Dear KINK OUT Family and Friends,
We are collaborating with CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at CUNY on Power of Leather, a series running from October 2024 to May 2025 featuring members of the Kink Out extended family. Highlights:
11/12/24: The Abject: A Performance by Empress Wu
1/30/25: Exigent Sadism
3/27/25: Fantasies Identity Can't Hold: Leathersex and Trans Experience
Spring 2025: KINK OUT: INCARNATE
Power of Leather is a series of in-person dialogues, interactive performances, and community events exploring leathersex, sadomasochism, and leather culture.
Leather knowledge is stored in boots, slings, cans of crisco, and the hallowed halls of dungeons. As such, each event joins leather community members, academics and artists, opening up space for embodied, erotic and object-oriented knowledge. The series foregrounds leatherdykes, trans leatherpeople, and sex workers whose histories intersect with but depart significantly from those of cis-gay leathermen and straight BDSM players.
Power of Leather explores leather imaginaries through performance, dialogue, sculpture, film, discussions, and play. The series ends with KINK OUT: INCARNATE, our interactive art installation and party that will invite you all to embody what you’ve learned along the way.
SPEAKERS:
KING COBRA, Ariane Cruz, Mama Vi Johnson, Yin Q, Ze R., Ignacio Rivera, Avgi Saketopoulou, Kassandra Sparks, Susan Stryker, Laura Westengard, and Empress Wu.
RACIALIZED EROTICS OF PLEASURE IN LEATHER
Thursday, October 17, 2024
630-830pm ET
CUNY Graduate Center + Zoom
365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
FREE RSVP
RACE IS ALREADY PLAYING YOU. HOW ARE YOU PLAYING BACK?
Ariane Cruz and Mama Vi Johnson discuss the “politics of perversion” in leathersex and legacies of pleasure for Black leatherpeople. They’ll draw on Cruz’s scholarship on Black women in kink and Johnson’s experience as a leather elder.
This is a hybrid event. Cruz and Johnson’s dialogue will be virtual, with an in-person livestream screening at the CUNY Graduate Center. Kink Out’s Ze R. will then moderate a discussion with in-person attendees, centering BIPOC queer and leatherpeople.
THE ABJECT: A PERFORMANCE BY EMPRESS WU
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
630-8pm ET
CUNY Graduate Center + Zoom
365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
FREE RSVP
FETISHISTIC MENAGE-A-TROIS WANT TO GET UNDER YOUR SKIN
Leather as skin. Leather as subversion and reanimation of medical disenfranchisement. In transgression there is always the possibility of infection, of invasion, of intimacy. Leathersex as embodiment that exceeds the human, turning bodies into toys and toys into bodies. A night of performance, art, and archive with KING COBRA, Laura Westengard, and Empress Wu.
EXIGENT SADISM
Thursday, January 30, 2025
630-8pm ET
CUNY Graduate Center + Zoom
365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
FREE RSVP
AN INVITATION TO BEND YOUR WILL
Is sadism ever ethical and, if so, when? What about moments when our sadistic impulses are recruited by our own histories of violence and oppression? Is that violence, traumatic repetition, or, perhaps, something else entirely? A discussion with Yin Q, Avgi Saketopoulou, and Kassandra Sparks.
FANTASIES IDENTITY CAN’T HOLD: LEATHERSEX & TRANS EXPERIENCE
Thursday, March 27, 2025
630-8pm ET
CUNY Graduate Center + Zoom
365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
FREE RSVP
LABORATORY ISO GENDER DEVIANTS AND IDENTITIES AT THE PRECIPICE OF UNRAVELING
Did you know trans sadomasochism creates possibilities for new bodies, new selves, new genders? Did you know dungeons are laboratories for gender and sexual experimentation? Ignacio Rivera and Susan Stryker do. And they can’t wait to show and tell you how. This event will start with a screening of one of Rivera’s films.
AND SAVE THE DATE:
KINK OUT: INCARNATE
Spring 2025
FOLLOW FOR UPDATES
We close out the Power of Leather series with KINK OUT: INCARNATE, our art activation and party that invites you to embody what you’ve learned through this series. Follow us on Instagram or subscribe to this newsletter below. More to come.
We hope to see you soon, at our events or yours.
With leather hearts,
The KO Crew