Between the Lines - Saturday, April 2

Visual AIDS presents Between the Lines readings by Bill Kushner and Dan Fishback hosted by BoxoFFICE. Plus a special viewing of Eric Rhein: Transmutation.  Saturday April 2 from 4 - 6 pm / Readings begin at 5 pm.  

Bill Kushner  one of New York’s most passionately inventive poets and playwrights, as offbeat and relentless as Alan Ginsberg and the Village Beatniks, as funny and intellectually sharp as the New York School's John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, and as spiritually searching and inspiring as New York's first bard, Walt Whitman. He is a New York Foundation of The Arts fellow in 1999 and 2005, and the author of 7 books of poetry. Walking After Midnight, his latest book will be published this spring, and is “full of sexy surprises.”

Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. His most recent play, You Will Experience Silence (Stephen Brackett, dir.) debuted to critical acclaim in April 2009 at Dixon Place.  He has performed at Performance Space 122, Joe's Pub, Galapagos Art Space and various of other venues in New York and abroad. He is currently developing two new theater pieces: The Material World, a pop musical about socialist Jews in the 1920s, and thirtynothing, a solo performance about growing up in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic.  Fishback will perform thirtynothing at Brooklyn Arts Exchange on April 8-10, 2011. 

Eric Rhein's exhibition Transmutation is on view through April 9 at BoxoFFICE  
 
Eric Rhein, a native of New York's Hudson Valley, is known for his refined and passionate wire drawings that combine human forms with animal and plant life. He weaves personal stories, experiences and mysticism into explorations of the powerful connections among man, nature, and the spiritual world.  The exhibition features Rhein's own photographs, as well as vintage photography of male nudes, combined with found objects and bronze & silver castings of leaves & twigs. These assemblages, like Rhein's other works, depict a sense of humanity's communion with nature, and evoke figures from Celtic and Egyptian mythology.

Exhibition and Readings are free and open to the public at:
BoxoFFICE
421 Hudson Street, #701, New York, NY 10014
 
Space for Between the Lines is limited, please RSVP by Friday, April 1 at 212-627-9855 / info@visualAIDS.org

Images:
top: Eric Rhein, Encountering Cernunnus, wire on paper, 2010, Courtesy of the artist.
center left: Bill Kushner photo by Nathaniel A. Siegel © 2010
center right: Dan Fishback photo by Allison Michael Orenstein .
bottom: Eric Rhein, Silver Horizon, 2010, silver gelatin print, courtesy of the artist.

Witnessing “Survival AIDS”

Witnessing “Survival AIDS” 
An evening symposium with performance by Hunter Reynolds

Saturday May 7 from 7:00 - 9:30 PM
gallery hours extended until midnight

Hosted by Participant Inc.
253 East Houston, NYC

Hunter Reynolds: Survival AIDS will be on view May 1 – June 5, 2011

Visual AIDS presents a symposium at Participant Inc. celebrating Survival AIDS, a major solo exhibition by Hunter Reynolds. Witnessing “Survival AIDS” will examine how HIV/AIDS reconfigured/reconfigures queer identify formation and contemporary visual and performance art. Presentations by David Deitcher, Nathan Lee, Virginia Solomon, and Anthony Viti. The symposium will precede a mummification performance by Hunter Reynolds. 

Click here for more info.

What Comes Next? Mark Morrisroe, David Wojnarowicz, Marc Lida, Andreas Senser, Bern Boyle, and contemporaries.

Visual AIDS and The Fales Library at New York University present:

What Comes Next? Mark Morrisroe, David Wojnarowicz, Marc Lida, Andreas Senser, Bern Boyle, and contemporaries.

Symposium with

• Sur Rodney (Sur)
• Rafael Sanchez
• Amy Scholder
• Jonathan Weinberg

Moderated by Dean Daderko

Wednesday April 20, 2011
6:30 – 8:30 PM

Since circa 1980, New York City has lost untold numbers of artists to AIDS.  Bern Boyle (1951-1992), Marc Lida (1957-1992), Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989),  Andreas Senser (1942-1989), and David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) are among them. The popular discourse on HIV/AIDS remains unresolved. The stigma is still very much alive and, while pushed underground, HIV-phobia is resurfacing. Discussions surrounding the censorship of David Wojnarowicz’s work by the National Portrait Gallery have drawn our history nearer in recent months.
 
Visual AIDS and the Fales Library present a symposium considering these artists’ responses to living with, and dying from complications due to AIDS. What is the role of those that survive them: the witness, the archivist, the estate, the presenter? How does the foreknowledge of impending death affect the artist's ouvre, in practice, and what are the conversations and relationships that need to occur to guide the artist's legacy forward?
 
