Place: Hall of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), United States.
Date: October 3rd, 1996
Event: Crossing National and Sexual Borders
Registrar: Unknown
Institutions: The Center for LGBTQ Studies; The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Description:
On the third of October, 1996, at 8 pm, the conference “Crossing National & Sexual Borders: Queer Sexualities in Latin/o America,” hosted by the City University of New York and aiming to explore connections between migration and sexualities, was inauguarated with a series of performances under the heading Homoperformance, as well as a video-installation/performance by the Yeguas del Apolcalipsis. The conference counted among its participants Licia Fiol-Matta, Carmelita Tropicana, Sylvia Molloy, Eliana Ortega and other academics, writers, poets, and artists.
Pedro Lemebel and Francisco Casas were scheduled for a seperate performance that evening, interacting with an installation, Cadavers (Homage to Nestor Perlongher), which consisted of five synchronized monitors transmitting the video Homage to Sebastian Acevedo, over a square delineated with a flour-like powder, surrounded by lanterns and a charcoal cross drawn in one of its corners. In the piece, the Yeguas del Apolcalipsis honored the memory of Nestor Perlongher, an artist and one of the most active participants in homosexual militancy in Argentina. The Yeguas also participated in other conference activities, such as the presentation of the PoeSIDA anthology the following day, and in the roundtable with other performance artists the final day of the conference. According to Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, then a graduate student in New York, Pedro Lemebel was extremeley critical of a certain type of activism that was prevalent in New York. However, he points out that Lemebel was not familiar with the many underground spaces and alternative organizations that existed in the city.