Dirty Looks NYC: Three Years with Performance by Narcissister

Part of Summer 2014

Dirty Looks NYC, a platform for queer experimental film and video, culls from their first three years of programming. Including artists such as Tom Rubnitz, Chris E. Vargas, Charles Atlas, Jill Reiter, Michael Robinson, Luther Price, Charles Lofton, Michael Lucid, and Narcissister, it is a program of works that have shaped or defined the Dirty Looks project and queer visual culture at large. Looking back from the edge of queer futurity, Dirty Looks NYC features queer takes on Black Power, riot grrrl, maternity, and Madonna’s “Vogue,” culminating with a live performance by Narcissister!

Programme:
Tom Rubnitz, The Mother Show (with Tom Koken and Barbara Lipp), video, 5min., 1981/1991)
Chris E. Vargas, Extraordinary Pregnancies, video, 10 min., 2010
Narcissister, The Basket (with Josef Kraska), video, 5 min., 2013
Charles Atlas, Butcher’s Vogue, video, 5 min., 1990
Michael Robinson, The Dark, Krystle, video, 9 min., 2013
Luther Price, Home, Super8 and video, 12 min., 1990 – 1999 (Home preserved by Anthology Film Archives with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts)
Charles Lofton, O Happy Day, 16mm transferred to video, 6 min., 1996
Jill Reiter, Frenzy, Super8mm on video, 10 min., 1993
Michael Lucid, Dirty Girls, Video, 18 min., 1996/2000
PLUS
Narcissister, TBD, performance, 5 min., 2014

Dirty Looks NYC: Three Years
with a Toronto debut performance by “Narcissister”
by: Keith Cole, Xtra!

“In Toronto, we enjoy the thought of silencing our performers, visionaries and freaks that take transgressive ideas about the body, art, politics and performance to the next level. I refer specifically to rebellious relics like Donnarama, Reg Hartt, Enza ‘Supermodel’ Anderson and Chris Edwards. Dreaming of these four encountering similar desperados such as Nick Zedd, Anne Heche, Margot Kidder and Jack Smith at the next OCCUPY event makes me have a hot flash. Thankfully, there are still spaces for those who refuse to be defanged – again, specifically, Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Videofag and Pleasure Dome.

Pleasure Dome has been presenting experimental media art since 1989 and isn’t really a place but more of a state of mind. Pleasure Dome welcomes Dirty Looks NYC to Toronto screening a programme of films and videos culled from their defining first three years of existence. Dirty Looks NYC is a screening / performance series for queer experimental film, video and live art. Still infants, Dirty Looks NYC has been very busy installing moving images all over New York City. Adding to the evening in June, the cognoscenti of the New York scene, both heretic and doyenne, Narcissister, will create a special performance at Dirty Looks NYC: Three Years at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre.

Dirty Looks NYC: Three Years includes media art by Charles Atlas, Jill Reiter, Luther Price, Charles Lofton and Narcissister + Josef Kraska. What is a Narcissister? Narcissister is a trompe I’oeil, soothsaying, virtuostic, hyperbolic, renegade weirdo whose performance style tips over the edge of political camp using mask, dance, storytelling and raw athleticism. As an extension of her screening and performance in the Dirty Looks NYC: Three Years program, Narcissister will offer her first-ever workshop at Videofag. The workshop will investigate what it means to use disguise as radical and physical transformation. Narcissister says of her performance technique: My performances re-figure narcissism through radical acts of self love. Using a mask and a handful of merkin, I play with the limits of burlesque, masquerade and performance art.”