Politics

The 2008 iteration Muntadas and Reese's series documenting the selling of the American presidency features political ads from the 1950s to ads from the 2008 campaigns, and highlights the development of the political strategy and marketing techniques of the TV campaign process.

In the words of activist Dhoruba Bin Wahad, “Historical and social events are subject to almost instant censorship by those who have better access and control over the medium of communication. It is important that there exist people skilled in the use of the technological instruments of communication who will seek out the real truth behind the headlines and tell it for all to see, know, and hear.”

An intimate dialogue with Soha Bechara, ex-Lebanese National Resistance fighter, in her Paris dorm room. The interview was taped during the last year of the Israeli occupation, one year after her release from captivity in El-Khiam torture and interrogation center (South Lebanon) where she had been detained for 10 years—six in isolation. Revising notions of resistance, survival, and will, the overexposed image of the survivor speaks quietly and directly to the camera—not speaking of the torture, but of separation amd loss; of what is left behind and what remains.

During a conference in the late 1970s, Carol Leigh (also known as the Scarlot Harlot) coined the term “sex worker.” Now, it is a fundamental part of the lexicon regarding all worker’s rights and this is owed in large part to Leigh’s artistic and activist career. Working primarily through the medium of performance and video – her work attempts to educate and broaden audiences’ understanding of sex work and the fundamental rights sex workers deserve. This interview is a distillation of those aims.

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.

A political composition on natural resistance. These images are an expiring breath in danger of extinction. These images become extinguished, consumed: a drop, a pure intensity which only appears when falling. In the presence of the image these audiovisual crowds become an affected body, assaulted by entropy. A face exhausted and reanimated by the continuous sound trance that traverses the battlefield. Faces for an eye that would not need to see.

In Bad Grrrls, Glennda and Fonda LaBruce attend a Riot Grrrl conference on New York’s Lower East Side. At the conference, they conduct interviews with punk women, performers and artists, including Penny Arcade and Sadie Benning. In doing so, Glennda and Fonda navigate a range of perspectives on feminism, punk, and underground activism. Furthermore, they engage with questions of drag’s relationship with feminism, and how one would reconcile the problems of punk with Riot Grrrl’s desire for women’s liberation. 

Filmed directly from the screen of a smartphone using a language translator app that has been told to translate from French into English, Steve Hates Fish interprets the signage and architecture in a busy London shopping street. In an environment overloaded with information, the signs run riot as the confused and restless software does its best to fulfill its task.

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.

In 1939, Westinghouse made a film about a small-town family visiting the New York World's Fair. Trapped inside that film was a completely different film that shows a mysterious alternate universe, revealed by Bryan Boyce’s own patented brand of narrative deconstruction and evisceration.The outcome is an absurd and chilling drama of a family transfixed by the technological wonders that would soon transform consumer society.

Stasi is an audiovisual recall of the political and social substrates that sustain an actual system of images. Stasi is a recall of a system of images that, even now, dominates the global gaze of the world.

The story of the anti-Vietnam War movement from the perspective of James R. Roebuck, the first African American president of University of Virginia’s Student Council. Over a ten-day period of unprecedented student upheaval in 1970, Roebuck confronted a series of political challenges and existential dilemmas. This budding activist and future U.S. representative was the quintessential militant insider whose cool temperament and ideological flexibility proved quite useful as UVA appeared on the verge of imploding from within.

In Glennda and Bruce Do Times Square, Glennda is taken on a night tour of Times Square by author Bruce Benderson. They observe the dynamic between forms of culture that would typically be identified as “underclass” in “suburbanite” culture within the economic and spatial landscape of New York City. Glennda and Bruce visit the apartment of performer Consuela Cosmetic, who was prolific within New York’s ball scene. She maps out the ways in which she believes gender can be expressed, and discusses the implications of ‘passing’.

Executive produced by Sara Diamond at the Banff Art Centre, co-produced by Michelle Baughn and Suzanne Lacy, directed by Tom Weinberg and Dick Carter, and edited by Holen Kahn.