Fales Library and Special Collections
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Third Floor
70 Washington Square South
Free and open to the public
Seats are limited - please RSVP at 212-992-7050 or by email

images (clockwise): David Wojnarowicz, Mark Morrisroe, Marc Lida, Bern Boyle

VAVA Voom Ceremony & Benefit

VAVA Voom

Monday May 16, 2011

6:00 – 9:00 PM

The 6th Annual Visual AIDS Vanguard Awards honoring:

Geoffrey Hendricks presented by William Pope.L

Brent Sikkema presented by Hilton Als

Richard Renaldi presented by Lesley A. Martin

Join Co-Chairs Mixed Greens, P•P•O•W, Kara Walker, and Pavel Zoubok for cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and a night of cabaret.

Celebrity Host: John Fugelsang

VAVA Voom Cabaret:

Justin Vivian Bond, accompanied by Nath Ann Carrera

Phoebe Legere

Music by DJ Senti-mental

Plus “Fair and Honest Appraisals of Your Appearance” by The Bumbys

The Park

118 Tenth Avenue NYC

Space is limited, reserve your seat today.  Tickets start at $250.00.  Proceeds support the programs of Visual AIDS.   Click here for tickets or more information. 

Mixed Messages: Visual AIDS at La MaMa

Mixed Messages

June 2 – July 3, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 2 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM

La MaMa La Galleria
6 E. 1st Street New York City

Mixed Messages curated by John Chaich for Visual AIDS, presents over forty text-based works by visual artists and designers whose reactions to and connections through HIV/AIDS reflect the contemporary moment’s tenor on the pandemic. From painting to print, sculpture   and installation, the featured works juxtapose publicly intended messages with deeply personal revelations, which are at once polemic and poetic, positive and negative, both in tone and form.  Featuring the artwork of Robert Blanchon, Anthony Burrill, Paul Chisholm, Cammi Climaco, Amanda Curreri, Craig Damrauer, Joe De Hoyos, Chloe Dzubilo & T De Long, Experimental Jetset, Avram Finkelstein, Nicholas Fraser, General Idea, John Giorno, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Andrew Graham, Gran Fury, Nolan Hendrickson, Leslie Hewitt, James Jaxxa, James Joyce, Deborah Kass, Matt Keegan, Amanda Keeley, Jayson Keeling, KleinReid, Larry Krone, Lou Laurita, Rudy Lemcke, Glenn Ligon, Liz Maugans, Sam McKinniss, Lucas Michael, Ivan Monforte, J. Morrison, Nightsweats & T-cells, Yoko Ono, Christopher Pennock, Jack Pierson, Kay Rosen, Charlie Welch, Frederick Weston, David Wojnarowicz and Rob Wynne

Mixed Messages Events

Sunday June 12 from 4 – 6 PM  • Free
Mixed Messengers Talk: A panel discussion among the creative teams behind recent HIV prevention campaigns.
Stephen Karpiak, PhD, Associate Director for Research at the ACRIA
Ivan Monforte of GMHC's First Ladies Care
Kevin O’Malley of NYC’s GayMeth.org and Stop AIDS Project, San Francisco 
Chuck Pollard of L’Oreal Hairdressers Against AIDS 
Moderated by Kenyon Farrow, Co-editor of Letters from Young Activists.   

Wednesday June 29 from 7– 9 PM • Suggested donation
Ask Me: Mixed Messages -- An night of storytelling inspired by the exhibition. Co-hosted by Cammi Climaco and David Crabb / askmestories.com.    

image: James Jaxxa, TAKE/NEED/FEAR/JUNK, 2010, mixed media

Risk, Stigma & Medicine

Join Lang Education Studies, University Health Services, & The New School University's program in Global Studies as, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, M.D. presents,

Risk, Stigma, and Medicine:Point of Risk Testing for HIV in New York City Commercial Sex Venues

Dr. Daskalakis's work explores why men who have sex with men continue to be over-represented in new cases of HIV domestically. Innovative approaches to making these men aware of their infection may result in improved personal health and public health by impacting the forward transmission of HIV. The Men’s Sexual Health Project, founded by Dr. Daskalakis, is such a program that at its core attempts to put HIV prevention on the street and out of the ivory tower. The lecture will cover trends in HIV and risk among men who have sex with men, the story of implementing M*SHP, and our social, behavioral, and biological findings.

