Agenda Opens @ Current Gallery

Cellphone/ipod installation by Edie Fake

Agenda, the ambitious new show curated by Jamillah James, opened at Current Gallery on Friday. The show includes work by over 30 artists, including Ten Tigers' friends Michael Farley, Xavier Shipani, and Owen Brightman and video pieces by art world oddballs/darlings Ryan Trecartin and Dynasty Handbag.

Owen Brightman's "flag"...I will never be able to look at the letter A the same way.

Artist Mike Farley

The show has a fun house feel-bright, bold and overstimulating, and it rules. There are a million things to look at, interact with and watch, you almost want to do it in two trips. It is nearly impossible to get through all the videos, or at least a serious time investment to do so.

Jeffrey Augustine Songco's dreamcatchers

Looping videos by 12 artists, including Dynasty Handbag, next to Xavier Shipani's flag

Hermonie Williams in front of Jeffery Augustine Songco's "Self Portrait #1: You Look Better Online"

Ryan Trecartin's "A Family Finds Entertainment"

Dylan Mira and Latham Zearfoss's video piece

Lexi watching Latham Zearfoss's video piece

Marty Weishaar admiring Lex Young's photos from a performance piece

Me, reflected in Jeffrey Augustino Songco's "Self Portrait #5: Next Time You Take a Pic"

Mike Benevento

"Pinups" by Christopher Schulz

Xavier Shipani's rad drawings

In addition to the installed pieces, there are 4 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

Details, above and below, from Michael Farley's "Sex in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction".....Walter Benjamin nod, YES.

Rebecca Nagle's fifteen minute performances

Agenda will be on view through December 5th, check it out. For more information, visit Current's website.

Agenda Opens @ Current Gallery November 14, 2008

AGENDA: QUEERING POPULAR MEDIA
Opening 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

TRANSMODERNMANIA! Part Deux

DYNASTY HANDBAG DOES BALTIMORE

Saturday's stage featured Adrienne Anemone, Lauren Bender, Jai Brooks, Katastrophe, Ric Royer and Adam Robinson, DYNASTY HANDBAG (Amy Sedaris meets Peaches), and Blevin Blectum and Kevin Blechdom.

In appearance order:

Lauren Bender interacts with a video of herself in an oreo-eating extravaganza

Baltimore-based Jai Brooks slammed slam poets

A self-proclaimed SNAG (sensitive new-age guy), Katastrophe from San Francisco

Ric Royer and Adam Robinson preform their hilarious "time machine" skit... and I don't throw around the word "hilarious" too much.

Dynasty Handbag doing....what she does.

After a flattering write-up in NY Arts magazine, Dynasty Handbag has solidified her spastic, exhilarated, (often abrasive) act as performance art genius. She told embittered, humorous tales of break-ups and being initiated into fictitious girl-gangs, and spoke and sang over pre-recorded monologues while jerkily contorting her body. It is impossible to take your eyes off her.
She fit in seamlessly among the transmodern performers and will hopefully be convinced to return next year.