In 1958, Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) published an article on Abstract Expressionism entitled The Legacy of Jackson Pollock in which he suggested the separation of the art-making activity from the art itself. Kaprow’s concept was most famously realized through Happenings, during which the traditional role of artist-creator was replaced by what he called “the social occasion.” In these events, divisions between artist and audience—and between the artwork and the perception of it—were dissolved.
An erotic lesbian video involving swimming upstream, female power, and fish love. Made as a collaboration under the name E.T. (Ela Troyano) Baby (Jane Castle) Maniac (Cheang).
This first "Frieda" collaboration between performance artists Barbara Lipp and Tom Koden and video artist Tom Rubnitz chronicles Frieda's rise from assembly-line worker in a box factory to singing superstar. Featuring rock-bottom production values and a sound track which includes the Brady Bunch kids' tune "Gonna Find a Rainbow".
In this episode of The Glennda and Brenda Show, Glennda and Brenda take over a public bus to protest discrimination and violence against queer people who are "out and outrageous". They pick up many other out and proud friends to stage this queer sit-in.
Tom Kalin is a screenwriter, film director, producer, and educator. As a key figure in New Queer Cinema, his work focuses on the portrayal of gay sexuality both in the age of AIDS and historically. Informed by his work with two AIDS activist collectives, ACT UP and Gran Fury, Kalin’s video work is characterized by appropriated images, original portraits, and performances.
In this video, Glennda Orgasm and Jackie Offie attend Lollapalooza '95 on Randall's Island, New York. Glennda and Jackie sing punk rock songs on the drag stage, and Glennda challenges Courtney Love to a fistfight. The video also shows other performances on the stage, and features Bruce LaBruce's music video for The Riverdales' Fun Tonight.
Born out of an "objective hazard" (a 16mm roll where two different subjects were imprinted by mistake), jeny303 is a composite work intertwining two portraits. On the one hand there is jeny, the feminine alter ego of a transgender millennial dealing with a heroine addiction. On the other hand there is the 303 building, an iconic modernist architecture in a public university in Bogota (Colombia). The images of the body and the edifice interlace and depict jeny303, a character on the threshold of a transformation to come.
Produced in collaboration with MICA-TV, Summer of Love is a public service announcement produced for the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Featuring The B-52’s, David Byrne, Allen Ginsburg, Quentin Crisp, John Kelly, and others.
This title is only available on Tom Rubnitz Videoworks: Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty.
Cool sheets and warm male bodies ignite the screen with antics that go from hot pink to black and blue as they romp, stomp, spit and strut their "goods" before your eyes.
… Watch out – things get rough!
This title comprises Peek-A-Boo (2008), Litany of the Seven Kisses (2011), and Boy Toys (2000) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.
In 1995 when TJ Cuthand was 16 they felt like the only lesbian at their Saskatoon high school. This turned out to be untrue, but the lack of visibility in their high school coupled with the lack of representation of Queer teenagers in the 90's made their video, a comedic short about teenage lesbian loneliness and trying to bribe classmates to come out with the promise of candy.
My Heart Belongs to Daddy is the third in a trilogy of experimental videos (Mad About the Boy and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man). This third video uses text, archival movie footage, interviews and fantasy sequences to examine the correlation between the director's relationship with her "real" father and the search for "dyke-daddy." With cameo appearances from Rose Trouche, Robin Vachal, and Exum.
In the Queen City is a series of three videos shot in Buffalo, New York that were produced following an invitation from Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center as part of their Ways In Being Gay festival.
An episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, hosted by Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm. Production Support Provided by Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.
You will never be a woman. You must live the rest of your days entirely as a man and you will only grow more masculine with every passing year. There is no way out.
People black and blue with life’s bruises, People who glow red with hot passions, or turn deep purple with spiritual purpose are here, boldly rendered in the widescreen format. Sit back and witness the event… See the faces, observe their bodies and hear them speak with their own colors.
A teenage lesbian's attempts to form friendships with older lesbians leads her on a disturbing ride through the ageist terrain of the dyke community.
“The second in a planned trilogy of films about desire and domesticity that began with Strangely Ordinary This Devotion (2017), Come Coyote examines issues around queer reproduction, intimacy, and motherhood. Collaborators and partners Dani and Sheilah ReStack capture in fleeting, diaristic images the tender and terrifying feelings they have around ushering new life into the world, conveyed with both humor and a powerful immediacy."
— Projections at NYFF, 2019 catalogue
In Post Queer Pride 93, Brenda and Glennda attend the New York City Queer Pride Parade. This video marks the return of Brenda after her relocation to Florida, and Glennda interviews her about the queer scene and gay activism in the South. At the parade, they conduct interviews with queers about the postqueer movement, the leather and SM scene, feminism, and capitalism.
A dragumentary about a day in the life of a score of drag queens on the lookout for photo opportunities at Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, Tiffany’s, and in SoHo. A tripped-out Hapi Phace shares her haiku, and The “Lady” Bunny pouts about the concept of unisex clothes. Also featuring Sister Dimension and Dagmar Onassis.
This title is only available on Tom Rubnitz Videoworks: Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty.
The Magic Hedge explores a bird sanctuary located on a former Cold War Nike missile site on the Northside of Chicago. Left to wander and observe, the viewer becomes aware of the park's open secret: men looking for fleeting sexual contacts within the trees and shrubberies. The video highlights the many contradictions of a site historically devoted to military surveillance and now designed to preserve and control the "wildlife".
A video diary about Cuthand's efforts to undergo artificial insemination. Cuthand contemplates a desire to have children and its relation to preserving Indigenous culture.
Trans filmmaker Jules Rosskam's against a trans narrative is a provocative and personal experimental documentary investigating dominant constructions of trans-masculine identity, gender, and the nature of community.
By sensitively framing the film through his own personal journey within the trans-masculine community, Rosskam creates an electric and original investigation into gender politics and social self-identity.
In this interview, Los Angeles-based artist and filmmaker Ryan Trecartin (b. 1981) discusses his personal interests and motivations, as well as the larger cultural and philosophical concerns that shape his videos and their reception. Trecartin is known for his construction of non-linear narratives, campy costumes, and excessively visceral characters and environments. One of the most compelling aspects of this interview is his insistence that language and its verbal articulation, rather than the visual, anchor his process. Trecartin identifies the influences of 1990s retro-rave culture, hip-hop videos, and editing software tools on his work. He notes that the accelerated disintegration of high and low culture has played a major part in his growth as an artist.
Gay Tape: Butch and Femme is Cecilia Dougherty's first video work. She was immersed in two things at the time: making artwork, and being a part of the Oakland, California lesbian bar scene. The tape is the child of those two activities. Dougherty asked her friends, Ann and Joanne, and her girlfriend at the time, Rosa, to speak on camera about dating and the emergence of butch-femme relationships, which alluded to not so much a regression to old-time lesbian subculture, as to a quotation of those times, and an appreciation of that kind of lesbian eroticism.
A movie trailer for a non-existent Bond-style spy thriller "coming soon to a mini-mall cineplex near you!" Featuring John Sex, Hapi Phace, Laura Levine, Dany Johnson and The French Twist.
This title is also available on Tom Rubnitz Videoworks: Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty.
Carole S. Vance is an anthropologist and writer and Associate Research Scientist of Public Health and Director of the Program for the Study of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Human Rights at Columbia University. She has written extensively on sexuality and public policy, as well as issues of gender, health, and medical anthropology. Her books include Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (1984 and 1993) and Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship (1988). Interview by Carole Tormollan. A historical interview originally recorded in 1989.