Elizabeth Taylor on Larry King speaking out about AIDS in 1996

Elizabeth Taylor — screen legend, HIV/AIDS activist — dead at 79

via LGBT NATION

Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor, died early Wednesday morning, March 23, 2011 from congestive heart failure at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. She was surrounded by her four children.

Taylor was 79.

Taylor was an ally to the LGBT community, and worked tirelessly on behalf of AIDS-related charities and fund raising. She helped start the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) after the death of her former co-star and friend, Rock Hudson. 

She also created her own AIDS foundation, the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation. By 1999, she had helped to raise an estimated $50 million to fight the disease. 

Taylor won two Academy Awards, both for Best Actress — for “Butterfield 8″ (1960) and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1966) — and in 1992 was awarded the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Academy Award for her work fighting AIDS.

“We are deeply saddened by the death Elizabeth Taylor,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese, in a statement.

“Ms. Taylor was a true ally to the LGBT community. She was one of the first public voices to speak up about the AIDS crisis while many others stayed silent in the 1980s and she helped raise millions of dollars to fight the disease. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family, and to all those whose lives have been positively impacted by the life and work of Elizabeth Taylor,” said Solmonese.

Taylor was hospitalized six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, “a condition with which she had struggled for many years,” according to a statement from her publicist.

Congestive heart failure is a condition in which the heart can no longer pump enough blood to the rest of the body.

In addition to her four children, Taylor is survived by 10 grand children and four great grandchildren.

May she rest in peace.

Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989)

ClampArt

521-531 West 25th Street, Ground floor

March 24 - April 30, 2011
Opening: Thursday, March 24, 6 - 8 PM

image: Mark Morrisroe, “Self Portrait,” 1980/1996, Photogravure (Edition 46), 16 × 11.5 inches (sheet), 4.25 × 3.25 inches (image). Copyright Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection), Fotomuseum Winterthur 

Hunter Reynolds: Survival AIDS

Survival AIDS is a new series of works that incorporate elements spanning 25 years of my image making, and constructed around my experience as a gay man living in the age of AIDS. I have been living as a person with HIV and AIDS since 1984. I began to express this experience in my art practice beginning in 1987, at which time I also became a member of ACT UP. For my upcoming exhibition, Survival AIDS, I am combining three modalities that I have used in various ways in my work over the years: the Blood Spot series, Mummification Performance Skins, and  Photo Weavings. In the early ‘90s I did a series of performances in which I extracted my own blood and dropped it onto paper, creating an abstract image from my diseased blood-body. I then scanned a single perfectly shaped spot of blood to use as a vehicle, to cleanse and reclaim it in various forms in my artwork. Between 1989 and 1993, I clipped every newspaper article and advertisement that I came across in the New York Times and other newspapers that had anything to do with AIDS and LGBT culture. During my career, performance art has been another mode of working. My drag alter ego, Patina du Prey; The Memorial Dress; my Mummification Performances; and The Goddess Within Dervish Performances are all sites in which I use my body as a transformative vessel to process and present, through my art, the emotional and physical experience of AIDS in my life and in the world around me. Survival AIDS is an installation combining three of those elements: the Blood Spots, the Mummification Performances, and the archival newspapers used to create large scale Photo Weavings. Read more and learn how you can help out here.

Rainbow Book Fair - March 26, 2011

Welcome to the 3rd Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair
Saturday, March 26, 2011, from 11am to 5:00pm

The New York Rainbow Book Fair will be held at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 West 13th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues), New York, NY—in the heart of Greenwich Village.

This is the largest LGBT book event in America, and it is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

Be a part of the most exciting lgbt book event in the U.S. Join authors, poets, publishers, university presses, and the entire reading and writing community in this diverse spectacular of words, images, and talent. With the Center’s dramatic large 3rd floor exhibition space, additional rooms for panels, poetry readings, and author events, free books and hourly book giveaways, mingling, and meeting authors and readers like yourself.

Combining author readings, poetry performance, academic panels on the past and future of lgbt literature and publishing, specialized events for genre readers and writers, and something for all of our community, the 3rd Annual Rainbow Book Fair will put the snap and sparkle back into book reading. Meet hundreds of authors, publishers and eager readers from the US, Canada, South America, and the rest of the LGBT world in this supportive and exciting setting.

Click here for details. 

Video: New York Remembers Chloe Dzubilo, Trans Rebel with a Cause

via HousingWorks.org

Viva Ruiz, who considered Dzubilo a mentor and mother.

