Već gledanje programa izaziva ushićenje. Političko-rodni aspekt me zapravo previše ne zanima, ali vizualno-medijsko-žanrovski, ohoho: tjelesna znanstvena fantastika i percepcijske mutacije. Queer-seks i "identiteti" zapravo nisu važni, nego su samo mamac i platforma za zanimljvije stvari - nastavljanje čovjeka drugim sredstvima.
Opening Night: Using My Sexual Energy as a Tool to Fight the State is as Good a Tool as Any Other
MIX NYC is thrilled to open our festival with a full program of films
that defy conventional expectations in both content and form. The title
of this program is a quote from David Wojnarowicz, and the featured
film makers operate within a contemporary and exciting queer current of
risk-taking and subversive art that contains his and many others'
legacies. Where ADILA, Disaster Movie and A Visual Guide to the Physical Examination provide stunningly beautiful images on film and are formally experimental in their manipulation of the medium, films like Frida and Anita and Looking for Jiro are more like thought experiments that challenge us to queerly re-imagine our past. Audrey Superhero and Veruca take different looks at the childhood origins of gender defiance. Don't Ask, Don't Tell GAY GAY GAY comically demonstrates how it feels to be the object of political debate, where How to Stop a Revolution
takes up political challenges more subtly by mapping the deterioration
of a relationship strained by the pressures of injustice. We conclude
tonight's screening and kick off this week's festivities with Wildblood, a raucous animated zine!
Looking for Jiro
Tina Takemoto
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 6 min.
Jiro Onuma arrived in the U.S. from Japan at the age of 19 in the
1920s and was imprisoned during WWII. Queer, and an avid collector of
homoerotic physique magazines, the Jiro of this film is depicted
surviving the isolation, boredom, humiliation and heteronormativity of
internment. This musical mash-up video features drag king performance,
U.S. propaganda footage, muscle building and homoerotic bread-making.
Audrey Superhero
Amy Jenkins
2010, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min.
I wanted to be a boy when I got borned, you know, outta your tummy!" — Audrey, age 6
Audrey Superhero explores the shifting terrain of gender identity. The film includes vividly charged discussions with Audrey, who insists that she is Superman, along with views of her obsessive role-playing during her daily life out in the "real" world. Playful and arresting, Audrey de-cloaks from Clark Kent to Superman, revealing her "secret identity" as a boy. She does push-ups, practices flying, and imagines "saving the police from the bad guy." She ruminates, "to have a girlfriend I have to be a boy," all the while drawing us into her state of transformation. The unscripted narrative was built through the collaboration of mother and daughter, with Audrey youthfully honest and willing to reveal her inner emotional state. She is open as only a six-year-old could be.
Audrey Superhero explores the shifting terrain of gender identity. The film includes vividly charged discussions with Audrey, who insists that she is Superman, along with views of her obsessive role-playing during her daily life out in the "real" world. Playful and arresting, Audrey de-cloaks from Clark Kent to Superman, revealing her "secret identity" as a boy. She does push-ups, practices flying, and imagines "saving the police from the bad guy." She ruminates, "to have a girlfriend I have to be a boy," all the while drawing us into her state of transformation. The unscripted narrative was built through the collaboration of mother and daughter, with Audrey youthfully honest and willing to reveal her inner emotional state. She is open as only a six-year-old could be.
ADILA: A day in los angeles
Ethan Eunson-Conn
2011, USA, super8mm, B&W, sound, 14 min.
In Los Angeles, art, like life, is something that happens
between car rides. As seen through a rear-view mirror-like reflection of
the mind, a hand-processed explosion of emulsion, light flares, and
re-photographed images, a day shared between three artists creates a
unique form of autobiographical fiction. As their conversation about a
single relationship becomes a metaphor for the relationships between
each of them and the relationship between an artist and their own
artistic process. Adrift in a world of lousy, lost, or un-attainable
loves, sometimes the only relationship we have that keeps us going is
one we make ourselves.
How to Stop a Revolution
Kenji Tokawa
2011, Canada, video, color, sound, 11 min.
A relationship breaks down under the strain of
different oppressions that keep us silent even in our most intimate
spaces. Oppression works divide-and-conquer style through struggles
with race and class.
Veruca
Kate Huh
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
Dreamy macro shot stills of a fabulous queen
create a landscape of genderfuck beauty. Voiceover of the filmmaker and
Veruca talking about the shared histories of the evolution of their
gender presentation. This is a film about friendship.
Disaster Movie I, II, III
Lorin Murphy
2011, USA, 16mm, color and B&W,
sound on CD, 15 min.
sound on CD, 15 min.
D1: Disasters that happen to humans because of nature.
D2: Disasters that happen to nature because of humans.
D3: Disasters that happen to humans because of humans.
16mm film collage with hand-altered (painted, scratched, distressed) found footage and experimental processes shown on dual-projectors to create superimposed juxtapositions of nature footage, flooded towns, logging, smokestacks, crowded city sidewalks - not natural disasters as we might popularly imagine them but the disaster of life.
D2: Disasters that happen to nature because of humans.
D3: Disasters that happen to humans because of humans.
16mm film collage with hand-altered (painted, scratched, distressed) found footage and experimental processes shown on dual-projectors to create superimposed juxtapositions of nature footage, flooded towns, logging, smokestacks, crowded city sidewalks - not natural disasters as we might popularly imagine them but the disaster of life.
A Death in Three Acts
Nathan Pancione
2009, USA, video, color and B&W,
sound, English/Spanish w/ English
subtitles, 9 min.
sound, English/Spanish w/ English
subtitles, 9 min.
A postcard has two sides. One, a recognizable
image; the other, a personal message. A visceral journey, Death In Three
Acts is a matador's dance between two seemingly competing identities.
A Visual Guide to Physical Examination
Kelly Spivey
2011, USA, 16mm, B&W, sound, 6 min.
This film is a contact printed experimental film. Spliced loops
of picture and then optical sound have been printed onto new stock,
hand-processed and solarized. A new kind of physical examination was
formed.
Don't Ask Don't Tell GAY GAY GAY
Dayna McLeod
2011, Canda, video, color, sound, 2 min.
