April Hunt and Rashaad Newsome with Legendary Monster Mon_Teese and Precious

An image of a galactic formation of gasses and stars with white text overlaid that reads DJ April Hunt and Rashaad Newsome with Legendary Monster Mon_Teese and Precious — A video still from *Go Off! Joy in Defiance*. Courtesy the artists.

A screen grab of an Instagram live post of DJ April Hunt layered over a background of flames with white text overlaid that reads DJ April Hunt and Rashaad Newsome with Legendary Monster Mon_Teese and Precious — A video still from *Go Off! Joy in Defiance*. Courtesy the artists.

Watch this Commission

This recording documents the premiere and original performance of Go Off! Joy in Defiance on Sunday, June 14, 2020.

About this commission

Go Off! Joy in Defiance is a celebration of Black queer sonic, visual, and performative traditions that takes place across multiple social media platforms, including a live-streamed DJ set and after-party. The online event opens with a new Rashaad Newsome video work, which begins with a memorial to a fraction of the countless Black lives that have been lost at the hands of systemic racism across the world and features a set by DJ April Hunt. Hunt is then joined by performers including kiki scene icon Legendary Monster Mon_Teese and ballroom commentator Precious. Connected by the rhythmic beat of Hunt’s set, Newsome, Monster, and Precious each add to the prerecorded video, taking the event from Instagram and Snapchat to Facebook Live.

The virtual turn-up shifts from partiers on a dance floor punctuated by neon lights and colors to a digital space of mesmerizing visual effects. When the story of this celebration flows into Hunt’s Instagram Live after-party hosted on The Shed’s Instagram account (@theshedny), the artists welcome viewers to join the digital dance floor as Go Off! reimagines what a social experience can be in this moment of sheltering in place and reliance on social media. The artists play with the transitions and interruptions that happen as they move from one digital platform to another. And, they share radical joy as a form of defiance of oppressive systems that, while still existing, are crumbling around us.

Creative Team

April Hunt

Rashaad Newsome

Legendary Monster
Mon_Teese

Precious

April Hunt is a DJ and community-builder who uses music and media platforms as a tool for recognition and celebration. In 2011, she founded sparkplugPR, an agency that spreads awareness of projects with an emphasis on creatives of color. Since then, sparkplugPR has evolved into Mixtape, a catalyst for high-level creative happenings IRL and virtually where she often provides soundscapes. As a DJ, she has performed at a number of cultural spaces and venues including Aspen Art Museum, MoMA, the Guggenheim, The Shed, the Standard, and International Center of Photography, among many others. She weaves genres of house, hip hop, experimental R&B, and vintage soul.

Rashaad Newsome is an interdisciplinary artist whose work blends several practices, including collage, sculpture, film, photography, music, computer programming, software engineering, and performance. Using the diasporic traditions of improvisation and collage, he pulls from the world of advertising, the internet, and Black and queer culture to produce counter-hegemonic work that exists between social practice, abstraction, and intersectionality. His work reclaims the Black body, celebrates Black contributions to the artistic canon, and creates innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media. Newsome has exhibited and performed in galleries, museums, institutions, and festivals throughout the world, and his work is in numerous public collections.

Justin Gomez, also known as Legendary Monster Mon_Teese from the Royal House of LaBeija, has been in the ballroom scene for 19 years. Gomez is a professional dancer, vogue coach, and choreographer, born and raised in Brooklyn. He became known within the ballroom scene for a dramatic vogue femme style and has found an escape from bullying and other challenges through dance.

Precious is a key figure in the ballroom and kiki scenes and has been commentating performances and balls since 2008. Through experiences in these scenes, Precious has found a sense of belonging to an energetic community of free-spirited people.

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