office initiatives: Black Disabled Lives Matter

Jermaine Greaves founded Black Disabled Lives Matter in 2020 to bring to light, celebrate, and, include the black disabled people who were as enraged, passionate, and creative in their methods of dissent, and more at risk of policing, with more than half of black disabled Americans experiencing an arrest before the age of 28. Greaves, has spent his life as a representative for black disabled people. His background boasts impressive work in event planning, modeling, and dancing, including a role in Lincoln Center’s 2021 “You Are Here” performance. Greaves has gone above and beyond what was expected, or made accessible to him to make way for disabled people in exclusionary spaces.

But after years of serving his community and well…serving in the NYC party scene, Greaves has turned inward to build spaces of rest and rehabilitation. For the past few months, he’s been in and out of the hospital with a fractured arm and skin condition, as well as a positive COVID test. Greaves has taken the not-so-subtle cues of his body to start putting himself and his health first.

After becoming re-infected at Rutland Nursing home, office checked in with him at New York Presbetyrian in Park Slope. Greaves has since returned home to his apartment in Clinton Hill, where he is facing eviction and currently raising funds to secure housing. In conversation with office, Greaves reminds us of the importance of caring for yourself in order to care for your community. Greaves has gained a new sense of purpose and personhood, following his inner voice to lead others.

Read our conversation below, and support Greaves and his work Black Disabled Lives Matter using the links beneath.

Hi! How are you feeling today?

I am okay today. I am happy to be here. Yesterday I was in pain and I could barely sleep, because I was in the hospital. I've been in the hospital since the 10th of February for an arm fracture and a condition called hidradenitis suppurativa. I also have other disabilities known as cerebral palsy, and anemia. So those are the three disabilities I have currently, and arm surgery. About a week and a half ago, I was at a rehab, called Rocklin Nursing Home where I got reinfected. So I guess, I went on an adventure, it’s called Hospital Gate. I think, for me, one of the things I'm realizing about black people, black men in specific, is we're in a constant state of survival. There is no sense of rest, but what I have learned about my life is that people expect a lot out of me. But a lot of people don't understand how much some of those things take. It takes a lot for me to physically get up and do something. And I think people forget that. Disabled people need rest.

How have you been prioritizing your rest?

Well, I have to. I’ve been sick for like five months with the arm condition, and I had to stop all the work I was doing before. It’s not the same, I’ve certainly tried to be at that same level. But it’s not the same when things change in you’re body. There's nothing you can do about it. I think for me, I've had to accept the changes in my body; where my life is right now, and who I am right now. I think it was hard because I was somebody who was on the go, who was hustling, who was doing a lot. I moved out of out my mother's house when I was 20, and since then I had no need to ask anyone for anything. It's very different. But I think the joy of this experience has been to finally be able to relax, not be obligated to anyone. Sometimes we, as young people, we’re so stuck in our obligations and what we have to do because we're in our 20s and feel like it's passing us by. But it’s okay to say “you know what, no, I'm not going to do this today.” It's okay to take that rest. It's okay to take that vacation.

How does it feel, then, to ask for help?

I would say I'm still adjusting. Because it's new, all of this stuff is new. The sickness the feeling kind of like, what do I do? Now that I was sick? I think I think what I have learned is that it is okay. To not be okay. And it's also okay to like say, You know what, I'm gonna, I'm good there. Now, I'm not doing great. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm lost. I'm confused. I don't know who I am right now. And I think this rebirth is about me. You know, I spent my whole career doing for others working for businesses working for brands, hustling for other businesses, where I sell to do things for other people. But I really didn't know that well. But I mean, for money. So I did what I had to do to get the money, but like, I don't have really solid relationships. I didn't cultivate my relationships, strong enough that they could last. We needed each other for a period of time. And that was it. I was looking at– “oh, maybe I'll need some help down the road.” I wasn’t thinking about needing help or assistance, me and all these services. I think going from being able to do so much to having such a limited capacity and going through rehab and running through all of this rehabilitation of my body. It has been such an adjustment to see myself starting over.

So what would you tell your old self, now that you’re starting over?

It’s like, Germaine, you can’t help everybody. You can’t be everything for everybody. You know, when you're in the activism space, you give so much of yourself. And it can be exhausting. I love it, but I realized Black Disabled Lives Matter was a labor of other people needing things. I think what's the most important thing for me, now, is to show people that you can still help others but carve out time for yourself. You can still be good to others, but don’t overextend yourself. You don't always have to turn on the brand person. You don't have to turn out your credentials. Who gives a shit? You're sick and going through. Who gives a shit about credentials when people are saying they care about you as a person.

