Radio Imagination

Known for their work in the performance-based collaborative My Barbarian (with Jade Gordon), Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade (each b. 1973) use song to suture the emotional past to the emotional present. On the opening night of Radio Imagination: Artists in the Archive of Octavia E. Butler at Armory Center for the Arts, the duo premiered Star Choir, a composition for voice and orchestra, at the neighboring Levitt Pavilion. Star Choir incorporates lyrics drawn from Parable of the Trickster, a novel Butler was famously unable to complete. The performance also included a video projection featuring animated renderings of the landscapes described in Butler’s drafts for Trickster. In the Armory’s Caldwell Gallery, Gaines and Segade displayed the video along with the original musical score.