October 27, Sunday, 8PM, 2002
LOOKING IS BETTER THAN FEELING YOU
curated by Astria Suparak

Location: Berwick Institute (directions to be posted)

With an irreverence for punk rockers, adults like parents and politicians, non-adults like breasts and babies, and people we generally approve of such as artists and scientists, these works reveal that posers are sometimes better than the real thing. We're all staging our rebellions, even against ourselves, and wind up aloof but completely aware of how we look. And check out her ass. It's just so big, it's like, out there. Baby got back.- Astria Suparak

Astria Suparak is a 24 year-old curator based in New York. In 1997 she developed a twice-weekly multimedia series at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn. This series featured experimental and independent films + videos, performances, live music, and guest artists. She has curated site-specific shows for art spaces, music venues, and alternative film festivals and theatres including the summer outdoor series at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the historic avant-garde theatre Anthology Film Archives, music showcase and label The Knitting Factory, and three years with The New York Underground Film Festival. Her videotape compilation Some Kind of Loving, produced by the alternative distribution network Joanie 4 Jackie (formerly Big Miss Moviola) and distributed by K Records, was released in 2000. This fall Astria Suparak will embark on her sixth tour in two years, across the U.S. and Europe. Suparak is also working with filmmaker Braden King on a European tour of films accompanied by live performance by The Boxhead Ensemble (2001-2002), as well as curating custom shows for Ladyfest and Cinematexas International Short Film Festival. When at home alone she works on an upcoming show of drawings, sculptures and projections.

FILM SKETCHES (selections) Film to video, as intro installation, 18min, 1999-2001
Director: Shannon Plumb

Stewardess 2:12 (from A is for Apple)
Taxi Driver 2:26 (from The Pros, Part II)
Roller Coaster :54 (from Commercials)

Each film is 2.5 minutes, sometimes less. They are silent, black and white, propped, staged, and performed with a Vaudevillesque style of grace, simplicity and innovation. I am the performer, the director, stylist and choreographer. The camera is merely a tool to capture the interactions and discoveries between character and props, actor and spontaneity, routine and the possibility of breaking the routine. -SP

Shannon Plumb: I was born in Schenectady, New York in 1970. I studied at Junior College of Albany, NY, did a theatre apprenticeship at Williamstown, and majored in acting and theatre at the State University of New Paltz, NY. In 1995 I moved to New York City and a year later began modeling for the fashion photographer, Mario Sorrenti while attempting to pursue a career in theatre. I spent time writing and developing short theatre sketches without the ability to bring them to life. Then, a short time later a friend bought me a used super8 camera from a fleamarket. I began making movies - short, black and white, three minute, silent works. I've produced four series of films and have since shown them at several local venues throughout Manhattan, including; The Annina Nosei Gallery, The Anthology of Film Archives, and festivals such as; The Williamsburg Film Festival, and The UnderGround Film Festival. My Work has been shown in limited venues across Europe and has been critically addressed in print for ID Magazine, Paper Magazine, V Magazine, French Vogue, New Art Examiner, and other local showcases. I have been involved in live theatre productions: The Performing Gargage - Emerging Artist Series as a guest performer with Bill (Crutch) Shannon, and Gale Gates, Et.Al., Production of "So Long Ago I Can't RememberS" I currently live in Manhattan, continue to work with the Super8 format, but hope to extend the scope of my films into larger formats. I also hope to continue my engagements in live theatre performances.

YOU THINK YOU'RE PUNK ROCK BUT YOU'RE NOT video, 3 min, 2000
SELF-REFLECTING video, 1min, 1999.
Director: Kirsten Stoltmann

YOU THINK YOU'RE PUNK ROCK BUT YOU'RE NOT: Punk Rock is a send up to all the posers out there, me being the finest of them all - so fuck off!!! -KS

SELF-REFLECTING: A brooding one-liner accompanied by the kitchen sink and a bikini. "Possibly, this is a self-portrait of the artist, but she's not sure. -KS

THE DRIFTERS (selections): Thea audio, 1min, 2002; The Phone Call #1 audio, 00:45, 2002;
The Phone Call #2 audio, 00:59, 2002
Director: Miranda July

Thea: These are selections from short recordings July made for the elevator in the Whitney Biennial.

This is what they were saying when you couldn't quite hear, it was all about adults loving other people's children, risks taken with disastrous results and women aging suddenly. -MJ

Miranda July is a multi-media performer and video artist based in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. Her videos (The Amateurist, Nest of
Tens, Getting Stronger Every Day) have screened internationally at sites such as MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the
International Film Festival Rotterdam. Nest of Tens will be included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, in addition to a sound installation
commissioned for the show. Currently July is touring internationally with The Swan Tool, a multi-media performance commissioned
by the Rotterdamse Schouwburg, the I.F.F.R., and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. July's previous multi-media
performance, Love Diamond, was commissioned by P.I.C.A., and has been performed at sites around the country, closing at The
Kitchen in New York. July has recorded several performance albums, available on the Kill Rock Stars and K record labels.

