Julie Tolentino Wood

New York-based performance artist/dancer/impresario Julie Tolentino is of Filipino/El Salvadoran descent, originally from San Francisco. Her work is inextricably linked to her decades-long involvement in queer sexual subcultures, Eastern healing arts practices, AIDS, and queer cultural activism. Her most recent one-on-one performance, A True Story About Two People, first presented for the 2005 PERFORMA Biennial in New York City at Participant Inc., will be performed in Berlin at the House of Kultur in August of 2007 along with a new installation/performance, States to Permanent Sleep. Tolentino has created many solo, site-specific, collaborative, and group performances including For You (2006) at NGBK Gallery, Berlin, and Participant Inc., New York (2005); Led, at Momenta, Brooklyn (2005); Lost and Found (2005) with curious.com and Lois Weaver, Birmingham, NY (for the Fierce Festival); The Point of Diminishing Return (2002) and The Bottom Project (2000) at the Kitchen, NYC, and On The Boards, Seattle, WA; Pieces of Mind/Mestiza as Landscape, with DJ Aldo Hernandez (1999) at DanceExchange, Birmingham, UK; Mestiza—Que Bonitos Ojos Tienes (1998), Manchester, England (as part of queerupnorth 98), and Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland; and Butterfly Box #3 (1996) at Mother, NYC (for the Downtown Arts/Simon Says Festival). She also collaborated with curious.com to create three videos: Blind; Goodnight Larry Joe (dedicated to Lawrence Steger); and Travels/Mapsuit (2001). Tolentino has been a member of the advisory board for the Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Anti-Violence Project of New York City. She is the co-author of the Lesbian AIDS Project's Women's Safer Sex Handbook, and was a founding member of ACT UP New York's House of Color Video Collective.

Debra Levine

Debra Levine is a doctoral candidate in the Performance Studies department at New York University. Her current work concentrates on how social activist movements (with a particular focus on AIDS activism) inform contemporary creative actions. Also a theatre director, AIDS activist, and documentary filmmaker, she has collaborated with incarcerated AIDS activists at the Bedford Hills Women’s Prison in New York State to produce a book Breaking the Walls of Silence and a documentary, ACE Against the Odds, which presents a first hand account of the experiences of organizing an inmate run AIDS peer counseling, advocacy, and educational organization. She has directed many off-off Broadway performances including the Bessie award winning To Us At Twilight, written and performed by Alyson Pou. She has been a member of ACT UP and has worked as a producer and curator for the public art organization, Creative Time.