Dirty Looks’ On Location will return July 1 - 31, 2021 to celebrate queer Los Angeles with film and performance in the gay bars, community centers and shuttered historic sites that wrote our shared urban history. On each night of the month, our 15-person curatorial committee will mobilize pop-up events to convey the significant, surprising and offbeat stories of locales across greater Los Angeles. The festival returns hot on the heels of our 2018 L.A. debut, which reached an audience of 4000+ in venues ranging from Moonlight Rollerway, The Vista to a truck parked outside the shuttered lesbian bar Plush Pony.

Our 2021 curatorial committee will be comprised of: Jackie Clay, Chris Cruse, Nikki Darling, Paul Gellman, Micah Gottlieb, Frank Jaffe, PonyLee Musgrave, Bradford Nordeen, Andres Payan Estrada + Wendy Yao, with collaborative duos Mariah Garnett + Aimee Goguen, Arshia Fatima Haq + Amitis Motevalli and Transgress Fest.

Dirty Looks is also thrilled to announce that, for the first time On Location will commission two original artworks, bolstered by support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. Founded in our exploratory exhibition approaches, we will work with artists or collectives to premiere two original works that celebrate and elucidate on the stories that make Los Angeles a world center for queer art and culture. Commissioned artists will be announced in early 2021.

This announcement coincides with the naming of five new members to Dirty Looks’ Board of Directors: Anna Betbeze, Jeffrey Caballero, Adam Frank, Ryan Linkof and Ariel Osterweis, who join members Andrew Gould, Justine Suzanne Jones, John Polly, Lauryn Siegel, Harry Vaughn and Amy von Harrington. To deepen support for the initiative, On Location will re-instate our Friends of On Location program, a series of a regular social gatherings building up to the festival. To become a friend, visit the festival mini site today!

On Location 2021 is funded in part by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the City of West Hollywood. On Location previously serviced New York City for three original iterations in 2012, 2013 and 2015, where it was initially organized by Dirty Looks founder Bradford Nordeen with David Everitt Howe, Jamillah James and Karl McCool.