Danya McLeod watches TV so we don't have to. Like the short
description summaries that often accompany TV programs through an
on-screen cable guide, Don't Ask Don't Tell Gay Gay Gay is a
jump-cut/short-cut edit of Season 4, Episode 4 of Boston Legal. All
excess material has been removed to effectively capture the tone of
national discourse around DADT.
Acto Primero, Escena Cuarta
ElÍas Brossoise
2011, Mexico, video, B&W, sound, 8 min.
Staging of an excerpt from the opera Lakmé by Leo Delibes. Two
women meet secretly where "the flowering vines spill their shadow over
the sacred creek that runs quiet and dark, awakened only by bird songs."
A man stares at them . . . Their voices, floating on the water can be
heard far away.
Frida and Anita
Liz Rosenfeld
2010, Germany, video, color, sound,
German with English subtitles, 20 min.
German with English subtitles, 20 min.
A glimpse into Weimar-era Berlin through an imagined
one-night-stand between Frida Kahlo and Anita Berber in 1924. Sparks fly
when two gender transgressing icons meet in a deliciously seedy
nightclub. Revolutionary ideas and subversive art form the basis for a
powerful attraction. This beautifully erotic film adds an anachronistic
queer flavor to a favorite historical era.
Wildblood
David Jones
2009, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
Wildblood is the third piece in a trilogy of animated shorts by
Los Angeles artist David Jones. It takes its inspiration from queer
zines and the San Francisco homocore music scene of the early 90s. The
artist was a member of the seminal band Fagbash and considers the piece
reminiscent of the type of making indicative of this period. It is
constructed entirely of xerox collages re-photographed and animated
digitally.
De Profundis
Lawrence Brose
1997, USA, 16mm, color, sound, 65 min.
MIX NYC first screened De Profundis in 1997 at the 11th
MIX Festival, where we called attention to its experimental rigor and
celebrated its investigation of language, sexuality, and Oscar Wilde's
fabulously transgressive aesthetics. We are just as excited now as we
were then by the striking beauty of this work and the enveloping score
by Frederic Rzewski, with additional sound compositions by Douglas
Cohen.
De Profundis is a three part, hand/alternative-processed experimental film based on Oscar Wilde's prison letter De Profundis. This 65 minute film sets up a haunting investigation of queerness, masculinity, history and sexuality, buttressing images against a soundtrack composed of Wilde's aphorisms, a voice and piano setting of Wilde's prison letter, and multi-tracked interviews with a diverse group of contemporary gay men.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
If film no longer existed, De Profundis gives the impression that Lawrence Brose is certainly capable of reinventing it. Oddly enough, Brose would do so by stripping film down to visual components that are reassembled only as they are knitted to each other at their breaking points. Redacted.
But one must resist the impulse to talk only of how Brose -with controlled image manipulation and extremely experimental hand-processing techniques- has produced in De Profundis a film united by stress and diaphanous. De Profundis is more than an unconventional approach to filmmaking, though it would be a visual tour-de-force if it were only that. Taking its cue from Oscar Wilde, De Profundis holds up a mirror to gay sexuality and plumbs the tensions reflected there.
Meshing images culled from home movies, drag performances, Radical Faerie gatherings, and vintage gay erotica with a piano soundtrack scored from Wilde's prison letter and a voice composition fashioned from the poet's aphorisms, Brose makes film itself into the protagonist of his exploration. With images and sounds constantly decaying and shifting and contaminating each other, film becomes a metaphor of the transforming self that Wilde prized for corrupting a sense of sexual normalcy. De Profundis embraces Wildesque deviance and cautions that the desire for normalization prevalent among contemporary gays threatens to contain it.
Serenity in sophistication is a triumph - like the deviance of De Profundis, which, achieved in an age too terrified to be deviant, lies in the film's unflinching honesty and terrifying beauty.
De Profundis is a three part, hand/alternative-processed experimental film based on Oscar Wilde's prison letter De Profundis. This 65 minute film sets up a haunting investigation of queerness, masculinity, history and sexuality, buttressing images against a soundtrack composed of Wilde's aphorisms, a voice and piano setting of Wilde's prison letter, and multi-tracked interviews with a diverse group of contemporary gay men.
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
If film no longer existed, De Profundis gives the impression that Lawrence Brose is certainly capable of reinventing it. Oddly enough, Brose would do so by stripping film down to visual components that are reassembled only as they are knitted to each other at their breaking points. Redacted.
But one must resist the impulse to talk only of how Brose -with controlled image manipulation and extremely experimental hand-processing techniques- has produced in De Profundis a film united by stress and diaphanous. De Profundis is more than an unconventional approach to filmmaking, though it would be a visual tour-de-force if it were only that. Taking its cue from Oscar Wilde, De Profundis holds up a mirror to gay sexuality and plumbs the tensions reflected there.
Meshing images culled from home movies, drag performances, Radical Faerie gatherings, and vintage gay erotica with a piano soundtrack scored from Wilde's prison letter and a voice composition fashioned from the poet's aphorisms, Brose makes film itself into the protagonist of his exploration. With images and sounds constantly decaying and shifting and contaminating each other, film becomes a metaphor of the transforming self that Wilde prized for corrupting a sense of sexual normalcy. De Profundis embraces Wildesque deviance and cautions that the desire for normalization prevalent among contemporary gays threatens to contain it.
Serenity in sophistication is a triumph - like the deviance of De Profundis, which, achieved in an age too terrified to be deviant, lies in the film's unflinching honesty and terrifying beauty.
Un Ovni Sobre Mi Cama (A UFO Over My Bed)
Pablo Oliverio / Fractal Cine
2011, Argentina, video, color, sound, Spanish w/ English subtitles, 120 min.
In Pablo Oliverio's Buenos Aires, humans and aliens live together
in a totalitarian society. Books and other publications are outlawed.
Constant surveillance and state control rule this bleak future. The
relationship between humans and aliens has broken down, and both are
subject to the enslaving powers of consumption and technology. Some
humans with jobs are permitted to remain in the city, but aliens and
poor humans alike are exiled by the city's Department of Cleaning.
