Performance

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.

Shot during the fall of 2009 in Wesleyan University, this short documentary follows Eiko & Koma as they construct the first exhibition of their Retrospective and ponder upon questions the project asks. Directed and edited by Joanna Arnow.

An audio mix assembled as part of a memorial for the storyteller and very old friend, Spalding Gray, who lost himself in New York Harbor in 2004.

This title is audio only.

This project on family violence, spanned two years and several sites across the country, and involved wrecked cars in sculptural installations. The cars were reconfigured by women and children who suffered violence at the hands of loved ones. Linked to each other through common experience, women from a domestic violence shelter in Pittsburgh, a family violence program at Bedford Hills prison, children from shelters in Niagara Falls and Cleveland, teenage girls in Oakland, and politicians on Staten Island all collaborated in making the cars.

Treating the problem of anorexia nervosa from the parents' perspective, Rosler presents a mother and father speaking about the tragedy of their daughter's death as a result of dieting. The conversation turns toward the irony of self-starvation in a land of plenty and toward the international politics of food, where food aid is used as a negotiating tool. Confronting a serious issue, Rosler simultaneously sets into play the confessional form and the ghoulish staginess of talk show dramatics.

A newly re-mastered collection of 17 vignettes and performances to camera, produced during 1974-75. Some use props and sight gags to preposterous effect; others star Man Ray, lapping milk from a glass, stopping marbles and dropping balls. Many of the pieces feature off-screen dialogue, including a comparison of the differences between audio- and videotape, and video and film.

Contents:

Nocturne, 7:49

Stalking, 2:06

Audio Tape and Video Tape, 2:04

Dancing Tape, 5:27

A queer rewriting of the events surrounding the 1968 National Democratic Convention in Chicago from the point of view of French writer Jean Genet. Along the way Genet will meet, amongst others, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, the Yippies, the Black Panther Party and the Chicago police force... Ultimately, the video is about the difficulty of aligning political and sexual desires.

Interrupting the nightly news in an act of guerrilla television, Gómez-Peña returns to the persona of a Chicano-Aztec veejay—"The Mexican who talks back, the illegal Mexican performance artist with state of the art technology"—to elaborate the complications of American identity. This post-NAFTA Cyber Aztec pirate commandeers the television signal from his underground "Vato bunker", where virtual reality meets Aztec ritual. Gómez-Peña embodies the doubly radical Chicano performance artist, delivering radical ideas through a radical form of entertainment.

Why Not A Sparrow is about a girl who enters a fairy tale land where the distinction between human and other animal species is blurred. In this kingdom, survival and extinction are on the tip of every birds’ tongue.

"An Eco-Fable about a girl, a rare bird, who experiences the pleasures and perils of another animal kingdom."

— Big Muddy Film Festival, 2002

This horror picture is a sequel to THE KISS OF FRANKENSTEIN (a one act play I wrote a few years ago which was performed by my graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute). This one was made on the main campus and features Linda Martinez reprising the role of Sherri Frankenstein who is MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! The budget given us was $400 but the picture looks big and robust, thanks to the attractive and healthy looking cast of students and guest performers who bring this tale of family vengeance to a rousing and tuneful finale.

Taste the delicious colors of "SWEET NOTHINGS" and observe the dice of desire being tossed on a gambler’s bed like yesterday’s candy. See tomorrow’s chocolate bunny melt into a brown puddle and feel a sticky, rainbow colored lolly-pop thats stuck to six feet of skin that secrets pent up passions... It’s all here for you to eat and is guaranteed to fatten your eyes!!

Sounds in the Distance is a video adaptation of David Wojnarowicz's 1982 book Sounds in the Distance: Thirty-five Monologues from the Road.

Cast in order of appearance: Allen Frame, Tara Kelly, Nan Goldin, Kirsten Bates, Elisabeth Walker, Bill Rice, Brian Burchill, Suzanne Fletcher, Frank Franca.

Directed by Kirsten Bates and Allen Frame, Produced by Peggy Bates

“This melodrama, staged by me and produced with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, follows the turbulent journey of an aspiring singer as she flees a frigid environment to heat up a tepid career. Hauling along her decrepit mom and an equally cadaverous aunt, our heroine falls prey to a variety of libido-inspired stresses and also has a tragic debut at a disco club populated by repressed, trailer trash and ousted meteorologists. It’s a fast moving trip from north to south with many odd detours for the viewer to relish.”

