15/10/2025
Genderfail 10 Years of Failing Forward Anniversary Fundraiser
October 24th 7-10pm
Join GenderFail in celebrating their 10th anniversary at Secret Riso Club. On October 24, 2015, a Kickstarter campaign we ran failed spectacularly, raising only $118 of the $2,000 sought to start GenderFail. In true GenderFail fashion, we aim to celebrate this unintentional “failure” that has become an essential lesson in maintaining and sustaining the GenderFail ethos. Ten years later, we will again attempt to raise the $2,000 initially sought a decade ago to help sustain the press in these difficult times. If we are fortunate enough to reach that mark, 10% of every dollar above $2,000 will be donated to Heal Palestine.
Opening Remarks by Legacy Russell
Longtime GenderFail supporter and author of incredible books such as Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto and Black MEME will be setting off the event at 7:30 with some remarks about this historic milestone for GenderFail. We were honored to publish Legacy’s first book of poems, titled Gay Pompeii 79 A.D., this summer.
Legacy Russell is a curator and writer. Born and raised in New York City, she is the Executive Director & Chief Curator of the experimental arts institution The Kitchen.
Formerly she was the Associate Curator of Exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Russell holds an MRes with Distinction in Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London with a focus in Visual Culture. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on gender, performance, digital selfdom, internet idolatry, and new media ritual. Russell’s written work, interviews, and essays have been published internationally.
Check out Gay Pompeii 79 A.D.
by Legacy Russell
DJ SET BY MHYSA
E. Jane is an interdisciplinary artist and musician who works in Brooklyn, NY. Through images, videos, performances, installations, and sound, they explore the interiority and labor of Black women and femmes. They enjoy scrolling through mostly digital archives to uncover and share Black femme perspectives, especially as they relate to media culture and surveillance. They regularly use the Black diva as a Black feminine archetype within their practice.
Jane is frustrated with the hypervisibility and surveillance of the black femme body. Recent installations and performances have questioned how and when the Black femme body is displayed by intentionally distorting or hiding the body, prompting viewers to actively engage in seeing.
Jane's persona MHYSA, a q***r underground popstar, occasionally performs within their installations and maintains a separate music career. This Gesamtkunstwerk project explores Black music culture and divadom through embodied expression.
Playing 8-9 pm
DJ SET c͓̽r͓̽y͓̽$͓̽c͓̽r͓̽o͓̽s͓̽s͓̽ + Qiron Vashni Mora
Multidisciplinary visual artist, image maker, and DJ cry$cross is a true artist embodying the breadth and depth of New York City’s DJ culture. Their music takes you to a familiar yet alien place, sonically traversing time and space. Their work explores their journey to reconnect with their native African roots and finding ways to intertwine the cultures that they grew up between. Through this, they create an entirely new world of their own, in turn, encouraging others to do the same.
Being from New York herself, cry$cross is no stranger to the city’s musical history and its cultural influences. She pieces together a vivid nostalgic picture through fusing gritty NY club with percussive electronic music to create a contemporary new sound. Her sets are masterful in their execution—living confidently in the boundaries between genres, to create an infectious sound that has captivated dancefloors across the country.
Playing 9-10pm
AFTER HOURS KARAOKE BY IRRELEVANT PRESS
Holly Meadows-Smith of Irrelevant Press will be hosting a post-party karaoke session in the basement of Secret Riso Club from 9:30-11:30pm.
Photo above from Irrelevant Press karaoke event in September :)
What is the 'Q***r' Voice? Protest-inspired open-source printmaking workshop
During the Genderfail 10 Years of Failing Forward Anniversary Fundraiser, we will be doing a workshop during the event titled What is the 'Q***r' Voice?. For this event, we made A-Z stamps of one of our Protest-Inspired Open-Source Typeset, Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, sourced from Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, cofounded group and youth shelter STAR, providing vulnerable and homeless trans teenagers with food and clothing."
As a “q***r” person myself, I don’t fully understand what it means to be q***r. For many, q***r is a place filler to describe someone who is definitely not cisgender, heteronormative, and colonialist. Part of my attraction to this label is its fluidity, but I often find “q***r” to be a hollow identity that doesn’t hold the power many assume it does. Add in the academic scholarship of “Q***r Theory” that is written for those who are college educated and doesn’t always reflect the lived experience of “q***r”, trans, non-binary, asexual, two-spirit, intersex... people, “q***rness” deserves a refocus.
Using our Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries stamps, create a protest-inspired statement describing your voice, be it Q***r, Disabled, Palestinian, Black, Indigenous, diasporic, or even a voice yet to be realized. The work you create is yours to keep; all we ask is that you scan your creation for our archive and a future publication project based on “The Q***r Voice”.
Sliding Scale Fundraising Tickets
Tickets will be available on a sliding scale, and no one will be turned away due to a lack of funds. All tickets purchased for $50 or more will receive a limited-edition risograph print created exclusively for this event. Even if you can’t make the event in person, please consider purchasing a ticket to set GenderFail up for another decade of imperfect publishing. Ticket sliding scale rewards will be shipped to everyone who can't attend in person.
All paid tickets come with an open bar (beer and wine and N/A drinks) and lite snacks!
SPECIAL THANKS TO SECRET RISO CLUB FOR HOSTING AND PLATFORMING THIS EVENT!
Secret Riso Club is a collaborative artist-run space & creative studio that serves as a resource for independent publishing, art book production, art project development, programming, exhibitions, and distribution. The use of print & design as a tool for social change, creativity, and community empowerment drive our work and programming. Rooted in the values of collaboration, equity, and artistic expression, SRC strives to cultivate an environment where individuals from diverse backgrounds can come together to learn, create, and connect. SRC is run in collaboration between Gonzalo Guerrero and Tara Ridgedell.