Cartographer Rex makes his way through the blighted city, witnessing skirmishes, burning books and lo-fi laser beams fired at protesters. By the light of flashing neon signs, Rex is watched by and interacts with robot representatives of the state. He dons a helmet and enters an altered state to draw beautiful maps with brush and ink. When his girlfriend leaves and he loses his job, Rex struggles between holding on to some form of employment or joining the resistance. Things take a turn for the hopeful when a new and mysterious roommate named Ian moves in, bringing the possibility of love. Along the path to revolution, we find an underground outlaw with cardboard goggles, comic book and video game worlds that come to life, and a rebel rendezvous in a nightclub.
Efforts to liberate the city intermingle with efforts to liberate the body. In this particularly relevant vision of the future, the world is run by consumption, greed and constant surveillance. Hope is offered by the possibility of queer extraterrestrial love. A society based on control is disrupted by desire unbound!
From the ominous titles that introduce the setting to graffiti coming to life, the film is visually stunning and charmingly strange. With extremely low budget special effects, it simultaneously subverts and joins the ranks of the science fiction genre. A testament to independent spirit, Oliverio wrote, directed and self-financed Un Ovni Sobre Mi Cama, with a 2-person crew, 25 actors and a set made entirely of found objects. Reminiscent of the bureaucratic nightmare of Brazil, the social control of Alphaville, and the video game world of Tron, this captivatingly dark film speaks directly to contemporary struggles with employment, protest, and the revolutionary potential of love.
Cartographer Rex makes his way through the blighted city, witnessing skirmishes, burning books and lo-fi laser beams fired at protesters. By the light of flashing neon signs, Rex is watched by and interacts with robot representatives of the state. He dons a helmet and enters an altered state to draw beautiful maps with brush and ink. When his girlfriend leaves and he loses his job, Rex struggles between holding on to some form of employment or joining the resistance. Things take a turn for the hopeful when a new and mysterious roommate named Ian moves in, bringing the possibility of love. Along the path to revolution, we find an underground outlaw with cardboard goggles, comic book and video game worlds that come to life, and a rebel rendezvous in a nightclub.
Efforts to liberate the city intermingle with efforts to liberate the body. In this particularly relevant vision of the future, the world is run by consumption, greed and constant surveillance. Hope is offered by the possibility of queer extraterrestrial love. A society based on control is disrupted by desire unbound!
From the ominous titles that introduce the setting to graffiti coming to life, the film is visually stunning and charmingly strange. With extremely low budget special effects, it simultaneously subverts and joins the ranks of the science fiction genre. A testament to independent spirit, Oliverio wrote, directed and self-financed Un Ovni Sobre Mi Cama, with a 2-person crew, 25 actors and a set made entirely of found objects. Reminiscent of the bureaucratic nightmare of Brazil, the social control of Alphaville, and the video game world of Tron, this captivatingly dark film speaks directly to contemporary struggles with employment, protest, and the revolutionary potential of love.
How The West Was Won: A Bob Mizer Film Sampler Part 1
Total Running Time: 61 min.
Bob Mizer's earliest photographs appeared in 1942, in both color
and black & white, but his career was catapulted into infamy in 1947
when he was convicted of the unlawful distribution of obscene material
through the US mail. The material in question was a series of black and
white photographs, taken by Mizer, of young bodybuilders wearing what
were known as posing straps - a precursor to the G-string. He would
serve a nine-month prison sentence at a work camp in Saugus, California
for what now seems tame. At the time, however, the mere suggestion of
male nudity was not only frowned upon, but also illegal.
In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer would go on to build a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in 1945 with one or more heretofore- unidentified partners, but by the time he published the first issue of Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own. With assistance from his mother, Delia, and his brother, Joe, he would go on to photograph thousands of men, building a collection that includes nearly one million different images and thousands of films and videotapes.
Robert Henry Mizer was born in Hailey, Idaho on March 27, 1922 to Delia Mizer, a recently widowed mother. Five years later she would move, along with her two youngest sons, to a home in Los Angeles, where she took in boarders to support her family. The home at 1834 West 11th St. would become the centerpiece of the AMG compound -a small Hollywood-style studio that spanned four city lots. Here Mizer would build an internationally known photography business, producing images that focused on representations of American masculinity. In his fifty years as an artist, he photographed bodybuilders, US servicemen, male prostitutes, and his fair share of cultural figures, including Victor Mature, Alan Ladd, Susan Hayward, Arnold Schwarzenneger, Joe Dallesandro, and others.
He died of cardiac arrest at White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles on May 12, 1992. During his fifty-year career, he influenced artists like David Hockney and Jack Pierson, and was instrumental in bringing the works of others, like Tom of Finland, to the public's attention. Following his death, the contents of Mizer's home and studio were either discarded, given away, or salvaged. This collection was housed largely in public storage units and residential garages until 2004, when photographer Dennis Bell purchased the photographic collection and what remained of the Mizer estate.
With donations and purchases from Mizer's friends and contemporaries, some of whom rescued props and equipment from abandonment, Bell founded the Bob Mizer Foundation and has since managed to gradually rebuild the estate, which is now part of the Foundation's permanent collection.
His works have been published and discussed in multiple journals and books, including Bob's World: The Life and Boys of AMG's Bob Mizer (Taschen, 2009) and The Complete Physique Pictorial (Taschen, 1997), and have appeared in galleries and museums all over the world.
The work is currently represented by Exile gallery in Berlin, Germany, where the exhibition "The Private Bob Mizer," curated by Billy Miller, debuted earlier this year, showcasing the artist's never-before-seen pioneering color photography.
Mizer began making films in the 1950s and as times progressed, his films reflected changes in both the adult film market as well as the society at large. The sampling here is mainly culled from the 1960s and gives a small taste of his output during that period when laws and the adult market was evolving. Mizer's films were originally produced and distributed to be viewed privately; then in the late 60s they were shown at theaters, and then later still, as the market changed and the videotape was introduced, his product was once again consumed in the viewer's private domain. This program is not meant as a mini-retrospective but simply as a sample of a certain period of production.
In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer would go on to build a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in 1945 with one or more heretofore- unidentified partners, but by the time he published the first issue of Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own. With assistance from his mother, Delia, and his brother, Joe, he would go on to photograph thousands of men, building a collection that includes nearly one million different images and thousands of films and videotapes.
