Ladies and boys and touching
curated by Astria Suparak, New York City
Tuesday, March 4 at the Chicago Cultural Center 8:30pm
Saturday, March 8 at Heaven Gallery 1:00pm

These video and audio works are brazenly aware of their own representation, those fake gestures symbolizing love, and the self-proclaimed identity of Art. On the other hand, this is a Science Fair. We’re interested in breeding and practicing our (dance) moves until perfection is reached, and by golly you’re either with us or against us. Selections from three programs made in the last year: Looking is better than feeling you (created for non-academic and non-artworld young girls at Ladyfest in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.), Adolescent boys, and Living rooms (curated for the Yale School of Architecture and for non-English speaking audiences at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City) and Keep In Touch! (for The 9th New York Underground Film Festival).

1. Jennifer Sullivan (Brooklyn, NY). DANCING GIRLS. Super-8 film to video, Intro installation. 8:50 min. 2002.
"A document of girls (including myself) performing in the mid-1980s, expressing themselves instinctually, exuberantly, self-consciously, hysterically. Their dancing is both authentic and completely theatrical at the same time." J.S.

2. Zakery Weiss (Brooklyn, NY). UNTITLED. Video. 4:30 min. 2001.
The artifice of artsy Arte: The cool blue invites and chides, wanting of itself, wanting of you. Are you audience enough for its lies and truths? Is its maker artist enough to be worthy of the attention he demands from you? Is the screen deep enough to contain you and the artist and all the colossal egos and expectations and unfed hungers everybody brings with them? -Cinematexas

3. Seth Price (Long Island City, NY). TRIUMF. Video. 15:00 min. excerpt of 60 min. work. 2000.
In the style of a political infomercial, an educational video, and an appeal to the average people of America, a robust woodsman recaps some of the facts about Ronald Wilson Reagan, a figure who looms large in twentieth-century mythology. -Impakt

4. Miranda July (Portland, OR). THEA. Audio. 1:05 min. 2002.
From The Drifters, an audio installation commissioned by the Whitney Museum for the elevators at the 2002 Whitney Biennial.

5. Kathy High (Brooklyn, NY). DOMESTIC VIGILANCIA. Video. 6:50 min. 2000-2.
High, thinking that she might die in the year 2000, decided to "perform her death," creating a tape around the topic each month. Her own pets, Oscar (cat), Ernie (cat), Push (cat) and Lily (dog) also play a major role in the events as she projects her own fears and anxieties onto them. The animals humorously embody and thwart her attempts to die.

6. Alex Villar (New York, NY). UPWARD MOBILITY. Video, 7:42 min. 2002.
" Like the in-between activities it seeks to investigate, my work lives between various fields: part nomadic architecture, part intangible sculpture and part performance without spectacle. A.V. or, In contrast to the invisible horizontal line drawn by everyday movements in the city, this video shows a person in search of vertical deviations from this norm. This project is part of a long-term investigation and articulation of potential spaces of dissent in the urban landscape." A.V.

7. Harrell Fletcher and Jon Rubin with Anthony Powers (San Francisco, CA and Portland, OR). ANTHONY. Video, 5 min. 1997-2002.
"In general Anthony was always banging on tables and when we asked him what he was doing he said that he was drumming to all of the heavy metal songs that were constantly flowing through his head." H.F.

8. Messieurs Delmotte (Belgium).CE QUI EST FAIT LE MAL EST FAIT. Video. 4 min. 1998.
"This is not a performance and even less a good idea." -M.D. Mystery artist "Messieurs Delmotte" performs silent-movie hijinks with disregard for dignity and limb.

9. Ann Weathersby (New York, NY). HUMANE RESTRAINT. Video. 8:05. 2002.
A man with a video camera encounters a woman's head on the beach and engages it in dialogue. 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. A.W.

10. Jacqueline Goss (Tivoli, NY). SLAPSTICKERS or DIGIT + DIAN. Video. 6:10 min. 1999.
"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." J.G.

11. Karen Yasinsky (NY). FEAR. Film to video. 5:26 min. 2001.
"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." K.Y.

12. Colleen Hennessey (Los Angeles, NY). FOR HOME PROJECT. Video. :30 sec. 2002.
Thirty seconds of objects in a relationship made in conjunction with the Home Video Project: artists contributing 30 seconds on the concept of home.

13. Miranda July (Portland, OR). BRUCE LEE. Audio. 1:35 min. 2002
From an ongoing series of dialogues and stories commissioned by and for The Next Big Thing, a radio show produced by New York NPR member station WNYC.

Astria Suparak is a 24-year old in Brooklyn, NY. Since founding a biweekly multimedia series at Pratt Institute in 1998, she curates site-specific shows for international art museums and galleries, experimental film festivals, music venues and bands (including Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, Ladyfest, Anthology Film Archives, Yale University School of Architecture, The Knitting Factory, New York Underground Film Festival, and The Boxhead Ensemble). She then brings the shows to different audiences and settings including sports bars, living rooms, artist collectives, churches, schools and micro-cinemas.