In 2011, the New Museum presented Donna Haraway’s Expanded Benefits Package, organized by Rhizome as part of the New Silent series. This dance performance by New York artist Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, was set in the compounded space of artist studio / gay bar / queer community center. Featuring music by SOPHIE, the event premiered a display of sculpture, large scale painting, and a video projection entitled Ideals, Bars, Shoes, and Legs, setting the stage for a sensual physical space in which the artist and collaborator Chelsea Culp danced and recited collaged erotic texts from London and New York. The event highlighted a shifting frame, which allowed for chance readings of moving image both painterly and physical. Donna Haraway’s Expanded Benefits Package evoked the New Museum’s neighboring historic center Judson Church, by likewise celebrating the tradition of translating daily activities into activist choreography.

The New Silent was a series of programs, presented by the New Museum and organized by its affiliate organization Rhizome, that explored contemporary art engaged with emerging technology and examined the ways digital technologies alter our lives and experiences of urban spaces. The series comprised screenings and performances, as well as a critical conversational strand, which brought together leading scholars, artists, critics, and public figures to illuminate the complex interactions between technology, culture, and creative practice. Named for the generational theories of Neil Howe and William Strauss, the New Silent presented artists working at the furthest reaches of technological experimentation as well as those responding to the broader aesthetic and political implications of new tools and media.