January 15 Nayland Blake and Lawrence Rinder in Conversation
3 p.m., George Gund Theater, free with museum admission Nayland Blake and Lawrence Rinder, co-curators of In a Different Light, discuss how they conceptualized and designed this ground-breaking exhibition. Their slide-illustrated conversation will focus on the resonance of gay and lesbian experience in twentieth-century American art.
January 26 FABULOUS! GALA
7:00 p.m. at the UAM/PFA--The University Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive invites you to Fabulous, a benefit gala featuring fabulous food and cocktails, entertainment, people, fashion, hair, and surprises, all in a cabaret setting. Outrageous New York diva (and Billie Holiday channeler) Joey Arias will be the evening's headliner. A shuttle to and from the SF ART FAIR at the Phoenix Hotel will be available on a first come, first served basis.
Fabulous will be held in support of the the exhibition In a Different Light on Thursday, Ticket price is $250 per person. Black tie prohibited-wear something fabulous! To receive an invitation or for more information, please call (510) 642-1636.
Thursday, February 2, 8 p.m. Performance:
"Late Nite with Joan Jett Blakk"
Gund Theater
Admission: $4 general, $2 all students, UAM/PFA members Tickets available at PFA box office starting at 7 p.m. Advance tickets: (510) 642-5249
In a queer take-over of the talk show format, "Late Nite with Joan Jett Blakk" features a stimulating and surprising mix of smart talk, celebrities, cool music, comedy, and right-on politics. The show has captivated sold-out audiences in Los Angeles and San Francisco. "Late Nite" is hosted by performance drag queen and presidential candidate Joan Jett Blakk, nationally known for her gay and lesbian-positive campaign to "lick Bush in '92," and who, out of drag, is the newest member of the gay black performance group Pomo Afro Homos. Joining Joan (a.k.a. Terence Smith) is her co-host Babette, described by S.F. Weekly as "pre-op McMahon." The February 2 performance will display a ferocious combination of queer energy, ideas, and mayhem.
Sunday, February 26, 2 p.m. Gallery Talk
Galleries 1, 2 and 6
Nayland Blake, nationally noted artist and curator, will present a provocative walk-through of In a Different Light, which he co-curated with Lawrence Rinder. In both his artistic and curatorial work, Blake has dealt significantly with issues of gender and sexuality. Blake's art work was the subject of a MATRIX exhibition at the UAM/PFA in spring of 1989.
March 19 "The Art of Code: Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg--A Relationship in Paint" and "In Your Face, In Your Head: Queer Pictures, Queer Orgy, Queer Politics"
Lectures by author/activist Jonathan Katz and art historian/activist Erica Rand. Katz explores the burying of traces of the relationship between Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg in their work, emblematic of the closet in the 1950s. Examines the dynamic of the artists' six-year relationship through the evolution of their works, analyzing some of their most famous paintings in terms of gay themes and tropes. Rand's lecture concerns the politics of circulating queer visuals--sexually explicit and otherwise--in teaching and activism. Also: the two discuss the differential identity politics between gay men and lesbians. 2:30 pm in the George Gund Theater, Free with museum admission
April 9 Two plays: Kevin Killian and Camille Roy
Commissioned especially for In a Different Light, "Cut" by Kevin Killian is a one-hour fantasia about a retrospective of Alfred Hitchcock's films organized by a local film society who has invited people who knew him. Conflicts arise between the high theory of the organizers and the tempestuous demands of the invited divas, including Tippi Hedren and her daughter Melanie Griffith, Isabella Rosellini (Ingrid Bergman's daughter), and Princess Stephanie (troubled daughter of Grace Kelly). Killian is a well-known Bay Area playwright, novelist, and poet--his forthcoming book for Detour Books is titled Three Plays for SF Poet's Theater.
Camille Roy
(information to come)
Time--tba, George Gund Theater
Free with museum admission.
This Shared Voices project is made possible through the LIla Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative.
Thursday February 9 - Who's Saying What About Whom? 7:30
Curated by Karl Knapper and Alfonso Moret This program showcases work that challenges societally induced stereotypes and perceptions about racial and sexual identity; it questions notions of abjection, self-discovery, love, anger, desire, personal politics, empowerment, and assimilation. The tension created both within and between these works generates and explores a space of ambivalence about identity and representation. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people struggle within this space to create personal identities out of the multiplicity of identities that so many of us can rightfully lay claim to in an often confusingly diverse world. These tapes deal with the myths, perceptions, and realities of our lives and expose the way lesbian and gay artists represent not only our own identities and realities, but those of others as well.-Alfonso Moret, videomaker and curator; Karl Knapper, critic, curator, educator, President of the Board of Frameline. Put Your Lips Around Yes (John Lindell, 1991, 4 mins). My Skin Is A Map (Steve Grandell, 6 mins). What Does It Mean to Capture a Soul (Amos V. White, 3 mins). B.U.C.K.L.E. (Catherine Saalfield, Julie Tolentino, 10 mins). Just A Love Thang (Mari Keiko Gonzalez, 4 mins). A Light On the Path (Marco Puccioni, Italy, 16 mins). Cholo Joto (Augie Robles, 12 mins). The Attendant (Isaac Julien, U.K., 8 mins, 35mm). Media Blackmale (Wendell Bruno, Canada, 1992, 5 mins). Significant (Br)other (Charles Lofton, 5 mins). Ghost Body (Christopher Cutrone, 20 mins). Vanilla Sex (Cheryl Dunye, 1992, 4 mins).
* (Total running time: 97 mins; U.S., 1993, Color, 3/4" video except as indicated)
Thursday February 23
In a Different Light: Queer Video
My Failure to Assimilate and Selected Works 7:30 Cecilia Dougherty (U.S., 1994)
World Premiere
Artist in Person
Cecilia Dougherty has struggled to inscribe a lesbian aesthetic within a medium that doesn't freely relinquish its male-dominated terrain, from her early endeavors to portray lesbian sex in a mundane, non-exploitative manner, such as Claudia (1987, 8 mins), to her more recent efforts to usurp male space by appropriating the garb of gay icons, most prominently as Joe Orton in Joe-Joe (1993, 52 mins). Her newest work, My Failure to Assimilate (20 mins), redirects this territorial imperative toward the consequences of participating in mainstream culture. According to Dougherty, the tape is "about the schizophrenic nature of an individual's relationship to language and social structures which categorically deny her existence. It's also about the high price of becoming visible on your own terms, and the acute lack of assurances that an outsider's position can ever be secure." Anti-assimilationist in posture, it isn't a retreat from the fight for representation; rather, it's a vivid glimpse of the battle scars.-Steve Seid
Plus: The Drama of the Gifted Child (1992, 6 mins) and Sick (1986, 6 mins). * (Total running time: 92 mins, 3/4" video, From the artist)
For location, accesibility, parking, etc. at the UAM/PFA...