Let’s get Wet: Reconnecting Electronic Music and Leatherdyke History

Celebrate Gavilán Rayna Russom’s album with Bloodsisters director Michelle Handelman, discussing electronic music & Leatherdyke culture.

Summary:

Join us on September 17th to celebrate the release of Gavilán Rayna Russom’s latest album under her alias Black Meteoric Star, WET. Rayna, whose personal collection is housed at the archives, will sit in conversation with artist and director of Bloodsisters: Leather, Dykes, and Sadomasochism Michelle Handelman about the long-standing connections between electronic music and Leatherdyke culture. Rayna has said of the Black Meteoric Star project, now in its 20th year, “It’s always had this thread about creating the kind of atmosphere that exists in queer dungeons, making music that could provide the ideal soundtrack for the kinds of SM spaces I imagined as a young person, and found as an adult.” Materials from the archive will be on view that highlight how Leatherdyke culture and electronic and dance sounds have intertwined, alongside materials from Rayna’s collection that share the visual and audio history of the Black Meteoric Star project.

No one will be turned away for lack of funds! If the suggested donation costs, more-if/less-if are prohibitive, please email: lhaspecialcollections@gmail.com

Event Access:

Access Questions: We are happy to provide more information about the space or event! Are we missing an access need? Please email us and we will do our best to accomodate: lhaspecialcollections@gmail.com

Mobility: The Archives is wheelchair accessible up to the first floor. The archives is on two floors. The main part of this event, the panel, takes place on the first floor which is wheelchair accessible with ample space for other mobility aids and an accessible bathroom. The second floor of the archives is only accessible by stairs.

Air: The Archives has two HEPA air-purifiers running 24/7 on the first and second floors. We will have KN95s and masks with equivalent filtration available at the event.

Bios:

Gavilán Rayna Russom is a musician artist, curator and folklorist based in NYC. Raised in Providence, Rhode Island on freestyle, rap, electro, and synth-driven funk during the breakdance era of the early 1980s, Rayna is a lifelong devotee of electronic rhythms and beats. Currently based in New York City, she has spent over two decades at the vanguard of underground sound, constantly redefining the boundaries of techno, synth, and experimental music.

Dubbed the “Counterculture Queen” by The Quietus, Rayna’s music has developed in parallel with her visual art, writing, performance, curation, and research work that celebrates themes including liberation, healing, sexuality, BDSM, sound, deviance, gender expansiveness, time, memory, and the dead, all through a cultural lens. She was the artist-in-residence at Esponja, São Paulo, in 2024. She has presented works in performance, video, and installation at international institutions including Moma PS1, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, the São Paulo Biennial, Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, the Donau Festival, Kunsthalle Zürich, Big Ears Festival, Foksall Gallery Foundation, the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances, Chicago Filmmakers, the Museum of Modern Art, Moogfest, E-Flux, and National Sawdust. Rayna holds an MA in Cultural Sustainability and is the founder of Voluminous Arts, a community organization dedicated to the experimental artistic culture of trans* people.

Her extensive discography includes work under her own name as well as aliases including Black Meteoric Star, Gavin Russom, and Hail of Arrows. In addition to her solo work, Russom gained international recognition as a member of the band LCD Soundsystem, contributing synthesizer artistry and production expertise to the group’s sound. She has also been the driving force and producer of more experimental collaborative projects like Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom and The Crystal Ark. However, it is her inventive solo output and fearless explorations that have cemented her reputation as a boundary-breaker and creative leader in the electronic music world.

For more information on Rayna’s work: www.gavilanraynarussom.com

Michelle Handelman uses video, live performance and photography to make confrontational works that explore the sublime in its various forms of excess and nothingness. Her background is a study in opposites–raised during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Handelman split her time between Chicago, where her mother was a fixture in the art world, and Los Angeles, where her father was a player in the sex industry. Over the years Handelman has voraciously traversed both these worlds, developing a body of work that investigates ways of looking at the forbidden and revealing dark, subconscious layers of outsider agency.

Handelman is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of many awards including Creative Capital, Art Matters, NYSCA, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Her work has shown internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; the British Film Institute, London; the PERFORMA Biennial, New York; Participant Inc, New York; Film at Lincoln Center, New York; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York; REDCAT, Los Angeles; among others.

In the mid-90’s Handelman directed and produced the feature documentary BloodSisters: Leather, Dykes and Sadomasochism (Bravo Award 1999), an in-depth look at the San Francisco leatherdyke scene that has just been re-released by Kino Lorber and recently acquired for the MoMA film collection.

For more information on Handelman’s work: www.michellehandelman.com