Shea nuts have been cultivated across regions of West, Central, and East Africa for over one -thousand years.For generations, Africans have used shea butter as a source of food, skincare, and income, supporting themselves, families, and communities with the nourishing product. In this workshop, participants will be educated on the nutrients within shea butter and its many restorative uses. Participants will sample Petty Butter, a shea butter skincare line made by Chicago’s Itunuoluwa Ebijimi aka Petty Crocker. Participants will learn how a 5-minute-a-day focused routine of lotioning with an intentionally crafted product can have exponentially transformative effects on one’s external skin and internal esteem. After reading an excerpt from an Afro-futurism article, participants will learn to use shea butter as a vehicle for self-care, manifestation, telling of cultural histories, and healing of body trauma.

Emerging technology offers new tools to create alternative economic systems, however, how do we ensure that the harm and violence generated by the current fiat-based capitalist economy do not infect and replicate in these new economies? As a curator of Afrofuturism, Ingrid LaFleur has been investigating how the cultural movement can provide a framework from which to properly architect fair and just economic systems. LaFleur will be sharing this investigation and invites us co-create a path towards economic transcendence that can be employed and implemented at every level of our lives. For this keynote, LaFleur asks the audience to share methods and strategies for manifesting their future visions for collective economic liberation.

Feldspar Rhodochrosite is the name of my character who is the masculine witch, the fool/magician. The setting, through colors and lights and clothing will indicate a sense of being in a place between dreams and reality, between masks and self expression, between audience and show. I will sing and lipsynch several well known songs around the topic of intuition. In the video, I perform as a sun goddess singing to Feldspar. I find examples of pagan stories and deities that are pre Christian and pre patriarchal in my ancestral lineage. It is important that we look to our ancestors, for purpose, for information, to defy erasure, and to avoid further colonizing through appropriating a culture that has already been subjugated.

Views From the 12th House was originally performed during the Eclipsing Festival, curated by Amina Ross. Views From the 12th house is about my complicated relationship to the night, darkness and it's metaphorical relationship to blackness. Through audio, text, video, performance and aroma, I use to the stage to maneuver through different spheres of the night.

This project is to make black and brown bodies feel amazing and great about themselves. This project is very conscious and beautiful within its existence.

NAXÖ was born in early 2013, producing and performing fusions of dubstep, psytrance, folktronica, electronica, and psychedelic music. Compositions are consisted of Middle-eastern North-african folklore/classical music, particularly Egyptian using stringed instruments like Oud, Kanoon, Bouzouki, and Strings sections blended with groovy electronic rhythms and bass lines accompanied by eastern percussion like Tabla, and Duff and electronic dominant drumming styles influenced by rock, jazz, trap-hop and psychedelic music. Currently, NAXÖ is performing a music live set of waves about reclaiming Egyptian queer terminologies, gender fluidity and post-colonial social complications

Niña is a queer reggaeton band based in Miami, FL. Our first album will be called "Quinceranerera" and for our debut performance in Chicago we wanted to throw an alternative Quinces party as part of our show. We want to go all out with cake, balloons, pastelitos, have big dresses for people to put on or bring. We envision this performance to be a full out spectacle and incorporate Liz's Cuban ass Miami roots to influence this moment. Liz never had a quinces, so this might just be it. Bow is a trans femme person and a quinces also makes sense as a represents a breakthrough or a coming out. I can also see this party would be relatable for all queer folks attending, celebrating personal growth.

American Cuck is a multimedia video and environmental installation and musical performance exploring the maintenance of white supremacy in the pornographic imagination and psyche of the U.S. nation-state, and its effects on every aspect of American Life. I am specifically wanting to explore the construction of the white male cuckold, the black male object of his obsession, and the relation of both to a plantation culture of race, desire, and violence. Indeed, it is my argument that the construction of the hyper-sexual black person in the white imagination continues to lead to our death in a white supremacist society. The hyper-sexual, hyper-physical black person in the white supremacist mind offers virtuosic pleasure and threat. On the other side of the fantasy of the “Big Black Cock” is a police officer shooting an unarmed black man or woman. In recent years, the “Cuck"has become a prevalent pejorative among white nationalist and “alt- right” circles. The obsessive “Cuck” has become their obsession, and with it the phantasm of black male sexual terror follows. Lexically and ideologically smuggled into supposedly novel racial discourse, the old plantation fantasy persists. American Cuck seeks to place this alt-right obsession with cuckolding into historical context and to explore the ways in which this newest version of an antique narrative serves as a variation on a formative theme necessary for the country’s self-identity. Any rupture in the dominant masques of the plantation fantasy sends the entire republic into crisis. Such ruptures and crises are the focus — and the goal — of American Cuck. From the plantation, to pornhub, to breitbart.com; American Cuck is a portrait of the psyche of U.S.

