FEB 6: Perspectacle v 1.5 at the New Museum

MIX NYC and The New Museum Present Perspectacle Version 1.5

Curated by Joshua Thorson

MIX NYC presents a special encore screening at The New Museum of a program originally curated by Joshua Thorson for the 2008 MIX Festival. Thorson has updated the menu of films since the original screening last fall. Taking off from a universalized conception of "Queer," Perspectacle Version 1.5 presents an argument about the "Queer" subject's varying strategies for the encoding/decoding of narratives/narrativity and the perspectival advantage of such a position.

Date	Friday, February 6, 2009
Time	7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location	The New Museum
Street	235 Bowery (F/V train to 2nd. ave. or 6 train to Bleeker St.)
City/Town	New York, NY
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www.newmuseum.org/events/283

WORKS IN THE PROGRAM

Cone, Matthew Robert Lutz-Kinoy, 2005
Synesthesia (excerpt), Tony Oursler, feat. Tony Conrad, 2002
Cat Zoom, Brett Levin, 2007
Wayne's World, Ryan Trecartin, 2003
Over My Dead Body, Dale Hoyt, 1983
HAARP's Rainbow Aerosol's July 6 2007, Dboots, 2007
Drama of the Gifted Child, Cecilia Dougherty, 1992
I: Subplot, Sarah McKiel, 2006
The Woman Who Went Too Far, Colin Campbell, 1984
Lover Come Back (excerpt), Delbert Mann, 1961
Love Comix, Barry Shils, feat. Ann Magnuson, 1982
Awakening of Desire, Simon Hughes, 1997
Protest Rushes (excerpt), Artist, 2008
New Report Artist Unknown, Wynne Greenwood & K8 Hardy, 2008
Off (excerpt), Tony Oursler, 1999

$8 for Museum Members, $10 for non-members
A co-presentation of the New Museum and MIX NYC

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Notes from curator Josh Thorson

The works in this show can present an argument about the conscious nature of narrativity in relation to a subject proper (as in the difference between "we are the people" and "we are a people"). Here, the unifying word I will choose to name these subjects is "Queer." The Queer subject doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with sexual predilection; "Queer" can simply mean a subject with the experience of being outside of banal normality and passivity and endless deferment.

"The singulier universel is a group that, although without any fixed place in the social edifice (or, at best, occupying a subordinated place), not only demands to be heard on equal footing with the ruling oligarchy or aristocracy (that is, to be recognized as a partner in political dialogue and the exercise of power) but, even more, presents itself as the immediate embodiment of society as such, in its universality, against the particular power interests of aristocracy or oligarchy…" — Slavoj Zizek, "A Leftist Plea for 'Euro-centrism,'" Critical Inquiry, 1998.

The Queer (ad)vantage is circular, wide open; it is in the looking awry, in the enjoyment that occurs when you are either horrified or you laugh knowingly at subtextual information that for most everyone else in the theater, unless they too have perspective, remains and must remain (for their egos to remain solid) hidden; it is in the constructing and recycling and molding of our own cultural comprehension. The Queer subject, both forced and compelled to live "outside," has had to encode/decode media and meanings in order to be able to find enjoyment as they trudge through the bogs of our cultural "common denominator" and create images that truly reflect.

"[Our] inner sky may remain autonomous and depend only upon itself, but on condition that by means of [our] wisdom, which is also knowledge, [we come] to resemble the order of the world, take it back onto [ourselves] and thus recreate in [our] inner firmament the sway of that other firmament in which [we] see the flitter of the visible stars. If [we do] this, then the wisdom of the mirror will in turn be reflected back to envelop the world in which it has been placed; its great ring will spin out into the depths of the heavens, and beyond; [we] will discover that [we] contain 'the stars within [ourselves]…'" — Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, 1970.

We are the people.

MIX NYC Mailing Address 79 Pine Street #132 New York, NY 10005 212.742.8880 info@mixnyc.org www.mixnyc.org MIX NYC promotes, produces and preserves experimental media that is rooted in the lives, politics, and experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and otherwise queer-identified people. MIX's work challenges mainstream notions of gender and sexuality while also upending traditional categories of form and content. MIX NYC, a 501(c)3 non-profit arts organization, is SUPPORTED by the New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Materials for the Arts, Experimental Television Center, Kodak, HX, GO Magazine, Visual AIDS, the Gesso Foundation, Gill Foundation, Phil Zwickler Charitable & Memorial Foundation Trust, and the generosity of many individuals!