On Saturday a packed church said goodbye to Chloe Dzubilo, the fierce, iconic transgender activist, punk rocker, and former Housing Works client who died in February.

It was a ceremony fit for an individual known widely for kicking convention and embracing glamour. Men dressed as greek gods tended the entrance to the sanctuary at Judson Memorial Church in New York City; a sea of glitter covered the altar; and a pair of winged gold horses flanked the stage. 

“Chloe, we are here today to raise you up, so that future generations will learn what you did on their behalf,” said long-time friend Viva Ruiz, dressed in flowing white. “It is fitting that we elevate one who refused to be quiet, and who in the darkest places kept all her torches blazing.”

Chloe Dzubilo Memorial @ Judson Church 3.12.2011 from Housing Works on Vimeo.

For more than two decades, Dzubilo advocated on behalf of people living with HIV/AIDS, transgendered individuals and drug users. Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, she spent years conducting transgender HIV prevention outreach in bars, nightclubs and on strolls. She was affiliated with the political action group the Transexual Menace; directed one of the first federally funded HIV programs for transgender sex workers; and founded the Equi-Aid project, a horseback riding program for children infected with or affected by HIV. She was the first transgender person to grace the cover of POZ Magazine. “Her voice transcended the ‘shhhh’ of everyone else,” said Yvonne Ritter.

At the ceremony, friends celebrated a woman who inspired them to work through intense emotional and physical pain to produce art and political change. Rosario Dawson, a long-time friend, rose in front of the group and flung herself dramatically around the church to demonstrate how Dzubilo had taught her to pose for photographs. “Chloe called me Rosie because only family called me Rosie,” she said.

Dzubilo, who was disoriented from medication and fell onto a subway track on Feb. 18, was 50 when she died.

In true rebel form, friends banded together after the memorial, marching through the West Village, blocking traffic and shouting as they streamed toward the Hudson River. With the sun setting, they tossed a flurry of yellow daffodils into the water. Jesse Graves, 18, held tight to a friend. “She represented for me a generation of activists that laid the ground for everything that can happen today.”

Photos by Julie Turkewitz for Housing Works.

Queer Spirits book signing

Queer Spirits book signing March 22nd at Dashwood Books
 
Creative Time host a special book-signing event celebrating the publication of Queer Spirits, a new artist book by AA Bronson with Peter Hobbs. Both artists will be present at Dashwood Books, 33 Bond Street between Bowery and Lafayette Street in New York City on Tuesday, March 22 from 5–7pm. The event, hosted by Phil Aarons and Shelley Fox Aarons, is free and open to the public.
 
From 2008 to 2010, Bronson, a New York-based artist best known for his 25 years with the artists' collective General Idea, joined up with Toronto-based artist and academic Peter Hobbs to spin a tale in images and words of five performances, all titled Invocation of the Queer Spirits. Bronson and Hobbs performed five Invocations—in Banff, New Orleans, Winnipeg, Governors Island, and Fire Island—where the performers invoked the "queer" and marginalized spirits of each site, and enacted a secret group ritual. Queer Spirits is a collection of photographs, texts, and ephemera that leaves a trail of proverbial breadcrumbs behind the project. The book is being published in the United States by Creative Time Books and in Canada by Plug In Editions/Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, with support from Shelley Fox Aarons and Phil Aarons.
 
PRE-ORDER HERE

(Reading) Between the Lines (April 2)

Please join Visual AIDS for Between the Lines, readings by Bill Kushner and Dan Fishback, plus a special viewing of Eric Rhein: Transmutation on Saturday April 2 from 4 - 6 pm / Readings begin at 5 pm.  Space is limited, please RSVP by March 31. Bill Kushner is the author of 7 books of poetry, including IN SUNSETLAND WITH YOU published by Straw Gate Books. Kushner is one of New York’s most passionately inventive poets and playwrights, as offbeat and relentless as Alan Ginsberg and the Village Beatniks, as funny and intellectually sharp as the New York School's John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara, and as spiritually searching and inspiring as New York's first bard, Walt Whitman.  He is a New York Foundation of The Arts fellow in 1999 and 2005. His latest book “Walking After Midnight" will be published this spring, and is “full of sexy surprises”. Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. His most recent play, You Will Experience Silence (Stephen Brackett, dir.) debuted to critical acclaim in April 2009 at Dixon Place, where Fishback was an Artist-in-Residence.  He has performed at Performance Space 122, Joe's Pub, Galapagos Art Space and various of other venues in New York and abroad. He is currently developing two new theater pieces: The Material World, a pop musical about socialist Jews in the 1920s, and thirtynothing, a solo performance about growing up in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic.  Fishback will perform thirtynothing at Brooklyn Arts Exchange on April 8-10, 2011. www.danfishback.com  Eric Rhein's exhibition Transmutation, is on view from February 12 through April 9, 2011 at BoxoFFICE   Eric Rhein, a native of New York's Hudson Valley, is known for his refined and passionate wire drawings that combine human forms with animal and plant life. He weaves personal stories, experiences and mysticism into explorations of the powerful connections among man, nature, and the spiritual world.  The exhibition features Rhein's own photographs, as well as vintage photography of male nudes, combined with found objects and bronze & silver castings of leaves & twigs. These assemblages, like Rhein's other works, depict a sense of humanity's communion with nature, and evoke figures from Celtic and Egyptian mythology. Exhibition and Readings are free and open to the public at: BoxoFFICE 421 Hudson Street, #701, New York, NY 10014   Space for Between the Lines is limited, please RSVP by Thursday, March 31 at 212-627-9855 / info@visualAIDS.org

