Jean Genet in Chicago opened the colloquium Jean Genet, Le Québec et L’Amérique organized by L’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. I was on hand to introduce the video and answer questions afterward.

installation | 16 mm film transferred to HD | 2011 (work-in-progress)

In a large room of a galley or public site, two walls facing each other are covered by video projections displaying a series of portraits originally shot on 16mm film. On one wall a succession of men are posing alone next to a pool table at Touché, Chicago’s oldest leather bar. There are six men of different ages, styles, body types and races. The performers all look directly in the camera. The framing remains the same for the six shots. Each shot is the length of a hundred feet of film complete with the leader and flares at the beginning and end of each roll. On the opposite wall, five men are posing in front of a mural within the same formal system. Once projected in a room, the men will appear to be cruising each other from opposite sides of a virtual bar. Since the number of portraits is not the same on each wall, when the videos loop, the men will be flirting with a different partner.

The project engages in a disappearing act, it aims for a conflicting sense of loss, nostalgia and resilience. Black and White 16mm film is on the fast track toward extinction while gay bars have taken a hard hit from the proliferation of Internet hook-up websites but regardless of their digital competition, neither has conceded defeat. Bars are still the locus of the gay community while the materiality and texture of 16mm will always have a strong hold on artists and experimental filmmakers. And above all, men will always cruise other men, regardless of risks, prejudices and oppression.

0:47 excerpt of 7:30 | HD | 2011

Distributed by Video Data Bank

Screenings (so far): Kassel Doc Film and Video Festival, IndieLisboa, Dallas Video Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival…

Co-editor for a project by Andrea Geyer

Based on edited transcripts of the 1961 Trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem and the writings of Hannah Arendt, an abstracted trial scene stages six characters: Accused, Defense, Judge, Prosecution, Reporter, Audience. Each character within the scene is embodied by the same performer. The reconstructed, abstracted scene examines complicated questions of truth and justice as they travel across time within an individual and become history. The installation places 6 monitors— one for each character— around the viewers, situating them within the scene.

I worked with Andrea on a single channel adaptation for cinema screening of the 6 channel video installation. (2009-10)

The complexities of a mother’s sacrifice are discovered when Eleanore, at age 91, moves her developmentally disabled son Ronnie into a group home, after 64 years of devoted companionship and daily ritual in their modest Pennsylvania farmhouse. Eleanore and the Timekeeper chronicles the lives of Eleanore and Ronnie Hickman, the Director’s grandmother and uncle. Shot on 16mm, the film is a quiet love story between a mother and son, which records the inevitable transformation in their relationship, and shifting definitions of home over a seven-year span.

76:00 | Documentary | 2010

In The Body Parlor, both man and sheep as combined sacrificial bodies become subjects of biological investigation. In discovering new forms of health care (regenerative medicine) and tissue engineering (such as stem cell research), the body becomes sacrificial material for the greater purpose of a social good. The performers employ the material objects, either as products of or as extensions of the body as a way of exploring giving from one’s self in sacrifice.

4:38 excerpt of 14:00 | HDV | 2009

Distributed by Video Data Bank