Robert Henry Mizer was born in Hailey, Idaho on March 27, 1922 to Delia Mizer, a recently widowed mother. Five years later she would move, along with her two youngest sons, to a home in Los Angeles, where she took in boarders to support her family. The home at 1834 West 11th St. would become the centerpiece of the AMG compound -a small Hollywood-style studio that spanned four city lots. Here Mizer would build an internationally known photography business, producing images that focused on representations of American masculinity. In his fifty years as an artist, he photographed bodybuilders, US servicemen, male prostitutes, and his fair share of cultural figures, including Victor Mature, Alan Ladd, Susan Hayward, Arnold Schwarzenneger, Joe Dallesandro, and others.
He died of cardiac arrest at White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles on May 12, 1992. During his fifty-year career, he influenced artists like David Hockney and Jack Pierson, and was instrumental in bringing the works of others, like Tom of Finland, to the public's attention. Following his death, the contents of Mizer's home and studio were either discarded, given away, or salvaged. This collection was housed largely in public storage units and residential garages until 2004, when photographer Dennis Bell purchased the photographic collection and what remained of the Mizer estate.
With donations and purchases from Mizer's friends and contemporaries, some of whom rescued props and equipment from abandonment, Bell founded the Bob Mizer Foundation and has since managed to gradually rebuild the estate, which is now part of the Foundation's permanent collection.
His works have been published and discussed in multiple journals and books, including Bob's World: The Life and Boys of AMG's Bob Mizer (Taschen, 2009) and The Complete Physique Pictorial (Taschen, 1997), and have appeared in galleries and museums all over the world.
The work is currently represented by Exile gallery in Berlin, Germany, where the exhibition "The Private Bob Mizer," curated by Billy Miller, debuted earlier this year, showcasing the artist's never-before-seen pioneering color photography.
Mizer began making films in the 1950s and as times progressed, his films reflected changes in both the adult film market as well as the society at large. The sampling here is mainly culled from the 1960s and gives a small taste of his output during that period when laws and the adult market was evolving. Mizer's films were originally produced and distributed to be viewed privately; then in the late 60s they were shown at theaters, and then later still, as the market changed and the videotape was introduced, his product was once again consumed in the viewer's private domain. This program is not meant as a mini-retrospective but simply as a sample of a certain period of production.
Invasion of the Talkies
"My plan was to synchronize the camera and the phonograph so as
to record sounds when the pictures were made, and reproduce the two in
harmony."
As early as 1894, the Edison company experimented with the marriage of sound & picture and in the fall of that year, the "Dickson Experimental Sound Film" was made. The film shows a man, who may possibly be Dickson, playing violin before a phonograph horn as two men dance - an audacious and very queer inception indeed.
René Clair, film critic and avant-garde film director, wrote in May 1929 "It is too late for those who love the art of moving pictures to deplore the effects of this barbaric (the 'talkie') invasion. The talking film is not everything. There is also the sound film, on which the last hopes of the advocates of the silent film are pinned."
Clair went on to break cinematic ground with his use of sound, utilizing this new technical component to increase his artistic freedom to explore, as he recognized the creative and non-realistic possibilities that sound offered.
Though we might think of film as an essentially visual experience, we really cannot afford to underestimate the importance of film sound.
This program of short films abandons traditional dialogue as a means of telling a story, relying on sound - in most cases music - to complement the visual aspect. Whether the picture was inspired by the music, or the score was inspired by the image; whether the soundtrack is employed solely to enhance the emotional import of the film, or subvert what your eyes see, all of these works use sound and image in concert to create the whole story. In the tradition of René Clair, these makers demonstrate the leverage sound and score bring to image. Just try to imagine any of these films without these scores.
As early as 1894, the Edison company experimented with the marriage of sound & picture and in the fall of that year, the "Dickson Experimental Sound Film" was made. The film shows a man, who may possibly be Dickson, playing violin before a phonograph horn as two men dance - an audacious and very queer inception indeed.
René Clair, film critic and avant-garde film director, wrote in May 1929 "It is too late for those who love the art of moving pictures to deplore the effects of this barbaric (the 'talkie') invasion. The talking film is not everything. There is also the sound film, on which the last hopes of the advocates of the silent film are pinned."
Clair went on to break cinematic ground with his use of sound, utilizing this new technical component to increase his artistic freedom to explore, as he recognized the creative and non-realistic possibilities that sound offered.
Though we might think of film as an essentially visual experience, we really cannot afford to underestimate the importance of film sound.
This program of short films abandons traditional dialogue as a means of telling a story, relying on sound - in most cases music - to complement the visual aspect. Whether the picture was inspired by the music, or the score was inspired by the image; whether the soundtrack is employed solely to enhance the emotional import of the film, or subvert what your eyes see, all of these works use sound and image in concert to create the whole story. In the tradition of René Clair, these makers demonstrate the leverage sound and score bring to image. Just try to imagine any of these films without these scores.
NOISE: Trans-Subversions in Global Media Networks
At the turn of the 21st century, information technologies have
transformed institutions of power into decentralized networks that link
the everyday to the structural, the local to the global. Recent media
and communication technologies, including the internet, computer and
cell phone, are creating new conglomerate links between public/private
life, mass media, science, military, government and finance, across
local, national, regional and transnational scales. With greater
everyday access, these newer technologies also make independent, locally
adapted, interactive uses possible.
From different regions and diasporas, NOISE brings together transgender/queer media insurrections in the globally networked information economy. These shorts focus on the gender and sexual deviants, queer kin, street youth, activists, independent artists, laborers, migrants, and cultural workers that occupy the informal edges of conglomerate information infrastructures. More onscreen, online stream than film, video, game, performance, television, photography, or music, each piece exploits the interactivity, mobility, and liveness of networked media, rather than preserving the discrete aesthetics of medium, form, and genre. Together, they reject the replacement of one normative set of icons, images, messages, and protocols with another. And they flood the cocoons of atomized life in the so-called Age of Information with noise.
