Cecilia Dougherty

October 21, 2026October 21, 2026

Words of the Other Story

School of Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty & Staff Exhibition at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn

School of Liberal Arts and Sciences Faculty and Staff Exhibition

Curated by Uzma Z Rizvi

October 22nd, 2026 through December 12, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 22nd, 5-7pm

The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery
Chemistry Building, Brooklyn Campus

Exhibiting Artists:

Fulla Abdul-Jabbar
Lara Allen
Ersin Altin
Ashley Bales
Francis Bradley
Sincere Brooks
Josiah Brownell
Gabriel Cohen
Brian Cook
Paul Dambowic
Rafael De Balanzó Joue
Cecilia Dougherty (interactive fiction, Shanidar, Safe Return)
Cynthia Elmas
Dominica Giglio
Nada Gordon
Jeffrey Hogrefe
Nurhaizatul Jamil
May Joseph
Adeena Karasick
Cindie Kehlet
Velina Manolova
Ágnes Mócsy
Ciclón Olivares
Nancy Seidler
Timothy Simonds
Jeremy Tausch
Morgan Võ & Laura Henriksen

There is no single story of how we exist in the world today. In The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1988), Ursula K. Le Guin proposed that the first human tool may have been a container and that narratives, like bags, hold many stories and their many elements together, creating their own worlds and universes of possibilities. It is not about one way of being, nor one way of moving towards a hero’s victory. This exhibition takes that idea as its method: a way of finding other stories together.

The work of twenty-eight School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (SLAS) faculty and staff are curated with the same ethos. You will find poetry as data, photography as oral history, disciplines carried together rather than divided, much like our school. There are moments of being held, whether it be the wind in a parachute, a female mannequin adorned with found objects as a hero of the future, or poems descending into holes. And we are gathered: histories carried across generations and borders, ideas translated between languages, media and machines, and inner ways of being, from memory and fear to attention and resilience.

This exhibition celebrates the story-work and world-building that happen through our curiosity about time, place and futurity, and about the relations formed in human and more-than-human encounters. In this space of simultaneous time, where you may meet our many pasts, presents and futures, we invite you to meander, gather, reflect, and exist in ways that hold your own experiences, knowing that there is never just one story, but many interconnected ones.

– Uzma Z. Rizvi, Curator

The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery
200 Willoughby, Chemistry 101
Brooklyn, NY 11205

Gallery Hours:
Monday–Saturday, 10 AM–5 PM

www.pratt.edu/exhibitions
@prattexhibits

This exhibition is free and open to the public.

October 9, 2026October 9, 2026

Bratty Pack of Women Insurgent Artists (!)

Right on.

Pixelated Lesbian Mixtape: Azian Nurudin’s Wicked Times

Zine cover for Azian Nurudin's show in London — Pixelated Lesbian Mixtape: Azian Nurudin’s Wicked Times

“Welcome, fellow wicked Queers!” Let me quote Daryl Cheong, Sasha Han, and Renee Ng, curators of the Queer East Film Festival, London, 2006, from their excellent Zine, created for the screening of works by Azian Nurudin:

“Sasha first encountered Azian Nurudin’s work while doing research on the PLX2000, a Fisher-Price black and white toy camera that recorded audiovisual material on cassette tapes. Between the diary videos of Sadie Benning to the sprawling feature-length video Joe-Joe (1993) by Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer, the grainy, heavily pixelated image has since become synonymous with some of the most recognisable works by queer artists from the United States between the 1980s-1990s.

“At the San Francisco Art Institute, Azian worked alongside Dougherty and Singer in a “bratty pack” of women insurgent artists [italics mine], reflecting a tight-knit micro-community which shared equipment and was often able to act on impulse and swiftly execute her ideas.”

Congrats to Azian! And it’s nice to see how our work at SFAI and our pixel vision is regarded. Highly, basically. Thank you Daryl Cheong, Sasha Han, and Renee Ng!

August 10, 2026August 10, 2026

Joe-Joe: more for me! and everyone!

Video still from video Joe-Joe, 1993, Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer — Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer as Joe Orton in our 1993 video, Joe-Joe.

“Queer Thanatography: Joe Orton’s Death and Afterlife” (excerpt)
by Emma Parker, Arts, Media & Communication, University of Leicester, UK

Supporting Phelan’s* assertion that theatre has ‘a special relation to art as memorial’ (1997, 3), authors of screenplays and short fiction have created a different afterlife for Orton, one where he does not die or returns as a ghost. In the short film Joe-Joe (dir. Cecilia Dougherty and Leslie Singer, 1993), Halliwell is replaced with a second Orton, and the two Joes are both women (a couple), while Peggy Ramsay is a camp man. The film opposes lesbian invisibility, collapses gender binaries, wittily mocks the stereotypical association of homosexuality with narcissism, and poses a queer challenge to the conventions of time and space by transposing Orton from 1960s London to 1990s New York, indicated by a pile of books in the two Joes’ flat that includes Susan Faludi’s Backlash. Moreover, the film closes with sex rather than death. As Dougherty explains, in Joe-Joe, she and Singer ‘took up the story of playwright Joe Orton as seen in the film Prick Up Your Ears and reversed everything in it’.

