Performance

A colorful and sinister tale of hypno-therapists delving into the quagmire of UFO abductions, and wallowing in the subconscious muck of their own primal urges. A sprawling saga of consuming passion performed by enrollees of the San Francisco Art Institute under the direction of Professor George Kuchar in Studio 8.

Susan Mogul's fantasies of success have always a comic, congenial twist, as in Dear Dennis, a video letter to Dennis Hopper inspired by her discovery that they share the same dentist. The central irony of this witty piece is that, despite Hopper's popular persona as an innovative, sub-cultural filmmaker and performer, the actual distance between his so-called independent" films and Mogul's experimental, non-commercial videos prevents Susan from finding any common ground from which to address Hopper other than the subject of dental work.

Each year, more women undergo treatment at hospital emergency surgical services as a result of family violence than rapes, muggings, and car wrecks combined. This startling statistic is the basis for a series of site-specific installations on domestic violence, On The Edge Of Time. Underground, the first installation for the Pittsburgh Three Rivers Art Festival, used three wrecked cars strewn along a 180-foot section of railroad track to reference the history of Abolition and the Underground Railroad, and as metaphors for different aspects of abuse.

In the second part of the Classics Exposed series, a neurotic scholar (Gibbons) leads a "buggy" ride tour through historic Charleston where, according to the professor, Franz Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis after taking a wrong turn on his way to Hollywood. Live-action with six-legged animation.

This title is also available on Emily Breer: Classics Exposed.

In Tree Song, Eiko & Koma continue their exploration of the body as a part of the landscape and the landscape as an extension of the body. Trees have been symbols of resilience, rebirth and portals through which spirits pass. Tree Song honors the iconography of trees and the primal mysteries of landscape and the human body.

In 2002, my troupe, La Pocha Nostra and I were invited to conduct a workshop at Columbia College in Chicago with 15 students and faculty from different departments. At the end of the two-week workshop, we created a large-scale performance-installation with the participants. Canadian video artist Liz Singer was invited to shoot the entire process, from the early workshop exercises, meant to connect students with their bodies and build a sense of community, up to opening night... In this documentary we reveal the working methods and radical pedagogy of La Pocha Nostra.

Actions speed up, slow down, and run at regular speed. The usual props are there, as is a wet dog. Subtle nuances are revealed as the behavior of the anxiety-laden protagonists is rendered, for once, in real-time.

This title is also available on HalfLifers: Rescue Series and HalfLifers: The Complete History.

Last Man is made of the raw footage of security cameras that stream online. During the spring 2020 lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Dana Levy, who lives in New York, monitored the images transmitted live from security cameras in city centers and at airports, beaches, universities, restaurants, and zoos around the world. In them, these key venues, which in normal times are bustling with life, appear nearly devoid of human presence.

“We lose good artists to the past all the time because their work was ephemeral, or difficult, or fashion wasn’t on their side. The performance artist Stuart Sherman, who died of AIDS in 2001, was a candidate for disappearance on all three counts.” 

— New York Times, 2009

Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas documented the preparations and opening of the Marina Abramovic Videoinstalaciones exhibit at Mexico City's Laboratorio Arte ALameda, the first Abramovic exhibition ever to take place in Mexico, in November of 2008.  Cuevas captures the self proclaimed "performance grandmother" in a number of personal and performative moments as she readies for the opening.

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.

... There is a garden in the dark hunger of his psyche where forbidden fruit grows.

— Mike Kuchar

A video adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses shot at the Parkville Senior Center, Connecticut, with the seniors reading the lines from cue cards. The piece addresses society, war, and personal mortality.

M+ Museum presented A Body in Hong Kong in two locations as part of Mobile M+: Live Art, 2015. Tim Mei Avenue, where Eiko chose and performed, was the main site of 2014 Umbrella Revolution. Nearly 100,000 people camped out, and in doing so, stopped traffic on twelve-lane highways and created a politically charged sphere.

A family embraces the heart of evil in this Poltergeist re-make/drag show, circa 1992.

April 26, 1976. San Francisco. Doug Hall and Jody Procter of T.R. Uthco, a San Francisco art/performance group, sat 60 feet above the pavement in chairs bolted to the masonry wall outside the east windows of the third floor of La Mamelle Gallery on 12th Street. They sat from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon, and during this time They talked continuously. The two performers were clearly visible to spectators on the street below. The sounds of their amplified voices and video images from two nearby cameras were fed into the gallery space.