From different regions and diasporas, NOISE brings together transgender/queer media insurrections in the globally networked information economy. These shorts focus on the gender and sexual deviants, queer kin, street youth, activists, independent artists, laborers, migrants, and cultural workers that occupy the informal edges of conglomerate information infrastructures. More onscreen, online stream than film, video, game, performance, television, photography, or music, each piece exploits the interactivity, mobility, and liveness of networked media, rather than preserving the discrete aesthetics of medium, form, and genre. Together, they reject the replacement of one normative set of icons, images, messages, and protocols with another. And they flood the cocoons of atomized life in the so-called Age of Information with noise.
Bodily Fluid is Revolutionary
A trans-woman relaxing in a cage. A boy giving the cesspool a
blowjob. Subtitles no one can read. This program showcases the recent
work of Thai media artists who push the boundaries of sexual and
political expression. We present works by well-known makers Michael
Shaowanasai, Thunska Pansittivorakul, and Tanwarin Sukkhapisit, all of
whom have been censored or banned by the Ministry of Culture for their
debasement of Thai values. Additionally, we feature exciting young
artists Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, Chama Lekpla, and Korn Kanogkekarin,
who gleefully carry on the queer tradition despite the climate of
political unrest and social turmoil.
Ma Vie Incompléte et Inachevée
Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
2007, Thailand, video, color, sound,
French w/Thai/English subtitles, 4 min.
French w/Thai/English subtitles, 4 min.
Grandmother desperately wants her
granddaughter to appease her sexual need with her little tongue, but her
desire won't be easily satisfied since her own son - the girl's father -
also wants his daughter for the same purpose.
X
Korn Kanogkekarin
2010, Thailand, video, color, sound, 5 min.
X for symmetry. X for chromosome. X for erasure. X marks the spot.
After Shock (Wan Fa Suai [The Day the Sky Was Beautiful])
Thunska Pansittivorakul
2005, Thailand, video, color, sound, 12 min.
A silent foray across the skies, the streets,
an amusement park and the commercial areas of a small town ultimately
takes us to the ocean. Across the water, we close in on a young man's
crotch. The film culminates in blood and semen.
Observation of the Monument
Michael Shaowanasai
2008, Thailand, video, color, sound, 3 min.
The viewer is positioned in the crowd, directed to look up at the one who is placed on the pedestal.
I'm Fine
Tanwarin Sukkhapisit
2008, Thailand, video, color, sound,
Thai w/English subtitles, 3 min.
Thai w/English subtitles, 3 min.
The director/actor sits in a cage on a hot
sunny day in front of Democracy Monument in Bangkok. She's used to it;
she's doing fine.
Essence de Femme
Chama Lekpla
2011, Thailand, video, color, sound,
Thai w/English subtitles, 16 min.
Thai w/English subtitles, 16 min.
What would it look like if humanity had no
gender? A kathoey noi (baby tranny) shows us how to cook international
chicken curry (curry is slang for prostitute in Thai). People have sex
with places, the locations they inhabit. A girly boy and a girly girl
play snooker and then get dirty. These three scenarios propose new modes
of sexuality and relationality.
Look at Me!
Tanwarin Sukkhapisit
2007, Thailand, video, B&W, sound, 5 min.
On a stormy night, we catch glimpses of each other.
Don't Forget Me
Manatsak Dorkmai
2003, Thailand, video, color, sound,
Thai w/English subtitles, 10 min.
Thai w/English subtitles, 10 min.
Archival footage of the October 6, 1976
massacre of pro-democracy student protestors in Bangkok is juxtaposed
with a Siam Society visit to the Yellow Banana Leaf Ghosts tribe.
Burmese Man Dancing
Nok Paksnavin
2008, Thailand, video, color, sound, 8 min.
Images of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand
are overlaid with Thai commentary about them. Subtitles are provided in
an invented language.
Middle-Earth
Thunska Pansittivorakul
2007, Thailand, video, color, sound, 8 min.
"To show naked men is forbidden in Thailand,
but the fact that we did show it on a big screen is a statement. It is
my political expression. To just show it, without saying anything more,
already means something. The authorities ban films for the silliest
reasons, so here it is."
Fantastic Magik
The ecstatic, the fantastic, the dark and the strange converge in Fantastic Magick
for a new edition of homoerotic love spells, witches and devilish art.
Here you will find tricksters conjuring spirits of the past as well as
blazing trails for all that is to come through sex, inversion, the
occult, and other forms of ritual behavior. In Sorciéres, Mes Soeurs, we find women living in defiance of social expectations, and in WHOEVER WHATEVER, we find a more obscure yet equally magical take on a defiant woman. In Aquarius, a love spell is cast, where in The Magus and Jerk the Circle,
we observe rituals with more obscure ends. From the directly subversive
to the obscurely strange, queer magic and ritual infuse the screen with
delight. This program delves into the roots of its own creation only to
tear asunder your assumptions from the start.
Little White Cloud That Cried
Guy Maddin
2009, Canada/Germany, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Goddesses unleash the power of the sea to
channel forces beyond their bedrooms. Moving image and still photos
create an orgiastic collage set ablaze in this musical short, created as
an homage to underground filmmaker Jack Smith.
Sorciéres, Mes Soeurs (Witches, My Sisters)
Camille Ducellier
2010, France, video, color, sound,
French with English subtitles, 30 min.
French with English subtitles, 30 min.
Sirens of the devil, hounds of
hell. Who are these women who represent the danger of times? Feminists
for sure, hidden sometimes, but original in their approach to life.
Here, Ducellier documents some of the witches she has encountered over
time.
The Magus
Jaimz Asmundson
2011, Canada, video, color, sound, 12 min.
A multi-format, process-based experimental
film that explores the root of artistic creation. The film documents
visual artist C. Graham Asmundson's body of work over a rigorous
six-month period.
WHOEVER WHATEVER
Daniel McKernan
2010, USA, video, B&W, sound, 7 min.
A haunting and epic dramatic short film
starring downtown New York City icon Sophia Lamar, touching on
preconceived ideas of genders, sexual expectations and stereotype.
WHITELICK
Tim Gallaher
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Jesus and Satan, the ultimate opposing and
polarized Western deities, prepare for a showdown on battlefield Earth.
But sometimes even the gods are in for a surprise. WHITELICK is a
raucous, heretical, and satirical puppet music video fantasy about the
war between these two ancient adversaries and the American tragedies
that ensue. Can the clashing cosmic titans be brought back into harmony
for the good of all before it's too late?
