About
The
Artist
Sage Whitson
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson (NY/LA) is an award-winning Queer Trans/mogrifying multidisciplinary artist and futurist. They ignore disciplinarity through a critical intersection of the sacred and conceptual across a multitude of practices and forms, celebrating Black, Queer, and Transembodiedness. Whitson is a United States Artist Fellow, Creative Capital Awardee, two-time “Bessie” Awardee, Hermitage Fellow, an artist in residence at 18th Street (Los Angeles) and New York Live Feed Artist in Residence. Whitson was the featured choreographer of the 2018 CCA Biennial, 2018-2020 Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center Fellow, and invited presenter at the 2019 Tanzkongress international festival. The Unarrival Experiments constellation centers Whitson’s expansive studio practices.
Recent commissions include Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Abrons Arts Center, American Realness, the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the California African American Museum. Whitson’s practice extends to choreography in conventional and experimental theatre and performance, most recently with Yale Dance Lab. Their writing has been published by Contact Quarterly, Dancing While Black journal, and the anthology, Critical Black Futures: Speculative Futures and Explorations.
Whitson holds an MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFAW in creative writing from Goddard College. They are an associate professor at UC Riverside and is a sought-after speaker, consultant, masterclass facilitator and conversationalist sharing among notable institutions and organizations: Princeton University, Cornell University, Rutgers University, LAX Festival, Movement Research, American Dance Festival, Collegium for African Diasporic Dance conference (2020 keynote), Theatre Academy in Helsinki, and UNESCO.
Videos/Gallery
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson Presents at the 2019 Creative Capital Artist Retreat
Dark matter and dark energy serve as portals to interrogating spaces of the unknown, yet they have an unequivocal impact on the composition of the universe. The Unarrival Experiments is an interdisciplinary performance project exploring relationships between astrophysics, cosmology, Blackness, Trans embodiedness and premature death via a notion of the vaporous body.
A Black Technologic: Considering Liberatory Imaginaries in Emerging Technologies
In this talk, artist Sage Ni’Ja Whitson presents their work with Virtual Reality (VR) as it relates to the creation to their upcoming EMPAC production and performance of The Unarrival Experiments — Unconcealment Ceremonies. The project uses VR to center the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. To do so, Whitson is designing a performance space of “both/and”: both movement and stillness, both darkness and image, both engulfment and distancing, both listening and feeling. As an extension of Whitson’s design process, they will use this talk to propose new futures for VR with questions that beg to remain unanswered.
Dance in Process: Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Whitson describes the process of creating “sibling” art works, Oba Qween Baba King Baba and The Unarrival Experiments while an artist in residence of the Gibney Dance in Process (DiP) program.
Featured in Video:
Kirsten Davis
Kate Freer
Paloma McGregor
Jeanne Medina
Jeremy Touissant-Baptiste
New Moon in Cancer –
Dark Matter Cypher Discussion
Trinity Dawn Bobo, Sharon Bridgforth (dramaturg), día bùi (apprentice, media design), Kirsten Davis, Waqia Kareem, Spirit McIntyre, Tavia Nyong’o, SA Smythe
Sage Ni’Ja Whitson 2020 CADD Keynote
Super Fluid / Super Black
Video Projected: “A Meditation on Tongues” – a live adaptation of Marlon T. Riggs’ iconic “Tongues Untied”. Features Kirsten Davis and Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, singer Jonathan Gonzalez. Adapted/created by Sage Ni’Ja Whitson.
Illumination Catalogue
Unconcealment Ceremonies
Unconcealment Ceremonies/Observatories
Dark Matter Cyphers
Book & Lecture/Performances
Illumination Catalogue:
An ambitious ceremony series and archive centering the magics of Trans living and lives. IC asks through ritual and a digital Black Trans Cosmic Map, “How were the exquisite births of Black Trans, GNC, and Intersex folx recorded in the sky?” and “How does the land and the cosmos respond to our traumatic deaths?”