*Peggy Phelan: Stressing that death can be social as well as physical, Peggy Phelan proposes that ‘Queers are queer because we recognise that we have survived our own deaths.’

Emma Parker’s full article can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14484528.2026.2705216

2027 UK screening of Joe-Joe in discussion as part of a remembrance of Joe Orton and a memorial marking the 60th anniversary of his death. More postings about this coming up. Thank you, Emma Parker, for including my and Leslie’s own memorial piece on Joe Orton, Joe-Joe, in your excellent article.

July 30, 2026October 20, 2026

ICE and DHS Detention Centers

I meant to make a quick animated GIF about the detention centers that are now all across the United States of America, but as I worked on it, the project, like the problem, was too big for a quick snarky comment to satisfy. Below is an animation that is more like a list of what I want to investigate for what will be a found footage film about ICE, DHS, and the gigantic lawlessness, cruelty and irresponsibility of the “immigration policy.” Money, money, money seems to be behind much of it. Corruption seems to be the vehicle for getting that money.

Topics for this project may include:

Money. Follow the money trail
Corporate “partners” – who what when where and how
Staffing detention centers and private police and incarceration forces
ICE recruitment, training, deployment, chain of command
Technologies and the companies who provide support for enforcement in the form of equipment and services, everything from clothing and masks to batons to vests to vehicles to ammo
Government oversight
Environmental costs of building camps in swamps, deserts, and other fragile ecosystems
Reported events and encounters with ICE agents by individuals, families, groups

Update October 2026

This project is complicated by my wanting to show interconnections between the corruption of the Trump presidency and everything it touches and a philosophical-activist approach to visualizing this corruption. I need to forget the philosophy and stick with the facts. They speak the loudest and clearest.

I have too many sources of information. I doom-scroll incessantly looking for more information and knowing the entire time that I am not getting any information at all. More research needed and I need to find a way to center the piece.

I realize that I have had a soundtrack in my head, which is steadily building itself into a theme for the entire piece. It’s a sonic theme that defines my relationship to the facts of our lives in America today. I need to get that soundtrack out of my head and into the editing space. I have started working on the keyboard. I need time and money. I need space. I’ll work with what I have at the moment.

July 2, 2026July 2, 2026

I’m not braggin’ on myself, baby

But this is a gorgeous crowd, at my May screening at Parkside Lounge. See my earlier post: Readings at Parkside. The party atmosphere at the Parkside set the mood for the screening of my writers series of videos, including video portraits of Joe Westmoreland, Laurie Weeks, Kevin Killian & Cedar Sigo, Leslie Scalapino, and Eileen Myles, covering a period from 1998 to 2018.

[click to enlarge]

Photo of audience at the Parkside Lounge in NYC for screening of videos by Cecilia Dougherty — Crowd at the Parkside Lounge, NYC, screening of videos by Cecilia Dougherty

Lori Scacco, Ann Stephenson, and yours truly, Cecilia Dougherty

Cecilia Dougherty and Lia Gangitano in conversation at the Parkside Lounge NYC, May 5. — Cecilia Dougherty and Lia Gangitano in conversation after the screening of my videos

May 25, 2026July 2, 2026

Queer East Film Festival London Screens Work by Azian Nurudin

Pixelated Lesbian Mixtape: Azian Nurudin’s Wicked Times (1986-1999)

Azian Nurudin is someone I worked with in San Francisco in my grad student days and beyond. Her work was recently celebrated in the Queer East Film Festival 2026 with a screening of videos, some of which I worked on, and all of which I love and am indebted to for their absolute non-apologetic bravery and intelligence. Thanks, Azian!

video still from "Nancy's Nightmare," by Azian Nurudin, 1988. — Video still from “Nancy’s Nightmare,” by Azian Nurudin, 1988

I wrote a brief essay about Azian’s work for the Queer East catalogue, which I have published below:

“I believe Azian Nurudin’s video work from the 1980s and ‘90s provides possible solutions to the global disasters wrought by late-stage patriarchy, such as those we are currently experiencing. Her content shifts the center of the then-current feminist discussions about colonialism, sex, justice, human rights – discussions that radiated ideology – to expressions of refusal and rage. Azian gives us the beauty of the experimental form in pieces such as Sinar Durjana (Wicked Radiance) (1991), and Bitter Strength: Sadistic Response Version (1992). In Malaysian Series 1-6, the performance of rage shifts the central argument vigorously from personal to geo-political, providing a visceral response to colonialism and the patriarchal death-wish.

“Those of us working in video together in San Francisco were creating a cohesive movement of feminist and queer experimental video without quite realizing the singularity of the moment. We shared equipment, cast members, and crew. Leslie Singer had a VHS camcorder that could turn out special effects and generate titles; Azian and I shared a Fisher-Price pixelvision camcorder that we purchased together for about $95. I did camera for Nancy’s Nightmare (1989) and What Do Pop Art, Pop Music, Pornography and Politics Have To Do With Real Life? (1990). And when I was making my own video Grapefruit (1989) about Yoko Ono, Azian agreed to play George Harrison. She insisted, however, on wearing sunglasses in every scene, weaving a new thread of visual humor into the piece.