Aquarius
Jody Jock
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 11 min.
Both tender and hardcore, Aquarius follows a young man as he uses magick to manifest the love he desires.
jerk the circle
SKOTE
2010, USA, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Using a combination of power tools and sexual energy, the performers
pay homage to our feminist and queer pioneers through tactics of
inversion. Jerk the circle documents a ritual in which a powerful symbol
is dismantled, rendered impotent.
Secret Identities
Greetings, True Believers! There has always been something a little
weird about maintaining a secret identity... but secret identities have
long been an ordinary part of life for two distinct yet similar sets of
people: Queers and Super Heroes! From Bat Signals to Hanky Codes, those
familiar with secret identities often devise a world, a language, or
even an ethic of our own. Cartoonist Donald Simpson wrote an article
describing Spider-Man as a metaphor for homosexuality, with Peter
Parker's secret life hidden from his live-in, frail aunt, who would not
accept his difference. It was innocuous, but controversial at the time
when gay representation in mainstream comics, the dominant medium for
superheroes, was rare, and often homophobic, and certainly not nuanced.
Short films in this program envision queer people becoming superheros
and superheros becoming queer. Filmmakers plumb the depths of our
uncanny relationship with the escapist fantasy of comic book heroics,
but also the actual heroics of our everyday queer lives. Featuring both
recent and older work, Secret Identities provides a plenitude of provocative politics, an abundance of action and adventure, and the dashing, dynamic Dyke Dollar.
Superdyke
Barbara Hammer
1975, USA, 16mm, color, sound, 20 min.
A comedy about a troop of shield-bearing Amazons who take over
city institutions before relaxing in the country. "Superdyke takes women
into the streets when Barbara arms a platoon of vagina warriors with
Amazon shields in an attempt to overthrow San Francisco. They march
through City Hall, usurp the bus lines, demythologize the consumer
mentality at Macy's (to the recorded astonishment of casual shoppers),
and wander through the erotic art museum. Barbara's frenetic handheld
lens catches the startled reactions and the glee of the participants.
Superdyke has a home-movie quality to it, but its committed and loose
moments in the playground confirm its comic rationale."
Audrey Superhero
Amy Jenkins
2010, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min.
Audrey, age 6
An experimental documentary that explores the shifting terrain of
gender identity. The film includes vividly charged discussions with
Audrey, who insists that she is Superman, along with views of her
obsessive role-playing during her daily life out in the "real" world.
Playful and arresting, Audrey de-cloaks from Clark Kent to Superman,
revealing her "secret identity" as a boy. She does push-ups, practices
flying, and imagines "saving the police from the bad guy." She ruminates
"to have a girlfriend I have to be a boy," all the while drawing us
into her state of transformation. The unscripted narrative was built
through the collaboration of mother and daughter, with Audrey youthfully
honest and willing to reveal her inner emotional state. She is open as
only a six year old could be.
Pony Glass
Lewis Klahr
1997, USA, 16mm, color, sound, 20 min.
Pony Glass is the story of comic book
character Jimmy Olsen's secret life. In this 15-minute cutout animation
Superman's pal embarks on his most adult adventure ever as he navigates
the treacherous shoals of early '60s romance trying to resolve a sexual
identity crisis of epic proportions. A three-act melodrama -each act has
its own song- filmed in Klahr's signature collage style that "unmasks"
our collective iconic inheritance as Americans while significantly
expanding the notion of what a music video can do.
"Klahr cruises the elysian backstreets of childhood comic books to make a set of 'musicals' ripened by blue-eyed melos and soul-searching psychodrama. Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen proves to be a pony of a different stripe and a man of steel as he ascends beyond good and evil in this bittersweet bildungsroman." - Mark McElhatten, New York Film Festival. In a different vein is Lewis Klahr's Pony Glass . . . The central character of this cartoon collage, whose visual focus is in the 1950s, is Jimmy Olsen, the cub reporter from 'Superman', who is imagined in scenarios with musical accompaniment dealing with racial and sexual anxiety. The character is liberated from a repressed Milquetoast into a figure posed in various pornographic couplings. The synergy of intense pop music and cartoons makes for a disturbingly heady meditation on transgressive imagery and popular culture."
"Less fussy and far more transgressive than his previous work, Klahr's collage animation Pony Glass makes comic-book hero Jimmy Olsen the locus of desperate anxieties about sexuality and race. The film is so charged with fear and desire that a simple iris down to black made the hair stand up on the back of my neck."
"Klahr cruises the elysian backstreets of childhood comic books to make a set of 'musicals' ripened by blue-eyed melos and soul-searching psychodrama. Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen proves to be a pony of a different stripe and a man of steel as he ascends beyond good and evil in this bittersweet bildungsroman." - Mark McElhatten, New York Film Festival. In a different vein is Lewis Klahr's Pony Glass . . . The central character of this cartoon collage, whose visual focus is in the 1950s, is Jimmy Olsen, the cub reporter from 'Superman', who is imagined in scenarios with musical accompaniment dealing with racial and sexual anxiety. The character is liberated from a repressed Milquetoast into a figure posed in various pornographic couplings. The synergy of intense pop music and cartoons makes for a disturbingly heady meditation on transgressive imagery and popular culture."
"Less fussy and far more transgressive than his previous work, Klahr's collage animation Pony Glass makes comic-book hero Jimmy Olsen the locus of desperate anxieties about sexuality and race. The film is so charged with fear and desire that a simple iris down to black made the hair stand up on the back of my neck."
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman
Dara Birnbaum
1978, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
A stutter-step progression of extended moments
unmasks the technological miracle of Wonder Woman's transformation,
playing on the psychological transformation of a television product.
Birnbaum considers this tape an "altered state [that] renders the viewer
capable of re-examining those looks which on the surface seem so banal
that even the super-natural transformation of a secretary into a 'Wonder
Woman' is reduced to a burst of blinding light and a turn of the body
-a child's play of rhythmical devices inserted within the morose
belligerence of the fodder that is our average television diet."
Superhero
Emily Breer
1995, USA, 16mm, color, sound, 6 min.
