This Just In: KUNSTHALLE BERN / KUNSTHALLE BAR PROGRAMM

CIRCLES

Community in den Filmen von
Peggy Ahwesh, Cecilia Dougherty und Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings
DONNERSTAG, 23. AUGUST 2018, 19 Uhr

installation view, Kunsthalle, Bern
Circles, an installation at Kunsthalle Bern, Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings

Here’s the description of the complete show, if you’re in Bern mañana:

In the late seventies, the filmmakers Lis Rhodes, Jo Davis, Felicity Sparrow and Annabel Nicolson founded the feminist film and video distribution network Circles in London. Circles was created in response to the need to have a platform for films by women. Previously, its founders had all been members of the London-based Film-Maker’s Co-op, and Circles was also a response to the lack of representation of women filmmakers in that co-op.
The screening at the Kunsthalle is part of a series of events and screenings focusing on filmmakers since the 1970s. The films screened are by Peggy Ahwesh, Cecilia Dougherty as well as by Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings. They look in different ways at queer communities, playing with stereotypes, exploring the autonomy of community spaces and looking for individual forms of expressions within the communities.

With an introduction by the organizers Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff (Author & Art Historian, Zurich) & Geraldine Tedder (Assistant Curator Kunsthalle Bern)

Image: Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings, UK Gay Bar Directory, 2016, Still from Film

Mit einer Einleitung von den Organisatorinnen Ann-Kathrin Eickhoff (Autorin & Kunstwissenschaftlerin, Zürich) & Geraldine Tedder (Kuratorische Assistenz Kunsthalle Bern)

I’m showing two videos, Eileen, from 2000, and Joe, from 2018 in Circles.
 


Desire as Politics at the Valade Family Gallery in Detroit, Feb-Mar 2018

Exhibition of LGBT Media in Detroit

Gay Tape: Butch and Femme (1985) screened recently at the Valade Family Gallery in Detroit. Many thanks to curators Scott Northrup and Jonathan Rajewsky!

Desire as Politics, gallery installation, Valade Family Gallery, Detroit Feb-Mar 2018
Desire as Politics, gallery installation, Valade Family Gallery, Detroit Feb-Mar 2018

Work by:
Sadie Benning
Cecilia Dougherty
Matt Lambert
Zachary Marsack
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Rashaad Newsome
Ira Sachs
Akram Zaatari

Desire as Politics presents a selection of LGBTQ perspectives in contemporary film and video from 1985 to 2017. The exhibition is not meant to summarize this arbitrary span of time, but rather to look at works exploring a range of identities, social constraints and prejudices unique to LGBTQ positions, including representation, fantasy, fear, love and the blurring of binaries, positions that we feel are vital in our current climate.

Scott Northrup & Jonathan Rajewski

video still, gallery installation, Gay Tape: Butch and Femme by Cecilia Dougherty, 1985
Larger than life, a mural-sized installation for my video Gay Tape: Butch and Femme (1985)

From the exhibition catalogue:

Dougherty’s first video, made while she was studying at Berkely:
“I made it just around the time when the term ‘gay’ was for everyone and then ‘lesbian and gay’ become the new term, until we progressed to ‘LGBTQ’.

“Gay Tape is a documentary about some of the regulars at Ollie’s Bar, a lesbian dive on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. The 1970s sartorial statement of flannel shirts, 501s, and Frye boots was passé and at odds with the new eighties aesthetic—tons of makeup, big hair, and complicated lingerie. Along with the new aesthetic came the reemergence of good old fashioned butch-femme role-playing. While the femmes pranced around like Stevie Nicks, their butch girlfriends reverted to an earlier role model, acting out fifties and sixties-style tough girl with brilliant aplomb. I asked some of the women from Ollie’s to talk on camera about role-playing.

“The camera instantly gave me too much control over content, so I tried to balance it by providing a platform for the women to speak on the butch-femme issue without overtly directing them. I relinquished authorship in favor of revelation and avoided coming to conclusions; the speakers were experts as well as subjects and could say whatever occurred to them. They spoke extemporaneously about their lovers, the details of their sexual identities, and their fantasies. My girlfriend at the time was one of the subjects. As her story unfolded I realized from my privileged position behind the lens that the lover she was describing in detail was not me. So much for the power of the gaze!

