One Must Live It: Day-long gathering in conversation with Lorenza Böttner

Saturday, July 23rd: In person and online

Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster Street | New York, NY 10013

10:30 AM - 6:30 PM Eastern Time

This is a free hybrid program offered at the museum and on zoom and will be filmed and available at a later date.

Coffee and snacks will be provided at the museum.

Further Information

In partnership with NYU Center for Disability Studies, the Museum will host a day-long convening and exchange focusing on Böttner’s oeuvre, diving into the possibilities of queer kinship, and the embodied experiences of transgender identity, disability, and migration, which Böttner’s work illustrates.

Speakers include: Exhibition Curator Paul B. Preciado, Mara Mills Co-Director, Center for Disability Studies, New York University, Adrian Jones–Adjunct Professor, Fashion Institute Technology, Alice Sheppard & Laurel Lawson of Kinetic Light, Artist Mary Duffy, Author McKenzie Wark, Simi Linton of Proclaiming Disability Arts, and Jules Gill-Peterson, author of Histories of the Transgender Child, and more.

Event Schedule (subject to change slightly)

10:30AM -11 AM: Coffee/Tea and breakfast pastries at the Museum, slow arrival.

11 AM: Introduction to the day.

11:10 AM -11:40 AM: Mara Mills (NYU Steinhardt) and Adrian Jones (FIT) introductory conversation.

11:40AM -12:40 PM: Paul Preciado: Exhibition Framing and History, with Question and Answer

12:40 PM - 1:10 PM: Simi Linton: On Barry Martin, with Question and Answer

1:10 PM - 1:50 PM: McKenzie Wark: Intersectional framings of disability, transsexuality, and migration not easily containable within queerness with Question and Answer.

1:50 PM - 2:50 PM: LUNCH BREAK

3:00 PM - 3:45 PM: Mary Duffy: Reflections on artistic practice in the 1980’s and Lorenza B¨¨ottner's work, with Question and Answer

3:45 PM - 4:30 PM: Jules Gill-Peterson: The Aesthetics of Trans Community; This presentation will discuss the fantasy of trans and LGBT "community," both in the New York City of Lorenza B¨¨ottner's 1980s and now, with Question and Answer

4:30 PM - 4:45 PM: BREAK

4:45 PM - 5:30 PM: Alice Sheppard & Laurel Lawson: Closing conversation: Artistic practice and provocations of Intersectionality in Lorenza B¨¨ottner's Work, with Question and Answer

5:30 PM - 6:30 PM: Mix and mingle, in person and zoom reception.

Event & Museum Accessibility

• Captions and ASL will be provided both in person and online.
• Any visuals presented will be audio described.
• For in person visits, five external steps lead to our main entrance: a wheelchair lift is available. All galleries are wheelchair-accessible.
• There is a single-occupancy accessible restroom located behind the visitor services desk.
• All restrooms are gender-neutral.
• This is a scent free event.

Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm Exhibition Accessibility

• Audio tour available here (downloading the Gesso app is required)
• Large print didactics are available at the front desk.
• Braille handouts are also available at the front desk for Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm, that include the curator’s essay and information about upcoming programs.

Covid Safety

Masks must be worn by all visitors and guests unless eating or drinking. Proof of vaccination, or a negative rapid test result taken within the last 24hours is required at the door for in-person participation. Additional instructions may be provided ahead of the event for registered guests.

Speakers will be allowed to give their talk without a mask at a distance for access purposes if they are comfortable.

For additional access requests or to connect around access needs and desires please email morgaine@leslielohman.org

More about the speakers

Paul B. Preciado, The Curator of Public Programmes for documenta 14, where he first presented Böttner’s work, Paul B. Preciado is a philosopher, writer, curator, and trans activist. His work considers biopolitics and sexuality, looking at the ways technology and pornography have shaped how we think about gender in the twentieth century. He has written about Playboy, architecture, and sexuality in the 1960s (Pornotopia, 2014); used his experiences taking testosterone to examine the business of desire and the pharmaceutical industry’s role in expanding our definitions of gender (Testo Junkie, 2013); and invited his readers to relinquish ideas about “natural” gender, sign a countersexual contract, and embrace the possibilities offered by the prosthesis (Countersexual Manifesto, 2002).

Mara Mills, Associate Professor, Media, Culture, and Communication and Co-Director, Center for Disability Studies, New York University.