“Azian’s work is raw as well as sophisticated, immediate as well as reflecting experience and contemplation. Process, community, performance in conjunction, clicking into place.”

Cecilia Dougherty

College of Staten Island CUNY Film Festival 2026

Just a few photos from the May 2026 CSI Film Festival. The festival showed 13 films by students in the Video Editing, Cinematography, Non-Linear, Thesis, and Workshop classes. The work at this year’s festival showed a lot of ingenuity, hard work, thoughtfulness, and some crazy (yet well-produced) fun. Many of my students in this festival – happy to have these great photos of them!

photo of Mitchell Lovell, CSI Film Festival Director at the podium announcing festival proceedings — CSI Film Festival Director Mitchell Lovell

Student winners at the CSI film festival — Festival winners and emerging filmmakers: Mia Sinodinos and Samuel Schell, with Media Culture Dept. faculty Emma Johnson and Film Festival Director Mitchell Lovell, behind the podium

CSI Film Festival 2026 student filmmakers and award winners — Carmine Mazza and Louis Yeomas, CSI Film Festival award winners and emerging filmmakers

Student filmmakers Emm Wilson and Arianna Gaytan — Emerging filmmakers and CSI Film Festival award winners Emm Wilson and Arianna Gaytan

Festival Director Mitchell Lovell with the participating student filmmakers at CSI Film Festival. Congratulations, everyone!

April 4, 2026May 10, 2026

May 5, 2026 Cecilia Dougherty at the Parkside Lounge

317 E. Houston St., New York City, Tuesday, May 5, 7:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Poster for a screening of works by Cecilia Dougherty at the Parkside Lounge. Curated by Ann Stephenson, with a Q&A after screening with Cecilia Dougherty and Lia Gangitano

Screening of my Writers Series of intimate video portraits. The works include Joe, 2018, with Joe Westmoreland; Kevin and Cedar, 2002, with Kevin Killian and Cedar Sigo; Eileen, 2000, with Eileen Myles; Lesie, 1998, with Leslie Scalapino; and Laurie, 1998, with Laurie Weeks. Total running time is about 45 minutes. I love these writers!

Parkside Link: https://tenteditions.com/Cecilia-dougherty

Afterwards, I’m discussing the videos with Lia Gangitano, excellent curator and gallerist at Participant Inc. in NYC, who has been showing my work since 1998, with a several-day screening event at Threadwaxing Space in lower Manhattan.

Ann Stephenson, who curates the Readings at Parkside series was generous enough to ask about the Writers Series. This is the first time they will have all been screen together. Thank you, Ann!

The Parkside Lounge is a neighborhood bar with music and events venue in the back room. It has a friendly neighborhood vibe. People of all ages and stripes enjoying a pint, enjoying each other’s company, attending readings by contemporary greats, and now, there’s a video screening! I look forward to seeing you there.

February 23, 2026February 23, 2026

At the American Museum of Natural History, NYC

February 2026

On weekend visits to the Natural History Museum here in NYC (the AMNH), you can go to a room off to the side of the main exhibit in the Hall of Human Origins and see and touch replicas of the skulls of all types of Hominins (upright-walking apes, like us). I’m holding a replica of the Herto skull from Ethiopia, aged at 160,000+ years. An early Homo sapiens type of person who had brow ridges. Brow ridges were to eventually disappear, but some have a theory that they may be a hold-over from a % of Neanderthal DNA that they, as modern people, carry in there genetic structure. I’m not sure about the Neanderthal origin of brow ridges in H. sapiens, however, since Herto and other early sapiens, such as the skull found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, had brow ridges as well, and being discovered in Africa, where Neanderthals rarely ventured, sapiens brow ridges may indicate a non-Neanderthal origin of brow ridges in people today.

Speaking of which, I was looking for an image of a Homo erectus skullcap and brow ridges online, because I guessed wrong at the model available at the AMNH and realized how little I know about early humans. Here’s the skull I mistakenly thought belonged to a Paranthropus individual:

But obviously, it has a rounded brain case, indicating that it is a Homo specimen. I have a lot of learning to do, but fortunately, all of the learning I have yet to do is fun and interesting.

The image search for the erectus skullcap and brow ridges above, led to a whole other place: plastic surgery and facial reconstruction to remove brow ridges, to smooth them out, in people who would like a smoother and more anatomically modern human brow. Here are some before and after images of people who have had surgery done. I always prefer the “before,” since the “Neanderthal” or archaic part of us is appealing, attractive, and interesting:

Before- and after- images of someone who has had brow-ridge surgery — Brow ridges, before and after surgery

So, yes, there’s always something surprising going on that gives the tug of war between our Neanderthal and Homo sapiens genes momentum. As stated above, I prefer the brow ridges to the smooth and egg-shaped new facial construction.