PUBLIC EVENTS
Stranger on the Road
video still: Valie Export, Touch Cinema
A video screening programmed by artist Carlos Motta
Wednesday, June 17, 8PM, $10
Stranger on the Road features eight videos that reflect on the political, social and emotional implications of sexual orientation and gender diversity in a predominantly heteronormative society.
Including works by Sadie Benning, Gregg Bordowitz, Glen Fogel for Antony and the Johnsons, Tom Kalin, VALIE EXPORT, Kalup Linzy, Tara Mateik and Alejandro Moreno.
(Running Time: 85 min.)
PART 1
VALIE EXPORT
Touch Cinema
1968, 1:08 min., b&w, sound
Touch Cinema is a document of VALIE EXPORT's famous street performance, in which the public was invited to touch her inside a curtained box attached to the artist's upper torso. The work is a witty and confrontational comment on the objectification of women's bodies. - EAI (Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix)
Sadie Benning
If Every Girl Had a Diary
1990, 8:00 min., color, sound
Setting her pixelvision camera on herself and her room, Benning searches for a sense of identity and respect as a woman and a lesbian. Acting alternately as confessor and accuser, the camera captures Benning's anger and frustration at feeling trapped by social prejudices. - EAI (Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix)
Tara Mateik
OPERATION INVERT
2003, 12:30 min., color, sound
Are gender outlaws considered the new biological terrorists seeking weapons of mass bodily destruction? OPERATION INVERT compares the different regulations mediating botox-related plastic surgery and gender reassignment "sex change." Historical medical assessments of the invert (homosexual and transsexual) "condition" reveal seemingly outdated absurdities about outsider deviance. Nonetheless, current institutional loopholes governing gender re-assignment surgery suggest a fresh resurgence of loony pathology and diagnosis. -TM (Courtesy of the artist)
PART 2
Gregg Bordowitz
some aspect of a shared lifestyle
1986, 22 min., color, sound
Focusing on early media reportage of the AIDS epidemic and the struggle for gay rights, some aspect of a shared lifestyle begins with the outraged response of the gay community to the 1982 Supreme Court ruling upholding a sodomy law in the State of Georgia, effectively banning gay sex. Reframing the debate from one of moral calumny to a matter of the Constitutional right to privacy, Bordowitz successfully portrays the complexity of issues surrounding the AIDS epidemic as it emerged in the early 1980s in this country, forcefully arguing for the need to confront AIDS as an equal-opportunity threat to all members of society. -VDB (Courtesy of Video Data Bank)
Tom Kalin
They are lost to vision altogether
1989, 12:56 min., b&w and color, sound
Kalin writes: "They are lost to vision altogether acts as erotic retaliation on legislation such as the Supreme Court sodomy ruling — declaring the private bedroom as open target for the State — or the Helms Amendment — the U.S government's refusal to fund explicit AIDS prevention information for gay men, lesbians and IV drug users. An attempt to reclaim eroticism and to address the contradictions of sexuality and romance in the face of a monolithic and culturally compulsory heterosexuality, They are lost to vision altogether
finds queer history where it can and invents the rest." - VDB (Courtesy of Video Data Bank)
PART 3
Alejandro Moreno
La Chata
2009, 11.30 min., color, sound
In La Chata, the artist interviews a former classmate, who recounts- in many cases as the executant- the (homophobic) harrasment to which Alejandro himself was subjected during his school years, by her and the rest of the classmates- she represents a collective voice. - Paco Cano (Courtesy of the artist)
Kalup Linzy
Conversation With de Churen V: As da Art World Might Turn
2006, 12:10 min., color, sound
Karen Rosenberg of the New York Times describes As Da Art World Might Turn as Linzy's "self-immolating response to the enthusiastic reception that followed his breakout in 2005. As the emerging artist Katonya, Mr. Linzy, in a blond wig and negligee, makes black-and-white drawings...After some false starts with lovers and dealers, Katonya triumphs with a boyfriend and a sold-out show." Elizabeth Schambelan writes in Artforum, "Like a belated sequel to Alex Bag's scabrous art-school confidential Fall 95, this video charts the travails of a would-be art star, Katonya (played by the artist in his customary desultory drag), who must contend with deep insecurities and a bitchy gallerist. Linzy's tweaked telenovela style seems exactly right for a critique of that ever-ascendant phenomenon, the up-and coming art star." -EAI (Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix)
PART 4
Glen Fogel for Antony and the Johnsons
Hope There's Someone
2005, 4:20 min., color, sound
A "bed-ridden" music video of Antony and the Johnsons's song Hope There's Someone, "a song about the fear of dying alone," directed by Glen Fogel and starring Joey Gabriel. (Courtesy of the artist)
