Stones to Rainbows | Gay to Queer Lives
Stones to Rainbows/Gay to Queer Lives is a process-to-performance project, developed into dynamic pop-up multimedia - sound, lights, video and images - within an installation of closet doors, both inspired by and developed from the intergenerational and cross-sectional dialogues of Boston-area LGBTQ+ artists and community.
In the project’s first phase, queer artists and community alike engaged in a series of cocktail parties, paired dialogues, and individual interviews. These dialogues were augmented by materials from the archives of project partner The History Project, self-identified as “the only organization focused exclusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities.”
The inspiration for the project was sparked in rehearsal with a dancer in his 20s, another in his 30s, and DiMuro, in his 60s. A simple question was asked: “What was the AIDS crisis like to live through? I’ve only read about it in books.” The conversation evolved into an discussion of the terms “gay” and “queer”, their usage over time; and they asked, isn’t our current era’s killing of young trans women of color an epidemic of its own? The project further developed with the emergence of the coronavirus, which ultimately altered the course and scope of the developmental research. To date, nearly every event has been held online, which has enabled conversations not just in Boston, but across the globe, with participants from Texas, Washington, D.C., France, New Zealand, and more.
Stones to Rainbows/Gay to Queer Lives seeks to build upon the archives of the past and these conversations in the present, satisfying a need for present day celebration and articulation of the spectrum of LGBTQ+ lives lived, in all their glorious diversity.
Built on a foundation of our first-gay/now-queer histories in the hopes of creating a more intersectional voice for the future, the project is, in itself, a commission to all visitors and contributors to the dialogues who add to our collection of stories each day and to all performing artists defining the current queer world in Boston: Celebrate your queer and accumulated selves, be inspired by the past but not a slave to it; use your humanity, your dialogue, your talents to make a bridge for future queer lives.
our first live in-progress sharing of the project!
June 19 & 20, 2021
live and live-streamed from Arlington Street Church
351 Boylston Street Boston, MA