Lighting was more improvisational than planned. Overhead bulbs were adjusted by hand until shadows throbbed exactly where a performer wanted them. Projectors bled grainy films and found-footage loops across the walls: archival home video, snippets of protest footage, VHS clips of late-night infomercials. The collage of image and sound often created dissonant narratives — a lullaby colliding with footage of a demonstration, making empathy feel jagged and immediate. The year 2021 lodged itself in White Boxxx history like a splinter. The pandemic had wrenched the city, and venues closing had redistributed people and energy into smaller, scrappier sites. White Boxxx doubled as a shelter and a laboratory. There were afternoons when organizers turned the space into a communal kitchen; there were nights when the line outside wrapped around the block because people wanted to feel—briefly—safe among strangers. Masks were worn as a kind of ornament and armor; the venue’s policies shifted with infection rates, sometimes allowing reduced capacity shows, sometimes going fully virtual with recorded sets posted to ephemeral channels.