Ceremony for Phylicia Mitchell in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo Credit Lanequa Birks
Ceremony for Phylicia Mitchell in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo Credit Lanequa Birks
Ceremony in San Diego, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony in San Diego, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Marilyn Cazares in Brawley, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Marilyn Cazares in Brawley, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Celine Walker in Jacksonville, Florida. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Celine Walker in Jacksonville, Florida. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Claire Legato in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo Credit Lanequa Birks
Ceremony for Claire Legato in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo Credit Lanequa Birks
Ceremony for Yaeli Mozelle Galdamez in Pomona, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’ja Whitson
Ceremony for Yaeli Mozelle Galdamez in Pomona, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’ja Whitson
Ceremony for Jesse Sumlar in Jacksonville, Florida. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Jesse Sumlar in Jacksonville, Florida. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Ceremony for Keisha Wells in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo Credit Lanequa Birks
Ceremony for Keisha Wells in Cleveland, Ohio. Photo Credit Lanequa Birks
Ceremony for Lexi Sutton in Harlem, New York. Photo Credit Laura Cabrera
Ceremony for Lexi Sutton in Harlem, New York. Photo Credit Laura Cabrera
Ceremony for Yaeli Mozelle Galdamez in Pomona, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’ja Whitson
Ceremony for Yaeli Mozelle Galdamez in Pomona, CA. Photo Credit Sage Ni’ja Whitson
Transtraterrestrial:
Transtraterrestrial, prequel and premiere of The Unarrival Experiments – Unconcealment Ceremonies is a new live multimedia performance installation work designed to amplify the dark. In dialogue with Yorùbá Cosmology, Astrophysics, and research on the “blackest black,” the work centers the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. Dark matter and dark energy serve as portals to interrogating spaces of the unknown, yet have an unequivocated impact on the composition of the universe. The performance and its environment takes an audience through an otherworldly dive into the dark. Led by space conductor, Trans Trappist the Extraterrestrial, this work traverses the dark as an ancestor, embodied transgender technology, and cosmic intervention. Transtraterrestrial happens inside and outside of a custom-built space|ship, which is uniquely designed as a futuristic space vessel surrounded by painted organic matter. Its design and fabrication aids in visualizing darkness while also allowing for the seamless integration of immersive VR, projection, and spatial audio. The space|ship cradles performers and witnesses in encounter, collectivity, medicines, and invisibilities.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Transtraterrestrial. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Alvis Mosely.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Alvis Mosely.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Alvis Mosely.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Alvis Mosely.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Unconcealment Ceremonies. Photo Credit Michael Valiquette.
Unconcealment Ceremonies Dark Dive. Photo Credit Baranova.
Unconcealment Ceremonies Dark Dive. Photo Credit Baranova.
Unconcealment Ceremonies Dark Dive. Photo Credit Baranova.
Unconcealment Ceremonies Dark Dive. Photo Credit Baranova.
Unconcealment Ceremonies Dark Dive. Photo Credit Baranova.
Unconcealment Ceremonies Dark Dive. Photo Credit Baranova.
Adaptations & Dark Dives:
Unconcealment Ceremonies/Observatories
Unconcealment Ceremonies/Observatories
Unconcealment Ceremonies/Observatories
Dark Matter Cyphers:
Improvisational collaborations with scientists, artists, and thinkers in pitch-black spaces. Place, process, and collectivizing strategy, Dark Matter Cyphers gather the ideas within and encompassing darkness cultivated by The Unarrival Experiments, with a range of practitioners interjecting queer and trans Black dreaming in astrophysics theorizations.
Dark Matter Cypher at Watermill Arts Center. Photo Credit Maria Baranova
Dark Matter Cypher at Watermill Arts Center. Photo Credit Maria Baranova
Dark Matter Cypher at Watermill Arts Center. Photo Credit Maria Baranova
Dark Matter Cypher at Watermill Arts Center. Photo Credit Maria Baranova
Book & Lecture/Performances:
The first book project of The Unarrival Experiments forwards counterproposals and queered poetics of science-at-large, astrophysics, and the phenomena of darkness. It is a hybrid text that explores the research through the intersections of corporeality, dreaming, criticality, and archive.
Writing at Hedgebrook Residency. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Writing at Hedgebrook Residency. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Writing at Watermill Arts Center. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
Writing at Watermill Arts Center. Photo Credit Sage Ni’Ja Whitson
A Black Technologic Performance Lecture. Photo Credit Michael Vilaquette
A Black Technologic Performance Lecture. Photo Credit Michael Vilaquette
Super Fluid/Super Black Keynote. Photo Credit CADD
Super Fluid/Super Black Keynote. Photo Credit CADD
Calendar
There are no upcoming events at this time
COSMIC
FUTURES
Trans Trappist the Extraterrestrial
Could we imagine a space travel project that necessitates a future different? While current space travel efforts mimic to near exactitude the imperial aspirations of colonial powers, I seek to intervene my Black Trans self/body/magic. My space travel – and process to prepare – will be to study the expansive dark(s) of space, to better understand the dark(s) of the earth, and to be able to deepen my cultivation of the spectrum and textures of darkness in other media, and embodied darkness in Black Transembodiedness.