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Suzie Silver Videoworks: Volume 1

These early works by artist Suzie Silver form a trilogy centering around popular culture and queer desire.

# Title Artists Run Time Year Country
1 A Spy (Hester Reeve Does The Doors) Suzie Silver 00:04:52 1992 United States
2 Freebird Suzie Silver 00:11:00 1993 United States
3 Look of Love: A Gothic Romance Suzie Silver 00:19:00 1998 United States

A Spy (Hester Reeve Does The Doors)

Suzie Silver
1992 | 00:04:52 | United States | English | Color | Mono | 4:3 | Video

DESCRIPTION

A Spy is a gender-bending and thought-provoking mixture of pure visual pleasure with disturbing undercurrents. As Reeve lip-syncs to a Doors song (“I am a spy in the house of love. I know the dream that you’re dreaming of, I know your deepest secret fear...”), we see a new manifestation of Jesus walking in a video field of pulsing rainbows, amoebic forms, and B-movie girls in black panties — suggesting the desires we try to hide from ourselves and others.

Freebird

Suzie Silver
1993 | 00:11:00 | United States | English | Color | Stereo | 4:3 | Video

DESCRIPTION

Silver directs and performs all the roles in this raucous and hilarious music video rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s "Freebird", the infamous Southern rock anthem for an entire generation of 1970s male youth. In this spoof of straight mass culture, Silver flips ironically between roles; from a lesbian proudly proclaiming her sexuality at the Academy Awards, to an in-concert Coors-drinking Ronnie Van Zant, and, finally, to a black-lace lesbian lounge swinger celebrating the wild, colorful world of “out” visibility. Silver draws upon an amazing array of found footage and special effects to bend genders and genres with spectacular visual delight.

Look of Love: A Gothic Romance

Suzie Silver
1998 | 00:19:00 | United States | English | Color | Mono | 4:3 | Video

DESCRIPTION

The Look of Love: A Gothic Romance is an experimental video/audio collage in four acts. Performing in various guises, Suzie Silver embarks on a quest for the magnificence—and horror—of desire and pleasure. Her female characters are caught up in a cascade of subtle and spectacular cinematic images of sexual desire between women.