535 West 22nd Street, 3rd floor
New York, NY 10011
PROGRAM
Conrad Ventur, Mario Montez Screen Test, 2010
Patti Podesta, Stepping, 1980
Steven Arnold, Messages, Messages, 1968
Narcissister, Every Woman, 2010
Zackary Drucker, Fish, 2008
Rick Castro + Vaginal Davis, Barbi Twins (excerpt), 1993
Steven Arnold, The Liberation of Mannique Mecanique, 1967
A night of experimental film and video that explores & explodes normative roles of femininity and gender. With work that spans five decades, these artists queer female subject space via drag tactics, narrative juxtaposition and overt performativity, with styles ranging from masquerade to mythic, performance document to exposé video zine.
With Mario Montez Screen Test, Conrad Ventur resubmits Jack Smith/Warhol Superstar Mario Montez to Warhol's screen test format. Patti Podesta writes of her Stepping, "I wanted to make something about risk, about repetition and a sort of lulling into nonsense of a very dangerous situation." Steven Arnold won the Best New Director award at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Messages, Messages continues in the tradition of Cocteau and Anger, following its singular protagonist through a psychosexual labyrinth of libidinal delights and genderfuck costumery.
Narcissister's Every Woman is a performance document in which the artist spews slinky feminine attire from every orifice imaginable, all to Chaka Khan's ubiquitous anthem of the same name. Zackary Drucker's Fish is "a matrilineage of cunty white woman realness." A chapter from Vaginal Davis' Fertile La Toyah Jackson "Aksionist Video Magazine," Barbi Twins documents an incongruous sister duo's Los Angeles exploits and lively recollections in true reportage form.