Photo by Olympia Lolo
I’m Gavilán Rayna Russom, Rayna for short. I’m a folklorist, artist, community organizer, and curator based in New York City. I hold an MA in Cultural Sustainability and am the founder and current director of Voluminous Arts, an organization dedicated to the experimental artistic culture of transgender people and communities. For much of my career I’ve made art and music about holding space for difference, about experiences that occur at the boundaries of consciousness, and about the richness of the places where frictions occur between the individual and the collective. I’ve researched, written, and spoken about these things as well, especially in the ways that they relate to liberation, healing, sexuality, BDSM, sound, deviance, gender expansiveness, time, memory, and the dead.
My work is oriented around spiritual and creative imperatives, which has meant that I have followed an intuitive pathway through life and made choices based on the guidance of felt senses, inner knowings, and contact with traditions that strengthen these senses and knowings.
Many people are most familiar with my work in electronic music, which includes an extensive discography of recorded music and a 30 plus year career of performing live, touring, and DJing. Some of my past electronic music projects are Paper Eyes, Black Meteoric Star, The Crystal Ark, and both solo and collaborative work recorded as Gavin Russom.
In addition to my own music and performances I have contributed to several bands, most notably LCD Soundsystem with whom I recorded and toured as a synthesist from 2009-2018. In my teens I became interested in electronic sound as a way to achieve particular types of ecstatic experience, glimpses into non-linear temporalities, and brushes with states of fluidity in my body and identity. This interest led me to become an electronics engineer in my 20’s, a skill that was intimately connected to my desire to work with synthesis despite commercially made synthesizers being inaccessible to me.
My first company Electronics Wizard, which I launched in 2001, provided a way for me to employ my skills in analog synthesizer design, modification, and repair to create innovative sounds and systems for artists, bands, and studios. LCD Soundsystem and DFA Records were some of my many clients at Electronics Wizard. From 2001 - 2004 I designed, repaired, and modified a wide range of specialized electronics equipment for both, which eventually led to me releasing music on the label as well as recording and playing with LCD.
in 2007 I began to move away from electronics design to focus on some of the deeper themes which had initially drawn me to synthesis. These themes, including boundary states, temporalities outside of the linear, fluidity of identity, strategies of liberation, and relationships between the ecstatic and the everyday became the focus of my research, creative, and community organizing work.
Since the late 80’s, I’ve been involved with clubs, artist run venues, and other “underground” spaces of artistic exchange and community. I’ve presented my own work and curated events in and for these spaces as well as advocating for their cultural value in my writing and speaking.
In addition to my ongoing work in these spaces I have presented works in performance, video, and installation at international institutions including Moma PS1, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin, the São Paulo Biennial, Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, the Donau Festival, Kunsthalle Zürich, Big Ears Festival, Foksall Gallery Foundation, the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances, Chicago Filmmakers, the Museum of Modern Art, Moogfest, E-Flux, and National Sawdust.