Series II. Minutes, r. 2. b. 3 f. 1-10, 1987 March – 1988 March (ACT UP New York Records, Archives and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library)
By Ethan Philbrick
Saturday, October 10th 2026
Doors at 6:30pm Performance at 7 pm
TICKETS HERE
Presented as part of An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together
Series II. Minutes, r. 2. b. 3 f. 1-10, 1987 March – 1988 March (ACT UP New York Records, Archives and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library)is a vocal performance bythe artist and writer Ethan Philbrick that uses meeting minutes from ACT UP New York’s first year of weekly general meetings as its sole textual material. While minutes are sometimes overlooked as nothing more than bureaucratic notes, this performance approaches them as collective poetic texts that document the desires and frustrations of trying to get urgent things done together. For audience members, Series II. Minutes will be both a listening and reading experience, as each attendeewill be given a printed reader that contains copies of the original ACT UP New York meeting minutes so that they can read along while listening.
Series II. Minutes will be performed by Philbrick alongside vocalists Maia Chao, Daniel de Jesús, and Nicole Renna, and string players Carlos Santiago (violin), Myles Donovan (viola), Veronica Mercedes Pazymiño Jurkiewicz (viola), and Evan Kassouf (cello), with publication design by spreeeng (Carlos Romo-Melgar and John Philip Sage).
About the Artists
Maia Chao is an artist making anthropological work across performance, video, sculpture, and public practice. She has been commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Times Square Arts, The Shed, and MoMA Education. She is full-time faculty in Interdisciplinary Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore and resides in Philadelphia.
Myles Donovan is a largely self taught violist, born and raised inside the city of Philadelphia. He played viola for almost a decade in the queer outsider chamber music group Disemballerina, as well as the hostile architecture themed instrumental duo Forgotten Bottom. He appears often as a rotating collaborator in the band A Stick and A Stone, led by singer Elliot Miskovicz, as well the Audio Visual Improv group Ominous Cloud Ensemble, led by artist Erik Ruin. He attended his first Act-Up meeting as a gay teenage fly on the wall, back when the Philly chapter was still headquartered at the location of 13th and Walnut Street in the late 90s.
Daniel de Jesús is a multidisciplinary artist whose work moves between visual art, music, and narrative. His paintings and illustrations draw from medieval and baroque traditions, Latin American devotional imagery, and mystical philosophy. His music and writing expand these same themes through voice, strings, and sound. Across mediums, his work investigates identity, spirituality, and the psychological life of transformation. Many projects address queer experience, colonial history, and the spiritual language of ecstasy, devotion, and transcendence. Rather than separate disciplines, Daniel treats each medium as a tool for storytelling. Paintings, songs, images, and performances form a single body of work that examines the interior life and the forces that shape it.
Evan Kassof is an opera maker, sound artist, composer, and conductor, based in Philadelphia. His most recent opera – libretto by Aleksandar Hut Kono – Ganymede 5 premiered in the 2019 Philly Fringe Festival, while his operas Colony and Greenland were performed in London at the Royal Opera House. He is the Music Director of ENAensemble and is currently producing the second Serial Opera Project, bringing six newly commissioned songs and operas to life. He has conducted extensively in Philadelphia as a new music specialist and performs as a cellist and viola di gamba player. He earned his PhD in Music Composition from Temple University in 2021 with a specialization in opera making and research. When not making music, he is winning strikes as a higher education union organizer.
Veronica Mercedes Pazymiño Jurkiewicz is an instrumentalist, DJ, educator, and producer based in Philadelphia. She is drawn to sound involving the intersection of experimental, improvisational, and traditional practice; has a passion for creating and realizing diverse types of artistic programs and communal art experiences; and is an active member of the creative and Latin music scene in Philadelphia. As a Teaching Artist and educator, Veronica brings her passion for chamber music, nurturing creativity, and de-colonizing the formal institution of classical music to her teaching philosophy. Having previously taught group and private lessons through both El Sistema programs in Philadelphia - Play On, Philly! and Tune Up, Philly - she currently teaches both violin and viola at Friends Select School and Movemakers Philly. She is also the founder and director of Ritmo Nuevo, a Latin music collective in collaboration with Philly Music Factory/Urban Movement Arts.
Nicole Renna is a singer, director, writer, voice teacher, and creative producer working in Philadelphia. She is the Producing Artistic Director of ENAensemble, staging performances of their Serial Opera Project and mentoring singers, composers, and librettists who work with the ensemble. Nicole has extensive experience performing in musical theater, cabaret, and opera. She was most recently seen in the Fringie Award-winning production of the Circus Opera Company’s production of The Tire Swing. She teaches the Musical Theatre Vocal Workshop at the Walnut Street Theatre and private voice lessons to beginners and pros alike! Her favorite roles are wife to Chris and mommy to Costello.
Carlos Santiago is a Philadelphia-based violinist, improviser, composer, and educator whose practice moves fluidly between the classical tradition and the unruly possibilities of experimental music. Santiago approaches sound as a site for deep listening, playful experimentation, collaboration, and discovery. His work draws from an Afrocentric perspective while questioning the hierarchies and assumptions embedded in many forms of music, creating space for forms of musical expression that are as intellectually curious as they are joyful. Santiago is the founder of Arcx String Quartet and performs regularly with Arcana New Music Ensemble, Fire Museum Presents, Black Pearl Orchestra, and The Philly Pops. He is also a member of The People's Music Supply.
Spreeeng (Carlos Romo-Melgar and John Philip Sage) is a cooperative design practice providing graphic design and creative research services to clients within the cultural sector. Their work ranges from books and exhibitions to experimental websites and visual identities, for clients such as Tate, V&A, MoMA and Movement Research, among others.
About An Endless Meeting
An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together is a multi-pronged project taking place this fall at Vox Populi that activates collective process as subject, form, and method. Spanning exhibitions, a curatorial residency, public programs, and a print publication, the project explores the politics of collectivity, inviting broad publics to reflect on their own experiences of collaboration. An Endless Meeting will be presented as part of Collective Futures, a citywide initiative bringing together artist-run and community-based organizations to examine collective cultural production.
An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
About The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.