Cooler Night #3 featuring Jodi Lin, Pauli Cakes/Petty Boots, and Davon Chance/Miz Jade

[Due to unforeseen circumstances Tivali Thomas will unable to perform at Cooler #3 , but we're thrilled to update that Voluminous Arts artist and co-curator Omari Love will be stepping in to perform.]

Cooler Night #3, curated by Voluminous Arts residents Ris Gumpert and Omari Love, will take place on Monday, July 31.

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love–whether we call it friendship or family or romance—is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in these moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for one another.—James Baldwin

For the third Cooler Night Ris Gumpert and Omari Love have invited Jodi Lin, Pauli Cakes/Petty Boots, Tivali Thomas, Davon Chance/Miz Jade for a program that explores possibilities of rebirth, healing, and repair. Through poetry, music, and dance, these artists offer meditations on survival, and of moving out of grief and trauma towards joy. Thematically dovetailing with the themes of Cooler Night #2, this night further explores how movement is itself a form of care work through activating embodied experiences of pleasure and promise built upon legacies and presents of community organizing as an act of love.

Sometimes the love we experience between each other is the greatest art we can possibly create. Romantic, platonic, familial, self-love, and more. Love in its truest form is expansive and never transactional. Granting ourselves permission to heal from the traumas brought about by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and systemic oppression can allow that love to flow more abundantly between ourselves and the individuals that have been placed in our lives. Cooler Night #3 is a celebration of that healing, both embodied and experienced.—Ris Gumpert

We approached the gates that were decorated with a hard surface layer of gold.

There was a thick refreshing mist that hung in the air which covered the entire horizon.

Birds were chirping in perfect harmony and the air smelled like the first day of spring.

I walked through the sand with my bare feet, and I was kissed by the mist of sheer love.

Heaven could live on earth if we’re willing to learn the ways of love and acceptance. It would pervade like the rays of the summer sun.

Protecting the children and souls that became lost to the grasp of darkness —Omari Love

Cooler Nights is part of our summer program bloom how you must, wild until we are free, and is inspired by Voluminous Arts Founder Gavilán Rayna Russom's memories of the free, artist-curated “Monday Nite” series that took place between 1993 and 2001 at The Cooler, a club in the pre-gentrification Meatpacking District, not far from CARA. Instigated by Voluminous Arts’ work during the summer program, Cooler Nights at CARA aim to reconnect with and revitalize the legacy of our neighborhood, referencing the history of The Cooler and bringing in the voices of contemporary artists.

Learn more about Cooler Nights here!

More about the Cooler Night #3 artists

Pauli Cakes is a multi-dimensional non-binary artist, dj, performer and event curator born in the Bronx and based in Brooklyn. Pauli is the co-founder of nightlife collective & mutual aid platform DisCakes and founder of @xcakesnyc. Their live performance project is called Petty Boots and started in 2016 as a response to the woes of hyper-feminization and sexualization, trauma and their past experiences as a young sex worker.

They have performed as Petty Boots at The Performance Space in New York, O Sitio Arte e Tecnologia in Santa Catarina, Brasil and on other stages, streets and spaces all over. Through performance art Pauli Cake's uses their body as a tool for gender destruction, rage and rebirth. This upcoming performance at CARA will be their first time performing Petty Boots since 2019.

Tivali Thomas aka DOLLNXTDOOR is an internationally recognized poet, performer and DJ, creating music, literature and art that celebrates and interrogates the Black Trans experience. Her goal is to use sound, performance and literature to create a vacuum of love and immersion. She uses her DJ sets as a medium to communicate her deep love and appreciation for black queer influence on art and music.

Jodi Lin is a Queer/Trans Asian Pacific Islander poet and filmmaker based in Manhattan. They find focus in creating work that engages individuals who have ever sought a connection with something spiritual. Their poetry can be experienced in Olney Magazine, Amethyst Review, Poetry Project Footnotes and in Leaving Beauty, their video diary on YouTube. They were invited to complete a course of study at Maysles Documentary Center and was a fellowship recipient at Brooklyn Poets. Their short film “Borte, Queen of Tibet,” a fearlessly honest autobiography about their recovery from Schizo Affective Disorder, was nominated for the festival prize at the Soho International Film Festival and received numerous other screenings. A graduate of the ART Institute at Harvard and Sarah Lawrence College.

Davon Chance/Miz Jade is a Black, trans, queer interdisciplinary (drag) performance artist and dance teacher. After spending their early years exploring multiple art forms, Davon decided to hone in on their two passions: performance and education. She received her dance training at the world-renowned Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase, and continues to expand the breadth of her skills through additional classes, workshops and intensives. When they are not performing, you can find them teaching dance or dance fitness classes to adults and youth throughout NYC and Westchester County. As an interdisciplinary artist, she has merged her dance background with her nightlife persona, Miz Jade. Although they juggle a busy schedule, Miz Jade finds time to be a story-teller with the incredible team at Drag Story Hour, which fosters children's imagination while providing glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.