Queer Fossils

Queer Fossilization, Or, A Tour Through the Museum of Gay Unnatural Herstories. Outfest. 7/14/07.

This fascinating program of queer shorts is actually, shamefully, the first Outfest screening I've attended in the four years I've lived in LA. Professor Jose Muñoz and performance artist Nao Bustamante curated this program and I found their overall concept and sensibility the strongest part of the evening.

The program began with a live performance by My Barbarian, who performed excerpts from some pieces they recently did in Amsterdam. Their spectactular and irreverent performance style combined with intelligent social/political commentary make them a delight to watch.

The first film of the evening was Nelson & Christina directed by Robert Coddington. It featured footage from 1989 filmed by video artist Nelson Sullivan. It was a compelling document of life and art in the Lower East Side in the 1980s and personally I found this piece exceptionally fascinating. There were appearances by Ethyl Eichelberger and Jayne County and in general the piece captured the feeling of '80s New York as a locus of queer art and performance history, bridging gaps between filmmaking, performance art, and life.

Several of the pieces in the evening, particularly Artist Statement by Daniel Barrow, Dynasty Handbag: The Quiet Storm by Jibz Cameron and Hedia Maron, and Bra Burn by Marget Long, played with the film genre, particularly the relationships between image and text or sound. In these I didn't feel the emphasis on history and archive that was the theme of the evening quite as strongly but they did play with different ideas and uses of technology and the concept of film.

In contrast, Mata Hari directed by Alexis Del Lago felt extremely historical with a 1930s silent film Marlene Dietrich aesthetic.

The final film of the evening was an excerpt from A Family Finds Entertainment by Ryan Trecartin and it was absolutely insane with bright colors and crazy makeup and an innovative spirit. The piece was a only barely decipherable explosion of playful anarchy. It had a chaotic spirit reminiscent of the downtown queer art of the 1970s and 1980s that linked nicely with Nelson & Christina and with the My Barbarian live performance to show a continuity of queer creative spirit and subversion. This piece, though a bit bewildering, was my favorite of the films, but I'm not sure if it would have been if not the context and the reminder of its place in queer herstory. All together, Muñoz and Bustamante put together an exciting program and I very much enjoyed my first Outfest experience. It was delightfully queer in an experimental, nonlinear, creative way.