Live-action, hand-drawn and computer graphic
animation drive this high-speed fractured narrative about a Dionysian
superhero who sometimes has to punch out Batman for being too
goody-goody. Superhero is an updated personalized humorous response to
our traditional cartoon hero story.
Dyke Dollar
Laura Terruso
2009, USA, video, color, sound, 11 min.
An absurd, weirdo imagining of a
rubber-stamped "dyke dollar" come to life, Dyke Dollar is a comedy about
gay activism and identity politics as seen through the eyes of teenage
boys in Suburban New York. Starring Lisa Haas as the Dyke Dollar
herself.
What If?
Darrin Martin &
Torsten Zenas Burns
Torsten Zenas Burns
2009, USA/Korea, video,
color, sound, 16 min.
color, sound, 16 min.
A role-playing workshop where participants
reenact a fictional polyamorous romance leads to a group wedding and
honeymoon between characters based on two obscure Marvel superheroes and
two internationally renowned art personalities. The happy foursome are
Stelarc, an artist whose cybernetic mission in life is to render the
body obsolete; Orlan, an artist whose actual redefinition of her own
body via plastic surgery confronts representations of woman throughout
art history; the Scarlet Witch, a mutant superhero who has unlimited
powers over probability, and the Vision, a "synthezoid" whose
mechanically fabricated body contains a human soul. What If? unfolds the
entangled story that brought this romantic foursome together, spanning
the gulf between genders and representations; the body and technology.
The Personal is Revolutionary
We live in exciting times. Every day, we observe more of the old ways
pass and new ways come into being. This collection of short films
captures change in progress, some dealing with the personal impact of
vast power imbalances and some dealing with the possibilities for
revolution. Is Money Money, La Entrevista and Vamos a Quemar
come to us from queer collectives of politicized artists and scholars,
or artistic political activists, as the case may be. These small groups
are taking up critical issues at a critical time, and refusing to
simplify the intersectionality of identities and experiences of
oppression and revolution. Individual artists are also bringing us
highly personal work dealing with issues of our wealth, our
relationships, our bodies, our work and even DADT on television.
Is Money Money
B.J. Dini
2010, USA, video, color, sound, 9 min.
Inspired by The Autobiography of Alice B.
Toklas and the classic essay on inflation and fiat currency by Gertrude
Stein, this film features some of the Bay Area's most POSSESSED
performance artists making "art" with a Picasso Blue Period "print," an
"original" African mask, loads of "fake" money and a REAL live
wheelbarrow and fog machine with a chant that is sure to get the Occupy
Wall Street folks IN THE ZONE. Their symbols only have power over us if
we let them. INVERT THE PYRAMID. We have magic too.
How to Stop a Revolution
Kenji Tokawa
2011, Canada, video, color, sound, 11 min.
A relationship breaks down under the strain of
different oppressions that keep us silent even in our most intimate
spaces. Oppression works divide-and-conquer style through struggles
with race and class.
La Entrevista (The Interview)
Xamuel Bañales
2010, USA, video, color, sound, Spanish with English subtitles, 10 min.
Inspired by the grand Spanish artist, operatic
mezzo-soprano, and politician diva Manuela Trasobares. This satirical
performance piece simulates an interview, highlighting race, gender,
sexuality, class, and nationality as they relate to identity, social
justice, and decolonization, Queer Xicano style. Produced by
representatives of Young Queers United for Empowerment at UC Berkeley.
Don't Ask Don't Tell Gay Gay Gay
Dayna McLeod
2011, Canada, video, color, sound, 2 min.
Danya McLeod watches TV so we don't have to.
Like the short description summaries that often accompany TV programs
through an on-screen cable guide, Don't Ask Don't Tell Gay Gay Gay is a
jump-cut/short-cut edit of Season 4, Episode 4 of Boston Legal. All
excess material has been removed to effectively capture the tone of
national discourse around DADT.
The Culture War Is A Diversion From Economic Policy Insuring Plutocracy
Charles Lum
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
A local NYC-Queer experimental documentary
using art world critique to demonstrate the effective ambiguity of
street protest and the continuing dynamism of "gay" in political
strategies steeped in greed.
Uncovering Color
Marcelitte Failla
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 10 min.
Through the poetry of a queer, mixed race
woman, Uncovering Color looks at how skin color relates to racial
identity. It interweaves interviews of Black women of different
backgrounds to explore how perceptions of color impact childhood, beauty
and family.
Butch Tits
Jen Crothers
2010, Canada, video, color, sound, 4 min.
Butch women discuss the sometimes complicated relationship they have with their breasts. And they show us their tits.
Vamos a Quemar (Let's Burn)
El Paramo Colectivo
2010, Spain, video, color, sound, English/Spanish w/English subtitles, 27 min.
In Barcelona, a crossroad of events: a
performance where a woman penetrates another woman with her fist while
holding a camera. A screen projects and reproduces everything in large
dimensions. A book launch becomes a ceremony to celebrate the death of
the phallus, ending in a fisting by a bonfire. Everything can be
inscribed in the same collective search to challenge the representation
of the body in order to create alternatives to gender and sex
stereotypes. The Paramo Collective was born in Barcelona in 2010 during
one of many afternoons of teamwork. The group united not around a
concrete idea, but rather under the same visual needs: the search for
out-of-scene images and the exploration of subjects, objects and
contexts that do not fit within pre-established limits. PARAMO is
currently focusing on the struggle led by the recently-formed Spanish
Transfeminist Movement.
The Projectionist
Jerry Tartaglia
2011, USA, Super8mm, 16mm, video, live performance, color, sound, 30 min.
The Projectionist uses Queer Film Action and
multiple projections to explore the varieties of ways that projected
images can help shape an understanding of our presence. From
Aristophanes' hymn to "Double Love" in Plato's Symposium, to the
implication of the audience in the viral political fears that plague
America, Inc., The Projectionist attempts to unnerve, annoy and prod its
viewers to the point of power in the present and turn away from the
screens.
The Naked-Boy Business Part 2
André Hereford
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min.
In the form of a dreamlike confession set to
music, two wrestlers bare their souls and brave the consequences for
posing nude in the second episode of an audio-visual odyssey through the
naked-boy business.
feti(sh)ame
Kevin Simmonds
2011, USA, video, B&W, sound, 25 min.
feti(sh)ame is an arousing adaptation of a
book of poems based on interviews with gay men discussing their fetishes
and connections to shame.
