Cooler Night #1 featuring Gyna Bootleg, Naija Couture, and Wolf Chalet

For the opening night of Cooler Nights at CARA, Voluminous Arts Founder and Director Gavilán Rayna Russom has paired Vera Chitlyova’s 1987 film "Wolf Chalet (Vlčí bouda)" with performances by Gyna Bootleg and Naija Couture. From Russom: "Chitlyova’s film explores totalitarianism through the idiom of sci-fi and horror cinema. "Wolf Chalet" tells the story of 11 high school students who are selected to participate in an exclusive skiing course only to be manipulated by their instructors into singling one of their peers out to be killed. Through this narrative Chitlyova engages scarcity, sacrifice, authority, violence and scapegoating in both explicit and stealthy ways. In the context of Cooler Night #1, the film functions as a spell and offering to intentionally guide the energy of the residency program the event is the opening night of. It exposes problems that persistently occur in group dynamics as a way of creating possibility for more fruitful dynamics to occur over the residency’s 6 weeks. Gyna Bootleg and Naija Couture’s responses to the film extend this idea into physical and audible reality by unpacking their perspectives on the film’s themes through interdisciplinary experimental performance. Each of these artists has created an original work based on the film’s themes and its emotional landscape."

The night will open with a screening of "Wolf's Chalet (Vlčí bouda)" at CARA.

The Cooler Nights series is a part of bloom how you must, wild until we are free. Learn more about Cooler Nights here!

More about the artists

Gyna Bootleg is a self-taught queer non-binary multimedia artist based in Rhode Island working in experimental photography, performance, sound and video. They are known for their uncompromising style which utilizes their body in extremes as a focus, a totem, an altar, a sacrifice and a vessel for externalizing a journey of trauma and queerness. As part of the Victory Pearl film collective, their video work has been screened nationally, including at the 2014 Porn Hub film Festival in New York. They have toured nationally and internationally with such acts as Tinsel Teeth, Vomitatrix, HARPY, Sire and as their solo project Gyna Bootleg. In 2020 Alternative Press listed them in 10 Shock Rockers who dared to Take Things to the Highest Extremes and they have musical releases on Load Records, Nail in the Coffin, Bufu Records, Annihilvs, and Crass Lips Records.

Naija Couture (Adonis BC Okonkwo) is a sound selector, photographer and performance artist originally from Southwest Georgia but currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Naija Couture’s artistic practice focuses on highlighting the lives of Black trans people specifically trans masculine individual thru narrative, image and sound.