DROP THAT BABY AGAIN film to video, 5 min, 1998
FEAR film to video, 5:26 min, 2001
Director: Karen Yasinsky

DROP THAT BABY AGAIN: Absent-minded women, curiously forgiving husbands, and plastic babies. Based on a true story.

FEAR: In the lovely outdoors a man rolls around with a girl on one screen while on the other he cries. Is he distressed over a horrid memory or is it an unwanted forbidden desire? Is that a little girl that he's fondling? It's just a doll, isn't it? The girls are all in school. Airplanes, tears and a loving flight attendant doing her best to make it all better. -KY

Karen Yasinsky was born in 1965 in Pittsburgh, PA. In 1988 she received her B.A. from Duke University in Durham, N.C. and in
1992 she completed the M.F.A. program at the Yale University School of Art. This year she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and
the Philip Morris Emerging Artist Fellowship through the American Academy in Berlin. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the
UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Casey Kaplan 10-6, New York, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, L.I.C. and in the New York
Underground Film Festival. Internationally she has worked with Philomene Magers Projekte, Munich, Air de Paris, Paris and Rebecca
M. Camhi Gallery, Athens. More info on Karen's process at: http://www.ps1.org/cut/animations/install/yasinsky.html

BOUNCING IN THE CORNER #36DDD video, 2:35min, 1999.
Director: Dara Greenwald

A late-'90s feminist looks back on the seminal work of performance artist, sculptor and filmmaker Bruce Nauman. A take off on "Bouncing in the Corner" where everything is taken off.

 

 

HUMANE RESTRAINT video, 8min, 2002
Director: Ann Weathersby

"Humane Restraint" engages elements of video, sculpture and performance, using the body to provoke a physical, psychological and emotional experience. A man with a video camera encounters a woman's head on the beach and engages it in dialogue. The camera shakes and mercilessly zooms in and around the head's features. The body is fully buried for long periods of time, so there is a complete relinquishing of control. Tensions concerning vulnerability versus security, repression versus outcry, intellect versus emotion and private versus public space are explored. The scrutiny of the woman's physiognomy also reflects the intensity of the gaze, and the dialogue challenges ideas of trust and intimacy. -AW

SLAPSTICKERS or DIGIT + DIAN video, 6:10 min, 1999
Director: Jacqueline Goss

SLAPSTICKERS or DIGIT + DIAN: What if Dian Fossy and her favorite mountain gorilla Digit had survived and moved to Generica, USA? Slapstickers takes their story to new terrain in order to look for what's at the heart of the Anthropomorphizing human. Here, one finds language, deceit, and humor are front and center. -JG

Jacqueline Goss lives in the Hudson Valley in New York and teaches in the Film and Electronic Arts Department at Bard College.

NEGATIVE TEN video, 4:11min, 2001
Director: Jenny Stark

Edited from a found VHS tape, news footage is mixed with re-cropped fragments of the Twin Peaks television series and various war-torn skies including the Gulf War.

Within the context of videotape from a specific time in history links can be made between historic events and pop culture. -JS

Born in Bellaire, Texas, Jenny Stark received her undergraduate degree in Photography from the University of Houston, and went
on to receive her Masters degree in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts. She has taught at University of Houston and is
presently an assistant Professor of multi-media and digital video at Cal State University in Sacramento. Her works have shown at
South by Southwest, Austin, the New York Underground Film Festival, LA Film Forum, and the Viennale Film Festival, Vienna.

FOR HOME PROJECT video, 0.5min, 2002
Director: Colleen Hennessey

Thirty seconds of objects in a relationship made in conjunction with the Home Video Project: artists contributing 30 seconds on the concept of home.

Colleen Hennessey currently lives and makes work in Los Angeles, CA.

MEU NOME E GAL (My name is Gal) video, 5.5 min, 2001
Director: Kristin J Mohr & Kelly Hayes

A high camp drag performance inspired by Brazilian 'Tropicália' and its muse, singer Gal Costa. Set against a lush Rio backdrop our star-struck tourist does the town, and in her search for 'The South American Way' things
start bustin' out all over... -KM

A seamless blending of Pollyanna and Patti Hearst, of Tom Jones and Joan Rivers, KJ Mohr is a Chicago based performer, curator and movie-maker. Her performance work deals with Midwestern lore and cross-cultural examinations through characters and public confrontations. As a curator, KJ works with Women In the Director's Chair, Heartland Homos! and Discount Cinema. She has been making super-8 and video movies for the past ten years and has worked as a producer, cinematographer, production designer and art director on numerous shorts and feature length film productions.

Kelly Hayes is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago. A non-traditional academic, she spends her spare time making no-budget film and video and doing photography. In addition to her dissertation, her current projects include a video documentary on Macumba, an Afro-Brazilian possession religion that is also the topic of her dissertation, and a traveling photographic show entitled "At the Margins of the Sacred: Candomblé in Rio de Janeiro", which opened in April in Brasília. She currently resides in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.