Poet Steve Turtell on Mardi Gras with Peter Hujar in 1980

Poet Steve Turtell
on Mardi Gras with Peter Hujar in 1980

Thursday, March 17, 7pm
The School of Visual Arts Amphitheater
209 East 23rd Street (between 2nd/ 3rd Ave), Third Floor

Free to CCNY members, SVA students, faculty, and staff
$5 general admission, $3 for other students with valid student ID

Peter Hujar: Portrait of the Life and Death of a Friendship.

In the dismal winter of 1980, Peter Hujar and Steve Turtell traveled together to New Orleans to attend Mardi Gras, a trip that had unexpected consequences and redefined their friendship. Turtell will read excerpts from his account of their friendship and the trip, and discuss Hujar’s work in the context of his contradictory personality— sometimes charming, sometimes antagonistic, always brilliant and fascinating.

Steve Turtell is a poet who lives in New York City. His first book, Heroes and Householders was published in 2009 by Orchard House Press. His 2001 chapbook, Letter to Frank O'Hara is the 2010 winner of the Rebound Chapbook Prize given by Seven Kitchens Press and will be reissued with an introduction by Joan Larkin in 2011. He is currently at work on Peter Hujar: Portrait of the Life and Death of a Friendship, a memoir of his friendship with the photographer Peter Hujar.

Peter Hujar (1937-1987) is best known for his powerful portraits of downtown New York personalities of the 1970’s and 80’s. His books include Portraits in Life and Death, Peter Hujar: Animals and Nudes; Peter Hujar: A Retrospective, and most recently Peter Hujar: Night. His work has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland. In 2005-2006 PS1 exhibited an important survey of his work.

CCNY thanks the Peter Hujar Archive and Stephen Koch for their kind permission for photo usage.

Q & A to follow the lecture.

image: Peter Hujar, Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, 1973; courtesy The Peter Hujar Archive LLC. 

Eric Rhein: A Gathering of Comrades

Whitman on Hudson

A Gathering of Comrades

In conjunction with Eric Rhein’s art exhibition Transmutation, come and experience the spirit of Whitman’s love of comrades through a gathering of readers of the sensual and loving Calamus poems from Leaves of Grass.  Rhythm circle to follow.

Saturday March 19th, Reading & Drumming: 3:00 PM

BoxoFFICE
421 Hudson Street, Suite 701

(two blocks above Houston, at Leroy)

Gallery open: 1:00 – 6:00 PM

About Eric’s artwork:

In “Transmutation” Eric Rhein weaves personal stories, experiences, and mysticism together into artworks that reflect the powerful connections between man, nature, and the spiritual world.
 

Vintage male nudes, in classical poses, are transformed into “Faerie Men” through the adornment of recycled jewelry. Wire drawings inspired by an afternoon encounter with a deer, whom Eric calls “Silver Buck”, combine male nudes with the heads of deer, reflecting Cernunnos, the Celtic God of nature.

These assemblages, photographs and wire drawings merge male nudes with the features of animals, insects and plant life. At the center are a series of transformative self-portrait assemblages, incorporating found objects, and bronze and silver castings of twigs and leaves, with photographs taken in the sacred pine forest between Cherry Grove and The Pines, on Fire Island. The works conjure the four directions through their titles, North, South, East and West, and evoke figures from Celtic and Egyptian mythology.

New York Times critic, Holland Cotter once wrote that in Rhein’s work “the combination of art and craft, delicacy and resiliency, feminine and masculine, is exquisitely wrought and is, as it should be, seductive but disturbing.”