I'm in a different place mentally in terms of knowing that recovery is gonna take a while. It may not happen right away, but it will happen and it's okay. Everything I'm going through is literally a part of my story. And I think I'm growing, I'm learning, I'm making mistakes, understanding myself more. I'm learning my own way of doing things, so that I can also get the things that I need. I think I’ve fought against that, because that’s what everyone expects from someone like me, who's disabled, but I’m realizing it's okay to have a moment where you don't know what you're doing. And you know, we're in a pandemic, it's been three years now. A lot of us don't know what we're doing. We're trying to do something, but we're still lost.

You don't always have to turn on the brand person. You don't have to turn out your credentials. Who gives a shit? You're sick and going through it. Who gives a shit about credentials when people are saying they care about you as a person?

What has the pandemic been like for you?

Girl, at the beginning of the pandemic. I was getting money. I was getting that stimulus money. I was pending that money to go back to school to study theater. But, my pandemic experience was emotional. At the beginning, my sister passed away. I had to see her funeral and that was shitty, and my mother had COVID and then long COVID and that was also shitty. I eventually got sick now so I have been going through it. And then in the pandemic, I was also worrying about paying rent, surviving, I was just living life. And now, I miss my life. I miss my whole life. I know this is my life now too, but it’s different. It’s not the same. I think for me, what is so hard is realizing that so much has changed so quickly. And I don't know what else will change in the next five months. I don't know how my relationships will change, who will stick around who wants to stick around, and how that will look as my disability changes.

And after the summer of 2020, how did you found Black Disabled Lives Matter?

I think for me, I was upset with the Black Lives Matter movement because I thought what exact year did you start it? I started it in September 2020. I was upset that there were a lot of black people dying. But they weren't talking about their disability like Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Elijah McClain, these people had disability and they weren't talking about it. They were just talking about they were black. I felt compelled to start it. Because I didn't see myself reflected. I know I went to one activist march, and nothing was accessible. I was surviving in a march. And I'm here screaming for George Floyd. It felt like, who's screaming for me?

And it was just like, I gotta start this because I have to share with the general population to highlight the experience. Because a lot of people don't know. They don't know that most people that are being killed by the cops are disabled, 50% or more of people being killed by cops are disabled. It's an even higher percentage for those who are black and disabled. We don't know that statistic, because nobody's talking about it. We don't know that that maybe 25% of disabled people are getting jobs. The rest are either on unemployment or on something which is not income. Most people don't know that disabled people are not making enough money to survive and sustain.

In that work, what do you get angry about, and what do you find peace with?

I think I'm so angry, but I think the thing I found peace with is knowing that my work is going somewhere like our future. I see my work going in places that they've never gone before. And what I want my work to what I want my blackness ablisim work to really do is show people that people like me exist. And I want to be a part of changing history.

Tell me about your work as a dancer.

I guess for me, I enjoy dancing because I don't see anyone like me doing it. When I was dancing on Tik Tok, dancing on Instagram, it was like who is like giving it in their wheelchair so confidently? You know, I was always a creative kid. I went to college for musical theater.

Do you sing, too?

I–I tried singing. It wasn’t my calling. Okay, no, I can sing, but It’s more Rihanna, I give that vocally, but I don’t give, like Beyonce. As a kid, I did voice lessons. My high school had a glee club so I went but there were all these people who perform and could sing, so I was intimidated. What intimidates you and what makes you feel automatically confident? I’m not intimidated, no more. There you go. I think throwing parties in like 2010 in a random basement in Brooklyn in my wheelchair–that gave me confidence. Like having a real New York moment. I was one of those girls at the time, who was throwing parties in the clubs in Brooklyn an clubbing a lot. I was 19 or 20 getting drunk with a fake ID and a wheelchair, that was my life. I live my life. I’ve done mosh pits in the chair, I’ve made out with someone at a festival in the wheelchair.

What role does humor play in your life?

It’s everything? Sometimes I joke on myself, sometimes I joke on my disability. I think humor plays a role in my life because it makes my life more exciting. A hospital can be a depressing place, and I have chosen to find joy in the bleakest scenarios. I’ve been watching the Olympics, listening to music, twerking, or fake twerking. Just trying to live my life. In a hospital, it can seem like there isn’t an end in sight. But, for me, the beginning is there. Life is beginning and I have a new life. I’m wearing a hospital gown. I get to be naked, like a baby.

So what’s next for your new life?

Sleep. I just sleep. It’s like being a baby again. I sleep all day, I wake up, eat, sleep again. For me, this has been a wake-up call, like a sign that if you don’t get your act together, you’re going to keep going back. And clearly, I need to get my act together or I’m always gonna come back and nothing will ever change. I don’t want to make it seem like it’s a bad experience. I think I have to accept that this is what my life is going to be like for maybe a month or two, and eventually, I’ll get back to it. It’s not over because you went through something, it’s over because you stopped. It’s over if you give up and stop caring. But I still care. I know I got some fire.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

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Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.