An audio/visual experience that both questions and models a safe and liberatory club environment. Over the course of a few weeks, we will interview people about what a safe space looks like to them. Weaving samples of these conversations into avant turntabalism, Sasha and Sara will take the listener on a sample-based journey and eventually lead into a cathartic dance party. We will bring out the often conflicting themes of catharsis, desire, pleasure, danger and aggression embedded in dance music and provoke the viewers to imagine their ideal environments.

Film/video titles listed respectively by Artist: Erotic Slumbers of Pluto, 2015, 8mm film and digital video by Ciriza First completed chapter of a film series engaging themes of surreal, unconscious dream landscapes, as well as ancestral reversals, the feminine, death, birth, transmutation, and Santeria mythology. It was shot while performing rituals in the Mojave desert where I resided 5 years. "I Need This In My Life" by Fannie Sosa is a video and sound installation. 7m32s This video is a cristalisation of several threads that have been going around in my life for a while. The threads are: -the healing and evolutionary power of orgasmic experiences, -the blatant disregard of Black dance and song and their technologies as healing devices ie scientific and epistemological racism, -the amount of research and resources that go into weaponising these same technologies against the very people that first conceive them, -this experience that I had a couple of years ago when I literally felt bass fill my womb and make it vibrate into orgasmic release… A lot. The video is both a research video and a tutorial. "The Passion Cuts: 25 facets of Performance" by Hereaclitus Here Vernon 11 min 07 seconds The passion cuts; 25 years of performance video uses old video excerpts to create a cross section of an overwhelming amount of videos at 450 currently. I am interested in showing this work because some of it has never been screened and I feel its an interesting lens to look at my current work, by digging through the trash of the past work it sheds light on my current praxis. "Network Congestion Awareness Exercise by @100PERCENTLIZ 4 CyberSerenity" by Liz Mputu+DIAGNOSIS+ Cyber Exposure therapy: "MUCOUS IS THE ONLY DISEASE"- DR.SEBI + visuals of the data overload/excess virtual media intake we experience and the metaphysical impacts it has on our beings + SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION OF Upper respiratory infections [TW: suicide, illness]- "Desperate need for attention. Living in an emotionally charged environment where no one ever speaks of the "elephant" in the living room. Can manifest as pharyngitis (sore throat), bronchitis, pneumonia, strep throat ortonsillitis. A chronically unmet need for simple kindness can lead to addictions and even thoughts of suicide" [source]: "http://www.ourspiritualnutrition.com/is05.htm#Upper_respiratory_infections" +TREATMENT+ the E-Remedy: "ENTER THE VOID" +guided audio-visualization of symbols, objects, and scenarios with healing properties (nutritive herbs, the elements, scenes of relaxation) + soft background binaural beats to increase focus, clarity, and patience (qualities to help one overcome everyday stressors) + guided audio/visual breathing exercise + Sirian Sacred Circuitry Thot Pattern Remapping w/ Sigils "Tribute, First" by S. Nicole Lane is a video piece that explores my experiences working as a humiliatrix, where I would humiliate men for money and demand that they perform certain tasks for me at a timely manner. Paying for dinner, singing "I'm a Little Tea Pot," or practicing oral sex on a cucumber are a few examples of tasks. My piece includes the concept of hypnosis and online videos that dom's create to hypnotize their sub to further control their mind and body. My piece includes a sound component of all of the tasks that I demanded my sub to do, as well as a hypnotic video of myself, and hand commands that are used for the compliant male. The video is lo-fi and works with footage from when I also performed as a cam girl. "Documentation of Rebirth Garments Performance" Rebirth Garments is a line of clothing wearables and accessories for the full spectrum of Gender, Size and Ability made by Sky Cubacub in Chicago.

Hereaclitus will also be presenting a Manifesto conceptualizing the history of the work around Icuqts with the Armory Show of 1913.

Ladydady is a music production project with the aim of helping queer performers produce new music. Ladydady is a bossy bitch, a single parent household, a femme who's raising a family, and above all a tom boy daddy.

Inspired by my grandfather and my childhood in the church, Dynamite is a 30 minute performance piece that utlizes drag, burlesque, modern dance and beyond.

In my project "My Last American Dollar" I am thinking about resistance. How do we resist temptation, how do we slow down, how do we play, how do we survive? I have been thinking about 5 spaces/ environments that frame my research: Locker Rooms, Strip Clubs, Waiting Rooms, Church pews and Field Days. In “ My last American Dollar” I build a “waiting room” inside of a room. Church pews and benches become spaces for audience members to watch me and themselves. Sometimes I am her, I am your dancer. My back sweat is your holy water in our locker room. My speech becomes locker room talk, the “boys” playing in the field. The project investigates forms in which black and brown people hold space for each other, how do you carry the multiplicities of being young, gifted and black.