The exhibit runs from February 12th through April 9th, 2011
Regular Exhibition Hours:  Saturdays 1-6PM, and by appointment:


 

Edward Lightner: Eradication Project

Edward Lightner

Eradication Project

Mar. 19 - Apr. 16, 2011

Reception: Mar. 19, 7-10 pm

L2kontemporary

990 N. Hill Street #205

Los Angeles, CA 90012

image: Baker Crossroads Acrylic, 72"x48", acrylic, glitter and opaque marker on canvas

Alvin Baltrop: Photographs 1965-2003

Visual AIDS Recommends:

Alvin Baltrop: Photographs 1965 – 2003

Curated by Yona Backer and Randal Wilcox

Third Streaming

10 Greene Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10013

March 16 – May 14, 2011

Reception: Saturday, March 19, 2011 6 pm – 8 pm

The Pier Photographs are not simply visual documents about an untapped part of the history of New York; they also show how Baltrop’s practice unfolded during this turbulent period. “Alvin Baltrop: Photographs 1965 – 2003” features the silver-gelatin prints of the Pier series that initiated the artist’s posthumous fame, images made in the Navy during the Vietnam War, dozens of other previously un-exhibited vintage prints, rare archival materials, and late works shot at various Manhattan hospitals up until his death in 2004. The subjects range from military conflicts, lounging soldiers, children, prostitutes, public and private sex, crime scenes, and dilapidated buildings in the deindustrialized neighborhoods of New York. The exhibition is the first extensive overview of the African-American photographer’s work, and aims to show the formation, development, and refinement of a major yet under-recognized artist’s vision.

Mark Morrisroe: Super-8 @ Artists Space

 

Mark Morrisroe: Super 8 

Artists Space 38 Green St, 3rd Fl, NYC 

Thursday, March 10, 7:30pm
Friday, March 11, 7:30pm 

$5 entrance donation  / Artists Space Members Free

 

Between 1981 and 1984, Mark Morrisroe made three films on Super-8 sound—underground home movies filled with thrift-store costumes, cheapo gore, trashy dialog, and gratuitous nudity, starring himself and his friends as performers. The Laziest Girl in Town features the transvestite antics of Morrisroe, Stephen Tashjian (Tabboo!), and Jack Pierson, culminating in an obscene sequence reminiscent of John Waters' Pink Flamingos. The trio continued two years later with Hello from Bertha, loosely based on a one-act drama by Tennessee Williams about a prostitute dying in a fleabag bordello, played out in a Boston bedroom with spotty Southern accents and loose wigs. Morrisroe's longest film, Nymph-O-Maniac, tells the story of a portly phone sex operator and her insatiable girlfriends, one of whom comes to a grisly end at the hands of two sadistic young toughs.

For their presentation at Artists Space, Morrisroe's films are paired with works by his contemporaries as well as key precursors. A genealogy could be traced, via Waters, from Morrisroe back to the homebrew Hollywood melodramas of George and Mike Kuchar, here represented with one of their earliest 8mm films, the torrid, Bronx-shot Sylvia's Promise. Peggy Ahwesh's Paranormal Intelligence, made in Pittsburgh during the same period as Morrisroe's films, shares with Laziest Girl and Bertha the use of filmmaking as an extension of social practices; Ahwesh likewise lounges about with her fellow artists and slackers, but takes the work one step closer toward self-conscious autoethnography. A performance tape that suddenly takes on an unexpected documentary weight, Seizure is a video by Morrisroe's friend Pat Hearn, who would become one of the most significant figures in his career in her later incarnations as curator and gallerist. Considered together, these works illuminate the social milieu of Morrisroe's early life as an artist, but also locate the development of his creative sensibilities at the historical juncture of camp and punk.

Thursday, March 10, 7:30pm
George and Mike Kuchar, Sylvia's Promise, 8mm transfer to 16mm, 1962, 9 min
Mark Morrisroe, The Laziest Girl in Town, Super-8 on video, 1981, 23 min
Peggy Ahwesh, Paranormal Intelligence (Part 2 of The Pittsburgh Trilogy), Super-8 on video, 1983, 17 min
Mark Morrisroe, Hello from Bertha, Super-8 on video, 1983, 17 min

Friday, March 11, 7.30pm
Pat Hearn, Seizure, video, 1980, 17 min
Mark Morrisroe, Nymph-O-Maniac, Super-8 on video, 1984, 45 min

Followed by a conversation with Lia Gangitano, Jack Pierson, and Stephen Tashjian (Tabboo!)

