In the inaugural QVK event, we combined efforts with Kala Lolo—the well-established series of queer variety shows and experimental theater produced by Staten Island-based artist Lys Obsidian—to present a cross-pollinated night of art, entertainment, and gay propaganda.

Held at Snug Harbor’s Carpenter Shop, Queer Van Kult x Kala Lolo featured installations and art by Dot Dulgarian, Peggy, Zoë Tirado, Maria Ladias, Jenno Snyder, and Nicie Mok; projections by Cherry Mag (the duo Ai Vila and Velvet Tatiana) and Rachel Fox; and performance art by SB Kosinski, Snooze, PNK VLVT WTCH Ensemble, and Nola Star; and was hosted by Porno Pig.

Queer Van Kult: Leap Day was inspired by the folklore legends surrounding the elusive day.

Returning to Snug Harbor’s Carpenter Shop, QVK: Leap Day featured performances by stevie may, Madame Brassiere, Noelle Choy with the assistance of Liu Light, and Jenno; and installations by Moody Marinaro and Maggie Buford, Zoë Tirado, Nicie Mok, and Rachel Fox. Hosted by lovers, Thing and Demon.

Queer Van Kult: Leap Day was made possible, in part, by a DCA Premier Grant from Staten Island Arts, with public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

In 2022, QVK was invited to a residency with Snug Harbor’s Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art. For this we, were given four galleries to convert into a dreamscape that subverted the societal narrative in which to be queer is to be “othered.” Growing up queer is to be subjected to religious dogma and often personal and familial rejection. Just by existing, a queer person instigates circumstances without their willing participation—scenarios that may be fueled by patriarchal expectations and aspirations of a nuclear family. Revelation invites visitors to be “unborn” from these societal expectations and enter a world where queerness is a preexisting condition.

Revelation was inspired by hell houses, nuclear families, dream logic, and creationism churches. QVK both curated and commissioned works from visual and new media artists local to Staten Island, and NYC.

Revelation was made possible through generous support from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Queer Van Kult presented a night of drag and burlesque in partnership with the Pride Center of Staten Island as an official PrideFest event. Hot Messiah, Obsidian Absurd, Morticia Amoureux, and PNK VLVT WTCH, were featured performers.

Our fourth Revelation event featured a screening of True Love Forever, a film series written and directed by Zoe Alice. along with a performance from the film’s star, God Complex.

Zoe Alice Camina is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, born in Venice Beach and raised in New Jersey. She strives to make films with unconventional narratives and honest depictions of life rarely shown on screen. With an eclectic background directing campy horror shorts, cinematic music videos and heartfelt indie comedies, she just wants to tell stories we never hear and probably should.

During her high school years, Zoe Alice fastidiously studied 80s horror in moldy suburban basements, shaping her aesthetic for years to come. It was during this time she became infatuated with the idea of bringing a queer feminist perspective to the genre she loved, yet felt excluded from.

Eventually, with a guerilla approach to filmmaking inspired by John Waters, she began filming subversive shorts featuring non-actor friends, shot in abandoned locations and screened in punk venues. This lead to the cult classic "Death Virgins," following a group of bloodthirsty feminists hellbent on destroying the patriarchy.

Expanding her repertoire, she then directed, edited & co-wrote the indie comedies 'Bonebag,' and 'Sex Neutral,' while exploring experimental cinema techniques in her arthouse series 'True Love Forever.' Commercially, she has edited for Alexander Wang, Escada, Vice Media, Conde Nast and musicians such as Quelle Rox, Arielle Vakni and BBQT.

God Complex / Aeon Wade Andreas is a trans-masculine, trans-disciplinary director/performer and gender terrorist working in the fields of theater, film, dance, and drag. Most of their work holds Queerness and Trans-ness as a tool through which to hold opulent darkness and abject joy in the same hand.

Aeon is based in Brooklyn, NY, and frequently works as an award winning drag and performance artist named God Complex. Aeon curates, directs, and produces ABSOLUTELY- a maximalist drag spectacular that collides installation art, environmental theater, and extraordinary drag.

Aeon has performed across the world as a dance artist and drag persona in places like Lincoln Center, Bonnaroo Music Festival, The Whitney Museum, LaMama, and The Chelsea Hotel.

He has creative directed, choreographed, and appeared in many music videos for artists such as Ladyhawke and Softee, and has opened for musicians like Twin Temple and Kristeen Young.

