reverse cowgirl: ride to the top will feature mckenzie wark, theodosia roussos, and nis fee brender, and premieres at the imagetanz festival, april 8-10, 2025, brut, vienna. it is part 2 of this trilogy.

a project of the department of performance quality, this trilogy of performances uses the artists’ own gender transition as a means to ask larger questions about self, identity, and processes of change in natural and cultural (late-capitalistic) worlds. the series draws on kembra pfahler’s notion of availabilsm to use and misuse the means at hand: history, myth, contemporary/ancient music, video, pop culture, artificial intelligence, poetry, stand-up comedy, and movement.

the work centres on three poles. first, the american southwest: in her memory (the endless road of traveling evangelists); in baudrillard’s america (culture crudely drawn on geologic time); and in her grandfather’s outlaw moonshine bar (knives, guns, pool sharks, country swing, fistfights rolling out to block the highway). second, the zen kōan tradition, in which the artist apprenticed for ten years: composed amid war, famine, and migration, its stories and practices reflect a millennium of practical research in the phenomenology of mind. and third, vienna and new york, the artist’s adoptive homes: change takes place.

the collective title, taken from a bleached shirt found in a brooklyn flea market, refers both to the artist’s background as a trans* woman from arkansas and (of course) to mckenzie wark’s brilliant memoir.

• r1 – reverse cowgirl β (beta); premiered 11.2023, brut, vienna, as part of the imagetanz festival. by and with ariadne randall. costume nyx ferrand. advice asa horvitz. additional advice oneka van schraeder, lau lukkarila, phillipe riera, kira kirsch, andreas fleck. supported by the huggy bears mentoring program. excerpts and drafts shown at kultursommer, vienna; medienfrische, tyrol; galerie peter gaugy; and kobo art space, zurich.
   
  
• r2 – reverse cowgirl: ride to the top; premieres spring 2025, brut, vienna, as part of the imagetanz festival. by and with ariadne randall, mckenzie wark, theodosia roussos, nis fee brender; concept and direction, ariadne randall. generously supported by the city of vienna and bears in the park.
   
• r3 – ██████████████