Part of an ongoing series of screenings curated by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter for Artists Space.

Top Image: Mark Morrisroe, still from Hello from Bertha, 1983

Bottom Image: Mark Morrisroe, still from The Laziest Girl in Town, 1981

 

 

Screening of "Untitled", 2010 (A film about the life and work of Feliz Gonzalez-Torres)

Untitled, 2010, is a film made through the collaboration of noted artist Jim Hodges with Carlos Marques da Cruz and Encke King. Responding to the life of acclaimed artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Hodges, da Cruz, and King trace a biographical thread through found footage addressing the braided issues of the AIDS crises and queer activism that marked both the cultural and personal contexts of Gonzales-Torres’s life and work. A radical portrait of an artist whose practice implicated politics in even the most fleeting moments of existence, Untitled mediates on fragmentation and temporality as concepts and formal practice to address the life of the artist. 
 
Thursday, March 17, 6:30pm

Martin E. Segal Theater
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Ave (btwn 34th & 35th)

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
No registration. Please arrive early for a seat. 
212-817-2005 / centerforthehumanitiesgc.org
 

Art in America Review: Mark Morrisroe

via Art in America

By Brooks Adams

I NEVER MET THE NOTORIOUS Mark Morrisroe (1959–989), but I must have seen every one of his shows, beginning in the mid-’80s, at Pat Hearn’s now mythic galleries in New York’s East Village. In ’85, it was a works-on-paper group show at her slick Avenue B storefront, featuring Morrisroe, Donald Baechler, George Condo, Philip Taaffe and others. In ’86, it was a solo at her imposing 9th Street space (between avenues C and D), where she presented a full range of Morrisroe’s photography: "sandwich" prints (as he called them) in big dark frames, small prints from Polaroid negatives, and “early darkroom experiments” using found materials—from gay porn magazines and such—printed in negative.

In all its incarnations, Pat Hearn Gallery was the epicenter of cool, but in 1985-86 it was at its most cutting-edge. There’s a surprisingly conservative snapshot of Morrisroe and Hearn from this period, probably from one of his openings, which is heartbreaking in its propriety. The artist—so much more often shot in the buff—is wearing a coat and tie, while Hearn, of late a punk princess (and, in Paris in ’81, photographed in the nude byMorrisroe as Kiki de Montparnasse and La Mome Piaf), has morphed into a grande dame in a fur-collared coat.

Morrisroe’s work became better known after his death, as Hearn, his devoted old friend from Boston, staged a series of memorial shows, in 1994, ’96 and ’99. Hearn, who inherited his estate and more than anyone else shaped, curated and pushed his work, also died young, at 45, in 2000; and, like that of so many artists whose lives and careers were cut tragically short by AIDS, Morrisroe’s work was put in considerable risk. When Pat’s husband, the maverick dealer Colin de Land—who had been trying to place the estate—died at 47 in 2003, it seemed like the two dealers’ engaged and unorthodox way of working was going to disappear.

The sale of the estate in 2004 to the Ringier collection of contemporary art, belonging to the Swiss newspaper magnate and art book publisher Michael Ringier, could not have been more fortunate. Ringier’s curator, Beatrix Ruf, had originally proposed to de Land that the estate, once it was owned by Ringier, would be housed at Fotomuseum Winterthur. The museum’s curator, Thomas Seelig, put archivists to work—most recently Teresa Gruber—sorting through the chaos, and this thorough inventorying has given Morrisroe a second life. There was a vigorous, Rimbaudian bloom to his work this winter at an exhibition curated by Ruf and Seelig in the serenely neutral spaces of the Swiss museum. [The version opening this month at Artists Space, “Mark Morrisroe: From This Moment On,” has a different selection of work.]

Morrisroe died at just 30, but by then he had accomplished a considerable life’s work. According to Gruber’s catalogue essay, his oeuvre comprises about 2,000 photographs, including 800 Polaroids, 600 gelatin silver prints, and 200 C-prints and “sandwich prints” (Morrisroe’s invention, made by reshooting a photograph, producing an intermediate negative, and exposing the photographic paper through the two sandwiched negatives). There are also 60 cyanotypes and gum prints (19th-century techniques), boxes and boxes of fascinating ephemera (a selection of which was presented at Winterthur) and three Super-8 films. 
(read more here)

images: Self Portrait (to Brent), 1982, C-print, negative sandwich, retouched with ink and marker, 20 by 16 inches. Collection Brent Sikkema; Untitled, ca. 1981, toned gelatin silver print, 13 by 193⁄8 inches.