Aeon is a resident artist at House of Yes, a member of the Sideshow Theater company The No Ring Circus and the dance theater company Witness Relocation. Aeon was on faculty at NYU Tisch’s PHTS for 8 years teaching contact improv, composition, choreography, and a drag practicum.

They have been featured in magazines and publications like Dance Magazine, Document Journal, Them, Paper Mag, and Colecta.

He graduated from NYU Tisch Drama in 2014 and is Represented by UGA Talent for film and by ZeeBeeDee Talent for modeling.

Queer Van Kult was excited to launch a publication for Revelation, current exhibition at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art. The event featured performances by Marisa Tornello and poets from NYSAI Press.

Marisa Tornello:

Described in the New York Times as delivering "crystalline rendition(s)", Marisa Tornello is a composer, vocalist, performance artist, and maker centering their practice around themes of mental health, and creating works that elevate voices in a stigmatized society. Marisa's practice also extends into mobile interface video art, poetry, theater, movement, and conceptual art.

Recent Accolades include:

2023 Howard Gilman Foundation Performing Artists Residency Cohort

2023 DCA Premier Grant for graphic score When I

2022 Artist Commission at Roulette Intermedium through the Jerome Foundation​

Marisa has performed and collaborated with Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks, Pioneers Go East Collective, Metropolis Ensemble, Oye Group, ECHOEnsemble, Infrasound, and La MaMa ETC. Their works have been shown at Roulette Intermedium (2022 Commissioned Artist), the Tank (Ladyfest), Jack, La MaMa ETC, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Vital Joint (Exponential Festival), Invisible Dog Arts Center (Nafas Festival), and Judson Church.

Their poetry and graphic scores have been published with Peach Magazine.

Marisa has been a member of the New York Choral Society and Canticum Novum Singers, and has performed on the stages of Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, the Prudential Center, and Palau de la Musica. She has performed in the choruses of Peter Yarrow, Andrea Bocelli, Renee Fleming, Anna Netrebko, and the Met Orchestra. Marisa is an alumna of the Trinity/La MaMa Program, and made her New York debut performing the ensemble piece Searching for Home at La MaMa in 2012. They have been an active model in the NYC bodypainting community since 2015, and had the opportunity to model in the tenth episode of Project Runway Season 13 in 2014.

​NYSAI Press publishes Staten Island based literary journals, chapbooks, zines, and a biannual literary magazine featuring artists and writers with distinct voices from all over the world.

Sunday Mass was the closing event to Queer Van Kult: Revelation, and featured performances by Sludgemisers, Dreamcrusher and Madame Lambo.

Luwayne Glass, better known as Dreamcrusher, is a Brooklyn-based noisemusician from Wichita, Kansas.

Dreamcrusher has been the subject of features in The Village Voice, Pitchfork, and FADER; praised in SPIN and VICE and was featured in a mini-documentary for PBS Digital Studios' Sound Field. Dreamcrusher's work has also been discussed in scholarly articles in the fields of musicology and queer/affect theory.

Dreamcrusher is known for a live performance style that is interactive, high-engagement, and multi-sensorial, with FLOOD magazine describing their live show as "a full-on, full-body sensory experience". They say in interviews that they prefer "an exchange with the audience" rather than providing an isolated "spectacle," "like eyeballs are on me, but there’s not an interest"; they move through the crowd rather than performing onstage, and often serve as the source rather than object of a show's lighting, wearing a strobing headlamp that illuminates those in the audience.

Those praising Dreamcrusher's live performances often acknowledge that this combination––of high volume, unpredictable movement, and even flicker vertigo––can be jarring, producing feelings of disorientation and vulnerability. Scholars Shoshana Rosenberg and Hannah Reardon-Smith frame the means and aims of Dreamcrusher's "affective atmosphere" as "electronics and harsh vocals (often screamed into the face of their audiences) to explore queerness, experiences of violence, and feelings of societal and relational abjection", but write that the resulting "psychophysiological states" can be transformative, generating "an ethics of care, through mutuality, solidarity and empathy". Similarly, David Farrow considers Dreamcrusher part of a music community in which explorations, performances, and even productions of pain can forge a "queer kinship" of "social connections that extend beyond performance".

Sludgemisers is a noise duo with Jenno Snyder and percussionist Nick Guttilla.