Performance

Woman, monster, animal? A portrait of a woman's face, the movement slowed down and reversed, the grotesquely made-up face examined in close-up.

Banshee is a duet between Margaret Leng Tan playing The Banshee (Henry Cowell) and Eiko's Night With Moths (camera by Rebekkah Palov) in a performance of The Duet Project: Distance Is Malleable at New York University's Skirball Center on April 16, 2022.

Camera by Alexis Moh .
Edited by Eiko Otake.

An homage to early videoworks by William Wegman, starring Man and Fay Ray's stand-ins.

"Anne McGuire shows that men are dogs."

--Ed Halter, New York Underground Film Festival (2003)

This is a colorful fable of many foibles involving a man of the cloth who wishes to shed those accouterments for something of a more sinister fabric. The plot tumbles unrelentingly toward a sci-fi tone when a time machine is thrown into the vivid melange and our anti-hero gets caught up with an ancient soul who has the hots for less ancient hunks. There’s spectacle on a budget and young and old doing their best to put on a big show about the sacred, the profane and the goofy.

‘ODDS AND ENDS’ is a dazzling patchwork of moods, lost and found, for the eye to savor.

Pagan and Christian souls clash in this student-collaborated mix of the defrocked and the deflowered.

There is a crudeness to How's Tricks, Benglis's first venture into narrative fiction. No attempt is made to hide the mechanics of making the tape. At one point, while Benglis and [Stanton] Kaye argue about the tape they are making of [Bobby] Reynolds (a real-life carny who also appears in The Amazing Bow-Wow), Kaye is seen reaching over to turn off the video recorder — and thus the scene ends...

The image comes up suddenly and then continues unwavering: a young person (Mirra) dressed in a black watchcap and pea coat stands at the edge of a large body of water and sings a sea shanty, occasionally flinching to emphasize certain lyrics or fend off the steady drizzle of rain. The frame is broken up into simple shapes—sea, sky, hat, face, coat—and the longer Mirra sings, the more rain collects on the lens of the camera—threatening to obliterate the subject into the background of sea and sky.

Zachte Berm (from Weiner’s film Plowman’s Lunch) sits with her back to the camera in front of a large mirror—her face, covered with shaving cream, is seen in its reflection. As the soundtrack begins, she tries to lip-sync to the spoken words, “Art is not a metaphor upon the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings but a representation of an empirical existing fact,” while shaving.

As a "Post-Mexican” performance artist operating out of the US for over 20 years, one of my conceptual obsessions has been to constantly reposition myself within the hegemonic maps. Whether this map is the Americas, the larger cartography of art, or my personal biography, one of my jobs has been to move around, cross dangerous borders, disappear and reappear somewhere else, and in the process create "imaginary cartographies” capable of containing the complexities of my multiple and ever-changing identities, voices, communities and performative bodies.

In Fagtasia Solstice, Brenda and Glennda attend a Radical Faerie event in New York City to commemorate the Summer Solstice. Through interviews with Faeries and footage of their walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, the group proposes to reclaim the city as a safe space for queer people, and discuss reorienting queer consciousness toward spirituality.

An episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, hosted by Brenda Sexual and Glennda Orgasm. Featuring the Radical Faeries. Thanks to Julie Clark and Dana Nasrallah.

Various scenarios are envisaged where a rescue might be possible. Props include a hoist, a trolley, various doors and windows, ladders and a length of hose. It is unclear whether our two heroes help or hinder one another. What is certain is that no rescue is in sight.

This title is also available on HalfLifers: Rescue Series and HalfLifers: The Complete History.

A.L. Steiner’s video More Real Than Reality Itself expands the structures of documentary works while challenging its conventional reliance on linear narratives. This critique takes shape through Steiner’s reconsideration of the history of political activism and its representations — configuring a story that emphasizes the embodied, romantic aspects of activism rather than a singular, dominant history.

In this video, Glennda Orgasm and social critic Camille Paglia walk the streets of downtown Manhattan and discuss the status of mainstream feminism in the early 1990s. They visit the Stonewall Inn, Washington Square Park, and a gay bookstore, and confront a group of anti-pornography protesters. 

An episode of Glennda and Friends, hosted by Glennda Orgasm and Camille Paglia. Featuring The Centaurians, Brian Roach, and Rennard Snowden.

Made with Stanton Kaye, and the only Lynda Benglis video with a discernible plot, The Amazing Bow-Wow follows the adventures of a talking, hermaphroditic dog given to Rexina and Babu by a carnival barker. Rexina and Babu soon decide to make the dog a sideshow act hoping to earn their fortune. Babu eventually becomes jealous of Rexina's devotion to the dog and one night attempts to castrate it, accidentally cutting off its tongue. The dog's head becomes hideous and skeletal, ruining its sideshow career and the profits.

The Videofreex document a street intervention by Turkish artist Tosun Bayrak (b.1926). The performance was to become a notorious example of the element of "shock" in contemporary art. Within the work:

Circle's Short Circuit is an experimental feature-length work with neither a beginning nor an end—the film can be viewed from any random point. It moves through a circle of five interlocking episodes that describe the phenomenon of interruption in contemporary communication through various forms and modes, investigating causes, consequences, and side-effects. Genres shift along the episodic path of this circle, moving from documentary to essay, through collage, simulated live-coverage, and silent film.

In collaboration with Patricia Herminjard Smith.

This video was filmed during a dress rehearsal of Eiko's performance Shedding on February 8, 2023. This scene is the last section of a longer performance work commissioned by UCLA in which Eiko explored new ways to work with a full-length video she created.

Filmed by Patricia Herminjard Smith.
Edited by Eiko Otake.

Tarlabaşı integrates performances of everyday movements and gestures as a direct response to the devastation caused by the centralized state sponsored urban renewal project in downtown Istanbul.

Dancer: Idil Kemer
Music: Cenk Ergün
Production: Yunus Demir

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT/SUMMARY: This film centers around one performance, when Holland-based musicians, The Ex, visited New York to play a concert. This performance is intercut with city scenes, first from Amsterdam and then New York, of construction sites, street life, and protests against the Iraq war and the Bush administration. The construction site scenes relate to the band's dedication to music as a realm for collaborative building and creative destruction.

An independent film portrait of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith in Portland, Oregon in 1996, wherein he plays three songs. The songs were done live acoustic--in his old studio, a living room, and a bathroom (it was quiet in there). It's also a small portrait of Portland, Oregon.

The songs are "Between the Bars", "Angeles", and a cover of "Thirteen" by Big Star.

This is Elliott as I remember him, at his simple finest as musician. 

A series of one-minute interview-based spots Martha Rosler made with the American Indian community during her residence in Seattle from 1991 to 1995. Rosler reveals lost languages, unrecognized tribes, and the experiences of contemporary Native Americans living not on reservations but in the city.

Tapping into cable because of his lousy reception, Mike gets more than he bargained for as he unwittingly becomes trapped in the medium—the “star” of his own cable TV show. Due to an incomprehensible mishap, Mike’s rewired TV now transmits his image to the world; the observer has become the observed. Turning the tables on viewership in a way that reflects the banality of television, Smith touches on identification with television, and the manner in which television re-presents our world back to us.

In this episode of The Brenda and Glennda Show, Brenda and Glennda comically debate changing the name of their show to Drag Queens for Jesus, in order to convert all the secular homosexuals to Christianity. They discuss topics like abortion and censorship from a drag queen perspective, exploring the hypocrisy and inherent bias of Christian ideals. Later, Brenda gets her nipple pierced in homage to Sandy Daley's Robert Having His Nipple Pierced (1971).

A performance about the artist’s experience in the aftermath of an accident.