Celebration Honoring Chloe Dzubilo

Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Square South
Saturday, March 12, 2011
2:00pm - 5:00pm

Please join our community of activists and artists to celebration Chloe Dzubilo's fierce and beautiful trans-spirit. We are coming together to be inspired by her loving defiance in the face of a tragically fractured health care system, abusive gender prejudices, and her own failing health.

Chloe Dzubilo was a trans-activist, equestrian, punk rock star, visual artist, recovering human, mother to many children, sister, lover, long-time survivor. Chloe advocated tirelessly for transpeople, addicts,  and people living with HIV locally and beyond. She lived her singular vision of equality for all with fierce kindness, humor and reverence.

Chloe's closest friends --- Transgender and HIV/AIDS advocates/heroes, recovering humans, downtown artists, singers, dancers --- will honor her vision through ritual, song, art, incite-full stories, and dance.

We invite you to come together for one afternoon in the spirit by which Chloe lived her life --- to invoke a world where artist-activist-healer are one, where struggle is glamorous, irreverence heals and joy shows up brightly in the darkest places.

Be an angel - we are asking our community to contribute to the Chloe Dzubilo Fund to put on a event that will honor her activism, and life. Proceeds will be used to pay all expenses for this event, any proceeds left over will be donated to her favorite causes: Visual AIDS and Return To Freedom.  Please donate to the event here.

photo by Michael Sharkey
 

Sex Education in Thailand

via Solutions Journal

By Dawn Starin

Off one of Bangkok’s main streets, down a tree-lined lane, is Cabbages and Condoms (C&C), a nonprofit restaurant that serves up good food and a healthy dose of sex education. The restaurant was founded by Thailand’s “Condom King,” Mechai Viravaidya, who also heads the Population and Community Development Association. He is often said to be personally responsible for lowering the country’s birth rate and rate of HIV infection and, through C&C, he hopes to continue to help empower the poor and fund safe sex and AIDS education in Thailand.

Conservatism has no place in this popular eatery. Mannequins wearing costumes constructed out of condoms and birth control pills greet the restaurant’s patrons. Safe-sex posters decorate the walls, along with a picture of the Mona Lisa holding a packet of birth control pills. Notices inform the clientele that the food “is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy” and offer free condoms as after-dinner treats. Fake flowers made from condoms hang from real trees, and ceiling lamps are covered in expired birth control pills. At Cabbages and Condoms, laughter and learning go hand-in-hand with haute cuisine.

The creator of these quirky masterpieces is Thongleum Damviengkum, or Thong, the restaurant’s resident gardener. Thong has no formal art training, but he was inspired by Mr. Viravaidya’s efforts to use humor to spread important health messages. Thong has been making decorations for the restaurant for years.

Thong’s creations have a short shelf life. After a while, the condoms wither in the intense heat and humidity. And these whimsical pieces are constantly being manhandled. Everyone who visits, including me, wants to touch everything. When I pointed this out to Thong, he smiled and replied, “That’s good. It means we have a constantly evolving show. It means people can come over and over again and take pictures and there will always be something new to see and photograph. Just like a menu changes, the artwork changes.”

In the early nineties, in response to the country’s climbing HIV rate, the Thai government launched a “100 percent condom use” program, in which free condoms were distributed to sex workers, who were then required to use them. (In 1990, it was found that 97 percent of HIV cases in Thailand were linked to the sex industry.) The program was a great success: between 1989 and 1993, condom use by sex workers increased from 14 to 94 percent, and the number of new HIV infections fell from 143,000 in 1991 to 19,000 in 2003. But late in the decade, financial instability in Asia caused funding for HIV prevention in Thailand to dwindle. Today, roughly half a million people in Thailand are infected with HIV, and 28,000 died from AIDS in 2009.

“It is important to have a safe place for people with AIDS,” says Thong. “This is a sanctuary, a haven. There are people working here who have AIDS and everyone knows it and it creates no problems. Outside, however, there is much prejudice and stigma. Maybe my work will help get rid of the stigma. Maybe my work will make people think seriously about using condoms. It is important to get the message across, making people see that condoms should be used and that we should all talk openly about sex and AIDS and family planning. Humor is important if you want people to listen. Maybe someday people will be able to talk as freely about condoms as they do about cabbages.”

Parts of this piece appeared previously in “The contraceptive café.” Gastonomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 9, 66-69 (2009) and in “Satay and safe sex.” New Statesman (July 23, 2009).