--George Kuchar

As two heavily made-up women take turns directing each other and submitting to each other's kisses and caresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that the camera is their main point of focus. Read against feminist film theory of the "male gaze", the action becomes a highly charged statement of the sexual politics of viewing and role-playing; and, as such, is a crucial text in the development of early feminist video.

Shot during an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) seminar in Berlin, a group fluxuates between guided meditation and discussion on consciousness and self-acceptance. Neuro-linguistic programming is a set of techniques and beliefs that are used primarily towards personal development. NLP is based on the idea that mind, body, and language create an individual's perception of the world, and an individuals behaviors can be changed by "perceiving and feeling yourself". Rapport focuses on the staging of the self that takes place during this kind of group therapy.

The body as a percussive instrument.

Performers: Ellen Krueger & Monica Wilson

In this cooking demonstration/performance, Sobell wears a chicken carcass over her face while dressing (literally, in baby clothes) a chicken to be cooked for dinner. Cooing and breast feeding the chicken as she would an infant, Sobell brings two stereotypical female roles—that of care giver and that of cook—psychotically close, emphasizing the potential dark side of women’s intimate association with food in a way similar to Suzanne Lacy’s Learn Where the Meat Comes From.

In The Body Parlor, both man and sheep as combined sacrificial bodies become subjects of biological investigation. As symbols of ritual sacrifice, they are bodies that give of themselves. In discovering new forms of health-care (regenerative medicine) and tissue engineering (such as stem cell research), the body becomes sacrificial material for the greater purpose of a social good. The performers employ the material objects, either as products of or as extensions of the body as a way of exploring giving from one's self in sacrifice.

Performers throw themselves into an underground passageway. They exit through the mirror, a symmetrical mirror world which exists because of the placement and angle of the mirror as an upside-down place.

Performers: Ellen Krueger and Monica Wilson

See a boy turn into a tiger. See the lad vomit colors of the rainbow. Watch him toss marbles onto wet bathroom tiles while holding up a green skull. See him squirm on warm bedsheets, wearing only soiled socks on his feet…… This kid has a mouthful of flowery words to spit out to you !

This title comprises Witchery (2008), The Tiger (2009), Swan Song (2009), Medusa's Gaze (2010) and Opal Essence (2010) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

Offering was co-commissioned by Dancing in the Streets (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, where the proscenium version premiered January 9, 2003) and the University of Arizona (Tucson).

Offering is a ritual of regeneration after loss. People everywhere have lost ideals and landscapes that were dear to them. Offering was originally developed as a mobile outdoor work. This transportable dance or living site "installation" can be brought into communities to serve a communal need for a ritual of mourning.

This real-time video-meets-digital-animation trilogy of shorts features the highly excited and mildly delusional Joe Gibbons, whose springboard becomes a surfboard as he fantasizes about his days as a lifeguard in 1963, when the young Brian Wilson would sit and jot down the songs he would sing while saving lives.

Mike Builds a Shelter is a performance comedy with apocalyptic overtones, a narrative extension of Smith's installation Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter/Snack Bar. In this darkly humorous morality play, Smith contrasts Mike's rural adventures in a pastoral landscape with his home fallout shelter. Throughout, the dual narratives are intercut with episodes of Mike's Show on cable, in which Mike's banal domestic activities are eagerly if passively received by living-room TV viewers.

In this video, Glennda Orgasm and Chris Teen travel to Washington, DC to attend a feminist art exhibition titled Walk the Goddess Walk at the District of Columbia Arts Center. The pair talk to the owner of the gallery, artists included in the show, and attendees, including Francy Caprino, Teena Cromwell, Andrew Melon, Camille Paglia, and Joseph Virgilio.

An episode of Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glennda Orgasm and Chris Teen.

In Takeover of the Empire State Building, Brenda and Glennda visit the top of the Empire State Building as it is lit up in lavender for Gay Pride. They interview both tourists visiting the building, and activists who have come to see the lights. Ultimately, they question whether this gesture is adequate, or if there is still a way to go until equality is achieved.