At a recent screening, the audience was interested in the difference between butch and transgendered, maybe not understanding that there were trans people in the community in 1985. I think there’s a distinction and as always, the people making the distinction are self-identified.”


Cecilia Dougherty at the Wexner Center for the Arts

This Woman’s Work: Ericka Beckman, Cecilia Dougherty, and Jennifer Reeder

In celebration of the Film/Video Studio Program

Sat, Apr 8, 2017 12:30 PM
 

video still from Gone, 2-channel installation by Cecilia Dougherty
Video still from my 2-channel installation GONE (2001, 37 mins), starring the inimitable Laurie Weeks.

Join the Wexner to celebrate the accomplished work of female filmmakers supported by the studio throughout its 27-year history. Exploring both traditional and experimental approaches to narrative, this program includes Hiatus, Ericka Beckman’s phantasmagoric, analogue exploration of virtual reality (1999, 30 mins., 16mm transferred to video); Gone, Cecilia Dougherty’s split-screen recreation of the PBS docudrama An American Family, here starring artists Laurie Weeks and Amy Sillman and featuring music by Le Tigre and Mike Iveson (2001, 36 mins., video); and the Ohio premiere of Artist Residency Award recipient Jennifer Reeder’s 2016 film Crystal Lake (19 mins., HD video). (program approx. 85 mins.)

Curated by the excellent Jennifer Lange

Fishing for Some Friends in Melbourne

video screening of works by Cecilia Dougherty and others, Feb 16, 2017, Melbourne Australia

Upcoming video screening by Cecilia Dougherty and others.

Fishing for Some Friends is a moving image exhibition in response to the misplacement of images both historic and contemporary. Contained within are images which due to aesthetic and political subversiveness have no collective home within Melbourne’s current cinematic landscape. These homeless images skirt the peripheries on the internet; skimming intermittently into conversations before being lost in the feed of information.

Fishing for Some Friends has caught some people and works that are excited about exploring new modes of representation, reimagining aesthetic expectations and citing alternative perspectives and conversations.

Fishing for Some Friends creates temporary space for moving image works from Cecilia Dougherty (New York), Charlie Freedman (Melbourne), Larisa Kosloff (Melbourne), Lucie McMahan (Melbourne), Meg & Jackson (Melbourne), Phoebe Mackenzie (Sydney), Siegfried A. Fruhauf (Vienna) and Steven Rhall (Melbourne)

6:00 – 11:00pm
16th February
115 Little Smith St. Fitzroy
Melbourne
Australia

Works of mine that are screening in this exhibition:
In A Station, Petals (2011, silent, 14:25) with a piece called Swell by Melbourne artist Laresa Kosloff, with a score by Melbourne musician Gregor

Also screening my first ever video, Gay Tape: Butch and Femme (1985, 26:50)

Shout out and thanks to Lucie McMahon, Melbourne!

 

 

Screening & Panel Discussion at MIX29 Queer Experimental Film Fest

Mix Queer Experimental Film Festival screening and panel discussion
Mix Queer Experimental Film Festival screening and panel discussion Feb 5, 2017

Artist and co-curator extraordinaire David Kalal and I have been working on a screening program and panel, called In-Between Theories, for the 29th MIX Queer Experimental Film Festival based on ideas we’ve been tossing around for at least a year. Or possibly longer!

The program is an exploration of queer ideas and expressions that are not quite the media for academic or even queer-political categorization, and which fall into – or more precisely, create – their own time/spaces.

When: Sunday, Feb 5, 6PM

Where: MIX29, The Dreamhouse, 1022 Wyckoff Ave., Bklyn/Flushing
(L train to Halsey)

What: Film, video and interactive work with a discussion with the artists to follow — things are going to get real — or maybe unreal — promises to be a great evening either way.

Click on the invite picture to go to our website http://www.inbetweentheories.com
with more information about the work and artists

… or go straight to the Festival website: https://mixnyc29.org/

Hope you can come out for In-Between Theories at MIX 29 on Sunday February 5th!