AGENDA: QUEERING POPULAR MEDIAOpening Reception: Friday, November 14, 7 pm
Exhibition Dates: November 14 - December 5, 2008
Current Gallery is pleased to present Agenda: Queering Popular Media curated by Jamillah James for Frontier Projects. The exhibition examines how queer (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans) subjectivity informs, and is mediated by, evolving technology, the media, and popular culture. Through mining the formal and narrative conventions of film and television, revisiting printed matter as a traditional means of communication, and addressing symptoms of immediacy precipitated by the digital age, the participating artists in Agenda create autonomous spaces for play, discourse, and protest in which identities and histories are fluid.
Agenda also considers the traditional definition of "queer"—to make strange. The experimental opportunities afforded by new media (installation, performance, video, and internet-based art) provides the critical apparatus to question matters of representation and agency, the influence to radicalize other art making practices, and the platform to subvert and eschew aesthetic conventions.
Agenda documents the present state of collective (un)consciousness, with its interest attuned to the quandary of visibility and a cultural obsession with "others" outside of the self. The collapse of public and private is expected, and surveillance spells opportunity. By refitting the lens through which popular culture and the media are viewed and rabidly consumed, and re-calibrating the gaze, the artists featured in Agenda affirm that the personal is indeed political.
Participating artists include:
The Opening Reception 7 pm, Friday, November 14, with performances by participants Owen Brightman, Rebecca Nagle, and Michael Farley with Dazzlestorm.
Rahne Alexander, Davey Ball & Levi Barringer, Owen Brightman, Alan Calpe, Dynasty Handbag, Edie Fake, Michael Farley, Kristen Galvin, K8 Hardy & Wynne Greenwood, Gabriel Held, Michael Lent, LTTR (K8 Hardy, Emily Roysdon, Ulrike Müller, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Lanka Tattersal), Sarah McKiel, Dylan Mira & Latham Zearfoss, Rebecca Nagle, PILOT TV, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Liz Rosenfeld, Mariadele Arcuri Rossoni, Christopher Schulz, Xavier Schipani, Emily Shinada, Hayley Silverman, Jeffrey Augustine Songco, Ryan Trecartin, Victor Van Bramer, Lex Young, and Latham Zearfoss.Supplemental Screenings:
11/22, 7 pm PILOT TV, a 2004 Chicago (trans-)feminist experimental media conference
11/23, 7 pm Paris is Burning, the 1987 Jenny Livingstone documentary about drag balls held by African-American and Latino-American men in New York City
11/29, 7 pm Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty (1982-1992), an anthology of works by seminal underground queer video artist Tom Rubnitz
11/30, 7 pm I-BE AREA¬ (2007), the critically acclaimed 100-minute video by artist Ryan Trecartin
