DOT presents: Karaoke Practice! - Another Protest Song
When: Thursday, May 1 @ 8-11 PM
Where: Francis Kite Club, 40 Loisaida Avenue, NYC
Organized by: Department of Transformation (DOT), supported by Historias
Guest Artists: Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere
Department of Transformation (DOT) and The Clemente are thrilled to announce our next Karaoke Practice! at The Francis Kite Club on May 1, 2025. In this ongoing series of experimental and participatory gatherings, collective voice, performance, and transformation take center stage.
For this International Workers Day edition of Karaoke Practice!, interdisciplinary artist duo Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere invite your participation in Another Protest Song: Karaoke, a series of experimental events that look to the karaoke songbook as potential for political enunciation through song. First initiated in 2008, this ongoing project invites the public to choose and sing songs of protest, along with pop songs re-contextualized to support the singer’s engaged interests or dislikes.
Karaoke Practice! and Another Protest Song: Karaoke are organized by DOT and presented in partnership with The Clemente as part of HISTORIAS, their multidisciplinary citywide initiative to foreground Latinx narratives in the arts. An experiential investigation of popular song and informal gathering as vectors for vernacular political communication, Nevarez and Tevere’s project considers the poetics of everyday modes of resistance and the ways in which cultural heritage is embodied and transmitted through ritual and song.
Department of Transformation is an artist-organized group founded by designer, author, and educator Prem Krishnamurthy that prototypes new formats for togetherness, learning, and collective healing. As part of DOT’s ongoing micro-residency at The Clemente, Karaoke Practice! sessions at The Francis Kite Club invite the DOT community and the public to explore karaoke as a medium for expression, experimentation, connection, and community.
As a readymade format, karaoke can generate varying levels of discomfort in people while also demonstrating a person’s virtuosic potential. Karaoke creates community through a shared sense of vulnerability and mutual support. Whether you are a pro or novice, love a good time or just have something to protest at top volume, we invite you to join us and make your voice heard!
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS:
Department of Transformation (D🌍T) is an artist-organized group that prototypes new formats for togetherness, learning, and collective healing. Through workshops, events, publications, and commissions (+ karaoke!), we support others in their own processes of change. We believe that by transforming the arts, we can transform ourselves, our communities, and our world.
Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere’s practice brings together music, sound, and the cultural complexities of the public sphere, engaging civic action through distinct musical instrumentation and acoustic traditions. They have exhibited their work at the Museum of Modern Art, Museo de Arte Raúl Anguiano in Guadalajara, Mexico, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and elsewhere. Their fellowships include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital fellowship, and an Art Matters grant. For more than two decades, the artists have collaboratively produced multimedia works with musicians, radio practitioners, students, and city agencies.
Located in the heart of the Lower East Side, The Francis Kite Club is a unique venue for creative engagement, fostering collaborative, social, and artistic experimentation. Reflecting DOT’s commitment to artistic and social transformation, these events create an inclusive space for self-expression, performance, and joy. Whether you're a seasoned performer or new to the microphone, all are welcome to take part in this evolving practice.
Department of Transformation and Karaoke Practice! are supported by The Clemente Soto Velez Cultural & Educational Center. Founded 1993, The Clemente is a Puerto Rican and Latinx cultural space rooted in the Lower East Side, connecting and co-creating with contemporary artists, cultural workers and small arts organizations by offering subsidized studios, exhibition, rehearsal, office and venue spaces; and producing original programming in a spirit of responsiveness, heritage conversation and provocative collaboration.