I am creating a mixtape for Reptilian Trax in fall and winter; my project, currently UNTITLED, will be a premiere of this work and also a separate entity that lives on in its own right. I will primarily be working with artists to create a live performance/mixtape that sheds light on trans lives, brown lives, musician lives in the city...this work will encompass primarily live and recorded sound (monologues and poetry I will write or co-write with other trans women) as well as collaborations on dance music that will weave these together. The performance aspect comes from a group of artists (mostly djs and live vocalists making it happen), but most of the focus will be on sonic time based performance.

ICUQTS and TRQPITECA Co-founder La Spacer (Natalie Murillo) and CQQCHIFRUIT (Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero) will present worK-in-progress showing of music developed over 4 years of collaboration in Chicago and Miami, using rhythms and melodies produced on hardware machines by La Spacer in conjunction with vocals performerd by CQQCHIFRUIT.

Live performance of Zemmoa’s recently released album “Covers”. Zemmoa, whose artistic name is derived from the French "C'est moi" which means "I am me", is a Mexico City based musician, performer and multi-media artist. Driven to tell her story as a queer and transgender artist, she created Zemmporio Records when a record company told her they were not ready for an artist who plays with gender identity. B!TCH3Z is excited to present Zemmoa in collaboration with TrQpiteca at I.C.U.Q.T.S 2018.

Film/video titles listed respectively by Artist: Erotic Slumbers of Pluto, 2015, 8mm film and digital video by Ciriza First completed chapter of a film series engaging themes of surreal, unconscious dream landscapes, as well as ancestral reversals, the feminine, death, birth, transmutation, and Santeria mythology. It was shot while performing rituals in the Mojave desert where I resided 5 years. "I Need This In My Life" by Fannie Sosa is a video and sound installation. 7m32s This video is a cristalisation of several threads that have been going around in my life for a while. The threads are: -the healing and evolutionary power of orgasmic experiences, -the blatant disregard of Black dance and song and their technologies as healing devices ie scientific and epistemological racism, -the amount of research and resources that go into weaponising these same technologies against the very people that first conceive them, -this experience that I had a couple of years ago when I literally felt bass fill my womb and make it vibrate into orgasmic release… A lot. The video is both a research video and a tutorial. "The Passion Cuts: 25 facets of Performance" by Hereaclitus Here Vernon 11 min 07 seconds The passion cuts; 25 years of performance video uses old video excerpts to create a cross section of an overwhelming amount of videos at 450 currently. I am interested in showing this work because some of it has never been screened and I feel its an interesting lens to look at my current work, by digging through the trash of the past work it sheds light on my current praxis. "Network Congestion Awareness Exercise by @100PERCENTLIZ 4 CyberSerenity" by Liz Mputu+DIAGNOSIS+ Cyber Exposure therapy: "MUCOUS IS THE ONLY DISEASE"- DR.SEBI + visuals of the data overload/excess virtual media intake we experience and the metaphysical impacts it has on our beings + SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION OF Upper respiratory infections [TW: suicide, illness]- "Desperate need for attention. Living in an emotionally charged environment where no one ever speaks of the "elephant" in the living room. Can manifest as pharyngitis (sore throat), bronchitis, pneumonia, strep throat ortonsillitis. A chronically unmet need for simple kindness can lead to addictions and even thoughts of suicide" [source]: "http://www.ourspiritualnutrition.com/is05.htm#Upper_respiratory_infections" +TREATMENT+ the E-Remedy: "ENTER THE VOID" +guided audio-visualization of symbols, objects, and scenarios with healing properties (nutritive herbs, the elements, scenes of relaxation) + soft background binaural beats to increase focus, clarity, and patience (qualities to help one overcome everyday stressors) + guided audio/visual breathing exercise + Sirian Sacred Circuitry Thot Pattern Remapping w/ Sigils "Tribute, First" by S. Nicole Lane is a video piece that explores my experiences working as a humiliatrix, where I would humiliate men for money and demand that they perform certain tasks for me at a timely manner. Paying for dinner, singing "I'm a Little Tea Pot," or practicing oral sex on a cucumber are a few examples of tasks. My piece includes the concept of hypnosis and online videos that dom's create to hypnotize their sub to further control their mind and body. My piece includes a sound component of all of the tasks that I demanded my sub to do, as well as a hypnotic video of myself, and hand commands that are used for the compliant male. The video is lo-fi and works with footage from when I also performed as a cam girl. "Documentation of Rebirth Garments Performance" Rebirth Garments is a line of clothing wearables and accessories for the full spectrum of Gender, Size and Ability made by Sky Cubacub in Chicago.