Wednesday, May 11, 2011

East Bay Express interview

...with li'l ol' me, conducted by the dear Toshio Meronek about my new project! I hope this entices you to come visit the UC Berkeley MFA opening show which opens next week! AHHHHHHH!

 

"Liberating Liberace: Oakland Filmmaker Chris Vargas Remixes the Life of a Gay Idol"

 in Ear Bud: The Bay Area Music blog, East Bay Express

"I Can Feel It But I Don't Get It" video program

Tonight! If you're in Boston, I'd like to encourage you to attend this finely currated video program in the Boston LGBT Film Fest, "I Can Feel It, But I Don't Get It"!

"It's Cool, I'm Good" by Stanya Kahn, 2010, 35:27 min, Los Angeles, USA


Wednesday, May 11 9:30pm
"I Can Feel It, But I Don't Get It" in The Boston LGBT Film Fest
Curated by Jeannie Simms
@ The BRATTLE THEATER Harvard Square
40 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA

TIX $9.75
STUDENTS: $7.75 (bring ID)

A Program of videos at the Boston LGBT Film Festival
Curated by Jeannie Simms

These pieces, all influenced by histories of cinema and contemporary video art explore various seen and unseen forces: materials, logics and pressures that ambiguously ooze into the frame unspoken by unsettling means.

LUCAS MICHAEL'S "El Maragato Barometrica" is a quiet video, sans dialogue, shot in Uruguay on a cell phone camera that documents a flooded house, a truck, it's attached hose, men at work and a slow, unexplained labor process. The eye witness immediacy of the low end video suggests a moment of crisis and delay on the brink of containment or collapse. (Uruguay/USA)

STANYA KAHN'S "It's Cool, I'm Good" follows an androgynously bandaged character with mysteriously attained full-body injuries who speaks to the camera from a bed in a hospital, to strangers at a fast food picnic table, in the belly of a world full of contaminated water, pus filled wounds, littered streets and corporately engineered hot dogs. (Los Angeles, USA)

Flipping by photo after photo throughout the decades at a breakneck clip, the 1970's, 80's, 90's and 2000's provide a backdrop of embarrassing teen hairdos, social and familial tensions and various cheap photo technologies in ALLYSON MITCHELL'S "My Life in 5 Minutes." Master paradigms hover and lurk as the narrative glides and lingers through moments of assimilation and refutation amidst swirling colors and inventive lo-fi animated techniques.
(Toronto, Canada)

"Falling in Love with Chris and Greg: Episode 2 Road Trip! TV Special" by CHRIS VARGAS and GREG YOUMANS uses the iconic American Road Trip, a typically liberating and transcendent cinematic motif, in which a gay/trans couple drive from the west coast into the American heartland chafing and squirming more vigorously under the social, political and biological possibilites of marriage and pregnancy as they pummel toward Vegas--chomping high-fructose snacks, sweating and swapping Native American vocabs as they go. (San Francisco, USA)


-by Jeannie Simms

Buy TIX here:
http://brattlefilm.org/2011/05/11/i-can-feel-it-but-i-dont-get-it/
 

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Inarguably Uncertian: The 41st Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition

My graduate thesis show is nearing its grand opening! Which means I'm about to graduate and I have a fresh new video project to share with the world! LiberaceĆ³n, a three-channel video installation with a 16 minute narrative at its center wherein I perform as the late great showman himself, Liberace! For those of you who don't know, I have been working on this for the greater part of my last year in the UC Berkeley MFA program and it is a story very dear to my heart. In this project, I rescript portions of the late showman's biography in order to insert him into a queer history of radical AIDS/HIV activism, but that's all I'm going to say (for now). You must see it to believe it, and believe me, the story I weave is unbelievable. I invite you to attend the opening (May 20th), as well as the artist talks (May 22th) to see for yourself!

LiberaceĆ³n video still (2011, 16 minutes)

Also on exhibit are the works of my six other amazing, brilliant, talented, and supportive classmates: Corinna Nicole Brewer, Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi, Narangkar Glover, Plinio Alberto Hernandez, Merav Tzur, and David Gregory Wallace. Come meet 'em!
  
I'm also tickled pink to be named someone to "watch for" in this Bay Citizen blog post by Aimee Le Duc, An Art Lover's Survival Guide to Student Exhibition Season. Thanks, Aimee. Who knew!

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Opening Reception
Friday, May 20th, 2011, 5:30-7:30pm
May 20, 2011 - June 26, 2011
Berkeley Art Museum, Museum Lobby
2626 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720


Sunday, May 22, 2011, 3pm
Artists' Talks
Berkeley Art Museum, Gallery 6
2626 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720