LGBTQ

This experimental Pixelvision piece explores the tenuous boundaries of gender through a series of mini-sequences, among them a group of anecdotes told by women who have been mistaken for men and a must-see synchronized barbershop scene.

This video diary visits two sites that exhibited my visual works this past year, culminating at the VOLTA ART SHOW in N.Y.C., where I sold some paintings and a photograph.

The underling theme of the diary deals with some bloating, scarring and beefcake exposure while on the road to an acting gig where I'm scheduled to play a BI-SEXUAL, paraplegic in heat.

There are some in depth scenes of me working out the romance/sex routines with a young and attractive, male co-star. The all-girl crew appears to be getting off on the whole thing and I don't blame them!

Hokey Sapp Does SPEW features Kate Schechter performing her invented media personality Hokey Sapp interviewing some of the luminaries at SPEW: The Homographic Convergence, a queer zine convention hosted by Randolph Street Gallery in Chicago in May, 1991. SPEW brought together artists, writers, editors of zines, performers, video-makers, activists, and bands from throughout the US and Canada, and marked the explosion of queercore subcultures through unabashed fashion, outrageous politics, humor, and joy.

The disparate chronicles of a high school wrestling team, a flooded town of aliens, and the love affair between two young men. Performers responded to individual drawings and prompts to collectively generate improvisational dialog during the Pilot Conference: Experimental Media for Feminist Trespass, in Chicago, 2004.

With Becca Taylor

A fast-talking and fabulous teen recounts his experiences as an out and loud Toronto queer. With catty wit, he recalls his confrontations with straight students at school and his gay prom at a Toronto gay youth community center, told with a flair for drama and punctuated with enactments of his Wonder Woman fantasies. Fung keeps the format simple, giving voice to his subject.

Set to music by Bikini Kill (an all-girl band from Washington), Sadie Benning's Girl Power is a raucous vision of what it means to be a radical girl in the 1990s. Benning relates her personal rebellion against school, family, and female stereotypes as a story of personal freedom, telling how she used to model like Matt Dillon and skip school to have adventures alone. Informed by the underground “riot grrrl” movement, this tape transforms the image politics of female youth, rejecting traditional passivity and polite compliance in favor of radical independence and a self-determined sexual identity.

PASSIONS run deep and LOVE flies high on Cupid’s arrow when ‘Boys’ are the desired target.

In a fragrant garden warmed by the sun, a young man inhales the atoms of the world and exhales thoughts that probe the very essence of his existence. 

Embraced by a gentle breeze in that tranquil place kissed by the sun, he embarks on a journey inward to that spiritual and sensual state best described as the "cosmic consciousness", - the "quest" to "understand" and "accept".....to have "peace of mind".

Every Wandering Cloud is the first installment in a series of experimental videos inspired by the writings of Oscar Wilde. Interweaving text from Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" with hand-drawn animation derived from Eadweard Muybridge's Human and Animal Location, Every Wandering Cloud is a meditation on themes of freedom and imprisonment. The video juxtaposes an eclectic array of archival and contemporary imagery, including documentary footage and original Super-8 and digital video.

Kiss The Boys And Make Them Die explores how memory, sexuality, and the self are created and enforced through the family story. The video chronicles how the social act of loving women becomes channeled into narratives of incest, desire for the mother, loss of the father, separation from the family, death and self-destruction. In this work, sexuality, difference and language are paralleled with haunting memories of a childhood ghost that both desires and hates women.

Sylvia is a portrait of the civil rights pioneer Sylvia Rivera for her memorial service in 2002, as told by her chosen family immediately following her death. "A veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, Sylvia was a tireless advocate for all those who have been marginalized as the 'gay rights' movement has mainstreamed. Sylvia fought hard against the exclusion of transgender people from the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in New York, and was a loud and persistant voice for the rights of people of color and low-income queers and trans people." --SRLP.org

The search for one’s true identity, the need to create, to find a proper place in the universe – this is the pursuit of the individuals portrayed in this narrative meditation… It is that quest to find meaning in existence… The ability to think outside of the "self".

This title comprises Saints and Sinners (2015), Soul Searchers (2014), and His Soul to Give (2019) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

Set in a post-industrial ‘Neverland’ of worn down row houses, looming factories, and desolate seashores, a rabble of deprived gender and age ambiguous youths explore their own vulnerabilities and put pressure on what it means to grow up. Misadventures that include impromptu races, nighttime spooning, cheating at card games, attempts at hypnotism, pocket knife haircuts, and sexual fantasies all function as means for the characters to attempt knowing one another.

In the video An Evening with Kembra, Glennda and Brenda attend one of Kembra Pfahler's dinner shows on New York City's Lower East Side. At her show, she performs cabaret versions of songs from her band The Volumptuous Horror of Karen Black. After the show, the group discusses the relationship of her work to queer culture. Interspersed throughout the video are two short clips: a skit entitled Drag Queen Starter Kit, and a call to boycott a bakery due to its discriminatory behavior. 

In this episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, Brenda and Glennda lead a group of drag queens on a trip to Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. Intended to be a drag queen gambling getaway and a public stage for drag visibilty, the trip turns into a moment of protest and reflection incited by homophobic discrimination. The group is kicked out of the gambling area for supposedly wearing excessive makeup and inapprorpiate, flashy attire — somehow unlike and worse than that of the casino's showgirls and other heavily powdered female patrons.

From The Files of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge is a series of video clips taken at the Pyramid Club, a seminal location for the East Village drag scene in the midst of the club's most influential years. While rummaging through a file cabinet full of event fliers from the Pyramid Club, an office worker in drag guides the viewer through video documentation of past performances at the club.

A series of intimate video-8 vignettes depicting the fierce love between Malverna and Sandi, 88 and 22, grandmother and grandson. The two playmates dress up drag-esque for this moving portrait of a woman’s lifetime struggle with gender and sexuality. Since Malverna's death, Tomboychik has become a living memorial to the intensity of her spirit.

Zach Blas is an artist, writer, and filmmaker whose practice spans technical investigation, research, conceptualism, performance, and science fiction. Currently a Lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, Blas has exhibited internationally, including at the Walker Art Center, Gwangju Biennale, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Whitechapel Gallery.