative
This performance series, presented in collaboration with the TurkxTaylor Initiative, mirrors an open assemblage model. Co-curators Emji Saint Spero and Leila Weefur invite writers and artists to deconstruct trans archives and architectures through textual and movement-based approaches. Situated within the Tenderloin, a district in which desire has historically been boundaried and confined, these performances engage Queer Time as an embodied strategy of resistance.
Events
Tenderloin Museum | Thursday April 25, 7pm
CounterPulse | Saturday August 24th, 5pm
Co-Curators
Emji Saint Spero (they/them) is a transqueer writer, performer, and pervert living in Los Angeles. They are curious about the potential of creative intimacies to queer the familiar, mapping the boundaries of collective en-gagement through movement, documentation, personal ephemera, and collaborative performance. Saint Spero is co-founder of the Oakland-based small press Timeless, Infinite Light and co-developmental editor for We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (Nightboat Books x Timeless Infinite Light, 2019). They are the author of disgust (Nomadic Press, 2021) and almost any shit will do (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), and have work featured in Trans History in 99 Objects (Hirmer Publishers, 2024). Saint Spero is the curator of Communicator Series, a language-curious queer and trans* performance series at Poetic Research Bureau, and is currently working on two poetry manuscripts, Exhaustion and A Retching.
saintspero.com
Ig @homopathetic
Leila Weefur (He/They/She) is an artist, writer, and curator based in Oakland, CA. Through film & installation they examine the performative elements connected to systems of belonging, present in Black, queer, gender-variant life. An entanglement of beauty and horror evokes concepts of sensorial memory, architectural psychology, hyper surveillance, and the erotic. Weefur has worked with local and national institutions including the ICASF, CCA’s Wattis Institute, McEvoy Foundation, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, San Francisco Art Institute, Museum of the African Diaspora, The Kitchen, and Smack Mellon. Weefur’s writing has been published in SEEN by BlackStar Productions, Sming Sming Books, Baest Journal, and more. Weefur is a lecturer at Stanford University and a member of The Black Aesthetic.
