Supported by the 2025 Creative Capital Award, How does it feel to look at nothing premieres at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Brooklyn, NY on October 21, 2026.

Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon’s (2025 Creative Capital Awardees) How does it feel to look at nothing is a new, experimental opera that explores the forces that compel life’s emergence and the act of meaning-making during epochs of decay. Grounded in the artists’ shared spiritual lineages and lives as partners, the project is a work of composition, improvisation, dance, and ritual that emerges as a story of transitional states. 

How does it feel to look at nothing engages with questions of queer-trans family building and contemporary life as trans artists of color during a period of rising American fascism, political disintegration, and global anti-trans violence. To reflect and embody the queer possibilities that emerge even within cycles of deterioration, the artists have developed an improvised practice called “Language Disintegration,” through which all elements of their work are transformed. 

How does it feel to look at nothing features Holland and yuniya as soloists and multi-instrumentalists and draws inspiration from diverse traditions, including American Experimentalism, Korean Shamanic Ritual, Channeled Singing, Punk and Hardcore, and Contemporary Opera. Throughout How does it feel to look at nothing, Holland and yuniya embody fluid and entangled identities– elemental force, angel witness, sounding body, deity, child, parent, and memory–to offer an expansive, transformational vision of trans futures.