Part of Summer 2002
Ka·lei·do·scope: A tube-shaped optical instrument
Scopophilia: Synonym: voyeurism; Skopeo, to view, + philos, fond
How do we infinitely receive pleasure in looking? The works in this programme explore the different ways we, as viewers, are fond of looking at eroticized images of others (or ourselves) on video and film. However, they also convey the pleasure in looking that comes from challenging how looking can be political, aggressive, controversial, surreal, smart, and all the while extremely sexy! Works include; Steve Reinke’s Barely Human, a gaze at the voyeuristic draw of vintage porn; Val Thomas’s Peep, a humorous look behind the scenes in a episode of a cyber-sex professional, Rodney Werden’s Call Roger: “Male model available for life drawing and photography. Call Roger 961-1310”, Danya McLeod’s Watching Lesbian Porn advocates the use of feminism as lesbian foreplay, John Orenlitcher’s Nightwalking draws on the use of low light portable image technology to investigate ritualized modes of commodity exchange and allusion, and in Eye Surrogates, Tran T. Kim-Trang asks, “If you could watch someone, what would you want to see?”