Nic Kay — Emily Mello

May 3, 2021 – September 14, 2021

New Museum Digital
Residency and Commissioned Film

Building from their personal archive and research practice, NIC Kay’s residency at the New Museum presented a new iteration of #blackpeopledancingontheinternet, their ongoing inquiry into the creation, documentation, and circulation of African diasporic dance and movement practices, house and techno music, and Black and queer internet cultures.

Through this project, NIC Kay considers ways that Black communities claim and maneuver the internet as a space for visible yet coded play, transpolitical organization, exchange, and innovation.

They are particularly interested in how internet platform design alters and influences textual and movement-based languages, ultimately shaping the expression, framing, and witnessing of content through video, images, texts, and GIFs; how bodies are compressed and expanded; how Blackness can subvert and infiltrate virtual space; and how meaning is created, co-opted, and reclaimed.

Commissions
 keep at it, 2021
Video, color, sound; 5:27 minutes
Typically working on this project solo with just a laptop camera, NIC Kay expanded their inquiry during the residency with a commissioned short film, keep at it (2021), produced with a film crew.

 “form in a sentence,” 2021
A non-linear movement work unfolding across 92 posts on the artist’s social media platforms

Selected Programs
 Work in Progress: Screening and Conversation with NIC Kay
 Dancing for the Internet: A Workshop with NIC Kay
 Sonic Situation

Alongside public programs, NIC Kay visited the New Museum’s Youth Spectrum Arts for a trio of workshops to create their own videos. This cohort met online two days a week during quarantine to explore contemporary art as a resource for queer community building.

Selected Press and Media
 Video Interview with Nic Kay
 Artist NIC Kay Seeks Balance During the Pandemic, Andscape, interview by Benedict Nguyễn