MOCA Store Presents
How to Tell When We Will Die: A Celebration: Johanna Hedva
Multimedia Presentation, Discussion, and Book Signing
MOCA Grand Avenue – Ahmanson Auditorium
Thursday, May 15, 2025
6pm
Free with RSVP

An event to celebrate Johanna Hedva's How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, the visionary essay collection ten years in the making, that began with the seminal essay "Sick Woman Theory" going viral in 2016. Released in fall 2024, the essay collection's ongoing impact and reach has revolutionized disability discourse to include topics such as monstrosity, queerness, kink, sex, pleasure, ambition, heavy metal moshpits, wrestling, and the color yellow. Multimedia presentations from Hedva, Staff, and Xina Xurner will be followed by discussion, audience Q&A, and book signing. 

Johanna Hedva is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician from Los Angeles. Hedva is the author of the essay collection How To Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, published September 2024, by Hillman Grad Books. They are also the author of the novels Your Love Is Not Good and On Hell, as well as Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and the Moon. Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages.

P. Staff is an artist based in London and Los Angeles. Their work has been exhibited, screened and performed internationally, including a solo show at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2017.

Xina Xurner is an experimental music/performance collaboration between Marvin Astorga And Young Joon Kwak, whose cathartic performances combine DIY and power electronics, mutated vocals, and bad drag to expand ideas about queer and trans bodies.