Pixelated Lesbian Mixtape: Azian Nurudin’s Wicked Times
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!
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
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.”
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!
CSI Film Festival Director Mitchell LovellFestival winners and emerging filmmakers: Mia Sinodinos and Samuel Schell, with Media Culture Dept. faculty Emma Johnson and Film Festival Director Mitchell Lovell, behind the podiumCarmine Mazza and Louis Yeomas, CSI Film Festival award winners and emerging filmmakersEmerging filmmakers and CSI Film Festival award winners Emm Wilson and Arianna GaytanFestival Director Mitchell Lovell with the participating student filmmakers at CSI Film Festival. Congratulations, everyone!
But my film only ran for half of it! There was an error with the projection. I created a teaching moment, however, and showed Kevin and Cedar to my Cinematography class with a description of how the piece came about. I was in San Francisco and had arranged to shoot a portrait of him, as one of my series of writers’ portraits that I had been doing, so far with Laurie Weeks, Leslie Scalapino, and Eileen Myles. When I got to Kevin and Dodie Bellamy‘s apartment, Cedar was there, having just then arrived in San Francisco from Washington State. We decided to have the portrait be a double-portrait with Kevin and Cedar together. Here’s a link to the other videos in my writers’ series > https://vimeo.com/channels/ceciliadougherty.
Curated by Steve Seid program online January 12–Febuary 7, 2023
Includes work by Cecilia Dougherty, Azian Nurudin, Leslie Singer, Marshall Weber, Dale Hoyt, Paula Levine, Emjay Wilson, Andy Heustis, and Ivar Smedstad.
Video still from Your World Dies Screaming by Dale Hoyt
SCREENING: Your World Dies Screaming (1981) by Dale Hoyt; Garbage Head (1981) by Marshall Weber; The Madonna Series, Parts 1–5 (1987) by Leslie Singer; Fuck You, Purdue (1987) by Cecilia Dougherty; Jungle Gym (1981) by Andrew Huestis; Mirror, Mirror (1987) by Paula Levine; High Fidelity (1986) by Ivar Smedstad; Funk Is Its Own Reward (1981) by Marshall Weber; Malaysian Series, Parts 1–6 (1987) by Azian Nurudin; My Pal Foot (excerpt) (1981) by Andrew Huestis; Donkey-Skin (1988) by Emjay Wilson.
Remember Dale Hoyt! Support video art and artists!
CHAOS THEORY by Steve Seid
How would you describe a gathering group of unruly artists? A fortuitous anarchism, or just trouble on the way? And if such a faction existed in one particular moment and in one particular place, the SFAI, providing unruly succor for its constituent parts, what would you call that moment? A discordant convergence?
Just such a thing occurred at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early-and-mid eighties when a gaggle of singular young artists converged on the recently formed Performance/Video Department and all (heaven and) hell broke loose. A moment, such as it was.
With every upheaval, whether aesthetic or political, there are ringleaders, and among them at the P/V Dept. was a bratty pact—Dale Hoyt, along with his pals Marshall Weber (who would go on to found Artists’ Television Access) and Andrew Huestis—and Cecilia Dougherty, leading an insurgent group of women artists that included Leslie Singer, Azian Nurudin, Didi Dunphy, Jill Garellick and others. The creative energy welling from this convergence was enough to overheat nearby North Beach. If you add to that mix a core faculty of Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Sharon Grace, Doug Hall, Kathy Acker and Tony Labat, you had fissionable artistic material.
Video stills from the Writers Series: Laurie (1998), Leslie (1998), Eileen (2000), Kevin & Cedar (2004) and Joe (2018); stills from The Drama of the Gifted Child (1992) and My Failure to Assimilate (1995) – all showing at the San Francisco Art Institute, March – July 2021
Walter & McBean Galleries, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute. Margaret Tedesco & Leila Weefur, Curators
The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2021 with A Spirit of Disruption, an exhibition that reflects on the school’s profound and sustained influence on contemporary art and highlights the contributions of generations of diverse artists and individuals often overlooked in the historical narrative of SFAI. A Spirit of Disruption includes the work of more than thirty alumni and faculty from the 1960s to the present; a dynamic media installation drawn from SFAI’s vast archive; and a section dedicated to artist model Florence “Flo” Wysinger Allen, the subject of countless paintings, sculptures, and drawings made at the school from 1933-1997.
A Spirit of Disruption also includes a dynamic media installation drawn from SFAI’s Anne Bremer Library archive featuring artists Rigo 89, Karen Finley, Cliff Hengst, Doug Hall, Debora Iyall, Jun Jalbuena, Jennifer Locke, Paula Levine, Cecilia Dougherty; and George Kuchar in collaboration with Tim Sullivan, among many others.
Video still of Eileen Myles from my 2000 video portrait, EILEEN
Communal Presence: New Narrative Writing Today, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz Conference October 2017
Two videos from my Writers Series are being screened at San Francisco’s famed ROXIE THEATER, where I personally have sooooo many memories of screenings and events from the days when I lived there. You can watch EILEEN (2000, 10:20) and KEVIN & CEDAR (2002, 8:30) on the big screen as part of the UC Berkeley/UC Santa Cruz jointly-organized New Narrative Conference. Pretty hot stuff.
Video still of Kevin Killian and Cedar Sigo from my 2002 video portrait, KEVIN & CEDAR
I’ll post more information about the conference dates, screenings, and venues as well as links as the news comes in.
Also screening with EILEEN and KEVIN & CEDAR are Marc Huestis’s Whatever Happened to Susan Jane? and Curt McDowell’s short Confessions.