Adrian Jones, Assistant Professor, Artist, and Educator with thirty plus years’ experience as a working commercial artist and fine arts photographer in New York City. Work includes editorial projects with numerous magazines and global model agencies. Group and solo shows in the US and Australia.

His work can be viewed at "www.adrian-jones.com" and on Instagram "adrianjones_ny" and "adrianjones_nyc".

Alice Sheppard is an internationally recognized dancer, choreographer, and founder of the disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light. She studied ballet and modern dance with Kitty Lunn and started her career performing with Infinity Dance Theater and AXIS Dance Company. In 2016, Alice founded Kinetic Light, a disability arts ensemble featuring herself, Jerron Herman, Laurel Lawson and Michael Maag. Working in the disciplines of art, technology, design, and dance, Kinetic Light creates, performs, and teaches at the nexus of access, queerness, disability, dance, and race. In the company’s work, intersectional disability is an aesthetic, a culture, and an essential element of artistry. In addition to performance and choreography, Sheppard is a consultant and speaker who has lectured on topics related to disability arts, race, design, and dance. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, academic journals, and the anthology Disability Visibility, edited by Alice Wong.

Mary Duffy: On graduating in 1983, I established an international reputation as a photographer and performance artist. I exhibited in venues across the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the National Museum of Photography in Tokyo and New Langton Arts in San Francisco. Since my first solo show in Limerick in 1989, I've received numerous commissions and awards, including the Gracie Fields Live Art Bursary. My photographic work was acquired by the National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland.

In the mid-1990s, I took a short creative detour into journalism and broadcasting, and in 2006, I turned full circle and returned to painting

McKenzie Wark, author of REVERSE COWGIRL (Semiotexte) CAPITAL IS DEAD (Verso) and PHILOSOPHY FOR SPIDERS (Duke). Her book RAVING is out from Duke in Spring 2023

Simi Linton [she/her] is the Project Director of Proclaiming Disability Arts, a book and community engagement initiative, and a Visiting Research Scholar at New York University’s Center for Disability Studies. Her writings include Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, My Body Politic, and “Cultural Territories of Disability” published by Dance/NYC. She is the subject of the documentary Invitation to Dance (Christian von Tippelskirch and Simi Linton). Linton’s organization, Disability/Arts Consultancy, serves cultural institutions throughout New York City. Linton was a founder and Co-Director [with Kevin Gotkin] of Disability/Arts/NYC [DANT] from 2016-2019. Linton holds a Ph.D. in psychology from New York University and was on faculty at CUNY from 1985-1998. She received the 2015 Barnard College Medal of Distinction, an honorary Doctor of Arts from Middlebury College (2016), and was appointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2015 to NYC’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission [2015-present] and to the She Built NYC Committee.

Jules Gill-Peterson is an associate professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Histories of the Transgender Child (2018), winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Jules is a General Co-Editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and co-host of the Slate podcast Outward. Her next book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny, will be published by Verso.

More about our July Programming series

One Must Live It: In conversation with Lorenza Böttner

Informed by Lorenza Böttner’s description of her own artistic development, “It isn’t enough to think an idea or just believe in an idea, one must live it,” the Museum will host public programs in conversation with Lorenza Böttner: Requiem for the Norm over three weekends in July. Alongside additional works by Böttner centered on fashion and dance, the Museum’s gallery will be transformed into an experimental atelier, bringing together contemporary artists, designers, and dance artists whose practices resonate with Böttner’s life and work. They consider experiences such as disability, gender-identity, and migration, via queer dance, design, and the performativity of fashion, all of which are reccuring themes throughout the Böttner exhibition.

Intentionally open-ended, One Must Live It also invites answers to central questions: how might the museum decenter itself as an arbiter of knowledge, and become a place for collective meaning-making? What ways of knowing—affective, embodied—can the museum foster or recover?

For more information on the exhibition and other July programming for One Must Live It visit our website.

Make a donation to support the Leslie-Lohman’s programs here

Funding and Support

One Must Live It, In Conversation with Lorenza Böttner is made possible by the generous support of the Ford Foundation and contribution from Kartell.

Programming is produced in partnership with Brooklyn Arts Exchange, NYU Center for Disability Studies, Proclaiming Disability Arts, and Viscose Journal with support from ACLS, an NYU Steinhardt Diversity Innovation Grant.