Raped Carrot Porn
Urban Porn
2010, France, video, color, sound, 3 min.
The recipe for a good Raped Carrot Porn?
Prepare some "Do it Yourself" sextoys, find same good old "Z" movies and
get inspired by post-porn feminist culture. Bon appétit!
Little White Cloud That Cried
Guy Maddin
2009, Canada/Germany, video,
color, sound, 4 min.
color, sound, 4 min.
Goddesses unleash the power of the sea to
channel forces beyond their bedrooms. Moving image and still photos
create an orgiastic collage set ablaze in this musical short, created as
an homage to underground filmmaker Jack Smith.
Harigata: The Alien Dildo that Turned Women into Sex-Hungry Lesbos
Szu Burgess
2003, USA, Super8mm to video, B&W, 10 min.
This is a MIX classic. Made to premiere at MIX
in 2003, it's been a runaway hit. Combining vintage porn footage,
original inter-titles and scenes from It Came from Outer Space, it's
funny, outrageous and sexy.
The Projectionist
Jerry Tartaglia
2011, USA, Super8mm, 16mm, video, live performance, color, sound, 30 min.
The Projectionist uses Queer Film Action and
multiple projections to explore the varieties of
ways that projected images can help shape an
understanding of our presence. From Aristophanes'
hymn to "Double Love" in Plato's
Symposium, to the implication of the audience
in the viral political fears that plague America,
Inc., The Projectionist attempts to unnerve, annoy
and prod its viewers to the point of power
in the present and turn away from the screens.
This presentation at MIX 24 includes Jerry
Tartaglia, Eduard Dumitrache, John Schlegel &
Abdul Alshagmom.
Glands 4.0
Skote
2011, USA, video & live performance, 12 min.
Set to an original soundtrack, GLANDS 4.0
comprises two costumed humanoids gyrating
awkwardly before a video projector in
a darkened room. The 12-minute performance
piece is a campy exploration of bodily
"betrayal" (i.e., mechanisms of puberty, illness,
aging) and how emotions, feelings and
thoughts are embodied within these biological
processes. The resulting dance is a way
to deal with this discomfort and confusion,
and demonstrates the value of play and their
favorite emotion, laughter through tears.
Thursday, November 17, 2011 · 8:15pm
FREE
Presenting...
E. Hearte
2011, Canada, 16mm, video, sound, 30 min.
Presenting . . . is an improvisational performance
that involves digital audio, a live video
feed and manipulated 16mm video loops,
revealing images of sexual, medical and
legal exploitation, juxtaposed with images of
queer spaces, parades and protests, gay bars
and drag shows, erotica and surgery. Prisms,
mirrors and lenses distort the 16mm film
images, sending them beyond the standard
perimeter of the screen. The live video feed
is run through a laptop, manipulated with
Max/Msp/Jitter and projected alongside the
film. The soundscape for this performance�
which explores the relationship between
gender identity, presentation, and the body/
self within the queer community�generates
a fractured narrative by combining documentary
style accounts, medical and legal
journals, statistics, news clips and historical
retellings, with wild sound from various locations
related to the subject matter.
Audience members will be invited to
insert themselves into the visual narrative by
stepping into the live feed, presenting their
queer bodies in their chosen manner. These
bodies will be woven into the ongoing improvised
narrative, providing the opportunity
to actively participate, express and alter the
presentation of our queer forms.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 · 10:30pm
&
Saturday, November 19 · 11:30pm
&
Saturday, November 19 · 11:30pm
FREE
The Insiders
Coral Short
2011, Canada, performance, running time variable.
Eight performers speak to intimacy, community,
trust, and genderless beauty by inserting
themselves into two pink spandex balls,
ever-morphing beyond the human form into
giant amoeba-like entities.
Friday, November 18, 2011 · 9:15pm
FREE
Yes, You Are Okay
Lacy Davis & Finn Paul
2011, USA, video & performance, sound, running time variable.
With appropriated video footage projected
onto their naked bodies, they stand bare to
the audience, asking for forgiveness, freeing
themselves from the guilt of their past
mistakes, from long held secrets. They ask
the viewers to consider their own, and to use
art to practice the honesty, forgiveness, and
radical acceptance we could not experience
in our day-to-day lives.
Sunday, November 20, 2011 · 5pm
Mapping Fields
-Niknaz Tavakolian & Zavé Martohardjono, Guest Curators.
Total Running Time: 131 Min.
Taking over the basement
level of the MIX Factory,
ten works engage both
audience and artist equally.
Along their contours, the
works will talk to each other.
A curatorial endeavour,
mapping fields brings together
artists who use personal
narrative to explore
political critique, who push
the boundaries of their mediums,
who subvert the lens
that has been turned on them
and who ask the audience to
shift from active viewer
to discovering participant.
Organized by multimedia
artists, the event
investigates the convergence
of performance, activism
and the everyday through a
queer lens. Join us for this
unique, one-night only, multi-
disciplinary event where
the experience of the work
is what defines it.
Streaming/Distress
Christian Baer
2010, USA, video, color,sound, 7:30 min. loop.
An unedited video documentation loop, part
surveillance, part tableau, which charts the
trajectory of three ambiguous figures playing
out the mediated fantasies of the videographer.
The woods at night is the backdrop for
their shifting relations of power, desire and
domination.
Drawing Desire
Jacolby Satterwhite
2011, USA, video, color, sound, 12 min.
An ongoing experimental documentary
about Satterwhite's mother's drawing and
sound practice during her diagnosis of
schizophrenia, Drawing Desire is a surrealist
animation that weaves together drawing,
performance, narrative and new media.
Untitled, or: The Paradox of a Queer Dream
Sinan Goknur & Emmett Ramstad
2011, USA, video, color, 3 min. (loop)
This interactive video performance installation features a
three-minute video loop in which nude bodies appear posturing, gesturing
and gyrating for seconds at a time, then fade away; a motion sensor
allows participants to modify this landscape of dreams where the bodily
layers are a phantasmagoric exploration of queer desire and imagination,
illusion, visibility and impossibility.
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