December 5, 2025
Artists
PETER CRAMER & JACK WATERS
Quoted as “New York's most radical queers” by I-D Magazine, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters central activity of the ‘80s was the performance collective POOL (Performance On One Leg), featured in the exhibition “Life Between Buildings” at MoMA/PS 1. In Spring 2025 they co-curated ABC No Rio 45 Years, a retrospective exhibition of the renowned radical art and social space. This Summer their films were featured in the series Queer and Uncensored, MoMA’s major survey of Queer film and video. They continue to instigate the hybrid of performance, film, video, installation and social practice in projects including “GENERATOR - Pestilence Part 1” at La Mama Downstairs Theater, prescient in its 2020 premiere on the cusp of the coronavirus pandemic; “Memories That Smell Like Gasoline - Reading David Wojnarowicz” at the Whitney Museum performed with NYOBS, their queer skinned kitchen band; and “Spaghetti Wrestling” at Herman Nitsch Museum, Naples. They were invited to present “Under Our Skin- An Exquisite Copse” for the 12th Annual Experimental Lecture curated by Lynne Sachs for NYU’s Cinema Studies Department and Undergraduate Film & TV Department. In June 2023 they presented a performance installation “Weavers of The Daisy Chain Gang Chorus” commissioned by NYC AIDS Memorial. Peter and Jack are co-founders of Le Petit Versailles, a community art garden in the East Village and Allied Productions, Inc., a non profit artist-run organization. They are former co-directors of the renowned radical cultural collective ABC No Rio.
Their 40 year collaboration includes dozens of projects including “The Ring Our Way” at Anthology Film Archives, a live cinema/action approach to Wagner's Ring Cycle for the legendary queer media festival MIX NYC, "Pride 2001-We Remember", a video/photo installation at the NY Public Library Donnell Media Center featured on IN THE LIFE - a nationwide broadcast on PBS; and "Lo Vamos a Hablar (Let’s Talk About It)”, a 2005 exhibit that was the first observation of World AIDS Day for the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea De Barcelona (CCCB).With the art activist organization Visual AIDS they participated in exhibitions including “Ephemera As Evidence” (2014), NOT OVER: 25 Years of Visual AIDS” (2013), as well as created the performance of "Sunscreen Test Boulevard In The Sand" (2015) in partnership with the Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR) and the New York Performance Artists Collective (NYPAC). Both are Yaddo Residency Fellows and members of the Visual AIDS Artist Registry. Their video/films are distributed by the Filmmakers Cooperative in NYC.
MILLIE KAPP & MATT SHALZI
Millie Kapp and Matt Shalzi have been collaborating on performances since 2009. They have worked together as a duo and within multiple ensembles. Their work has been presented in New York at Poetry Project, Danspace, Greene Naftali Gallery, and the Chocolate Factory. They have also presented work at Regards Gallery in Chicago, Zilkha Gallery in Middletown, Connecticut and Lunder Institute in Waterville, Maine.
STAR & STAN
Performance duo Star & Stan brings together the personas of artists, Kate Williams and Reed Rushes. Focused on issues of gender and sexuality Williams and Rushes perform as a fantasy couple; the heterosexual, his and her, power couple that they call, Star & Stan.
Star, played by Williams, wears faux-geisha makeup combined with the fashion of white upper class American women from her suburban home town. Rushes, as Stan, is painted silver and wears an assless business suit. Together they unpack structures of power, labor, gender and capital through the mechanism of gay shame. Described as "something people have never seen before”( Elephant Magazine) their performances capture the feeling of living in the chaos of Capitalist systems.
They use props, costumes and spectacle creating highly visual shows that mix the perverse and absurd with popular culture and Americana. Performing as lovers the movement sequences merge “lovemaking and conflict” (Paper Magazine), “passion and aggression” (Brooklyn Rail) commenting on glamour, fame and fortune and leaving audiences with the sensation that they’ve done “poppers in a bathtub full of money” (audience member).
Star & Stan have presented work at Performance Space New York, The Park Avenue Armory, Basilica Hudson, Art Omi, Centre for Performance Research, Entrance, Pageant and Les Urbaines Switzerland as well as at raves, in the streets and on beaches. They are currently working on their first Star & Stan film. Williams holds a BA in Dance and Human Rights from Bard College and the Ana Itelman Prize for Choreography. Rushes holds an MFA from Bard College, the OSUN Teaching Fellowship in Critical Cartography and Performance, and a BA in English Literature and Performance from Queen Mary University of London.
