RANDY

Art Practice, Activism, and Pedagogy: Some Feminist Views

In Art Practice, Activism, and Pedagogy, women artists who have embraced feminism in their art and social practice speak about its impact on their careers, the supportive communities it has created, and their current work. As artists engaged in individual and social practice and direct political activism, they discuss what it means to be a feminist artist today in the context of diverse forms of political engagement.

The conference is organized by Parsons Fine Arts faculty member Mira Schor, a painter and noted writer on feminist art and painting in a postmedium culture.

Speakers:

• Susan Bee, painter, co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings, Theory, and Criticism, instructor at the School of Visual Arts
• A.K. Burns, artist, collaborator in Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.)
• Audrey Chan, Los Angeles–based artist and writer, gallery teacher at the J. Paul Getty Museum
• Maureen Connor, artist, member of The Institute for Wishful Thinking, professor at Queens College
• Caitlin Rueter and Suzanne Stroebe, artists, founders of the Feminist Tea Party
• Ulrike Müller, artist, co-editor of the gender-queer feminist art journal LTTR, instructor at the Vermont College of Fine Arts

For more information, head to the New School!

Randy #2 contributor Geo Wyeth is releasing his first full-length album ALIEN TAPES!

“ALIEN TAPES is kind of a meditation on the relationship of proximity between the body, the room, and the sound.  Half of it was recorded on tape with a lot of live mixing and outboard effects.  Half of it was recorded by digital means and features heavy production.  Leading up to its release, I have been holding curated listening events in tandem as ways of bringing people together — the album functions as a drawing together of embodied experiences, and I hope it is approached in this way.”

Help him make it happen!!

Open House/Open Archive
March 17th, 2-6pm
With talks and conversation +refreshments after
Organized by WORKSHOP@138 Bowery

“DAM! began as a working group of Queer Nation and quickly evolved into a stand-alone agitprop unit whose exact membership remained anonymous for many years. Dyke Action Machine! campaigns presented a hybrid form of public address where civic issues such were packaged to fit seamlessly int the commercialized streetscape.

The campaigns dissected mainstream media by inserting lesbian images into recognizably commercial contexts, revealing how lesbians are and are not depicted in American popular culture. While questioning the basic assumption that one cannot be “present” in a capitalist society unless one exists as a consumer group, DAM! performed the role of the advertiser, promising the lesbian viewer all the things she’d been denied by the mainstream: power, inclusion, and the public recognition of identity.”

Check out DAM! on the net.

This Monday, March 12, CAC will screen at MoMA!!

“Community Action Center, a recent MoMA acquisition, is a picaresque, exuberant, and explicit filmic account of happily consensual, and often public, sexual encounters among a group of adventurous friends. The filmmakers—A. L. Steiner, an artist known for her photo-collages and her involvement with the band Chicks on Speed and the curatorial group Ridykelous; and A. K. Burns, a multidisciplinary artist and cofounder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.)—have created a non-narrative, transgressive document of a group of friends who act upon, and into, one another. The dialogue-free film features an original musical score as scintillating as its lush and lascivious images.”

To reserve tickets, head here!

The editors of Randy will participate in a panel discussion this Sunday, March 11!!

2:30-3:30PM – THE ARMORY SHOW
Breaking with Homogeneity
Participants: Litia Perta, Malin Arnell, A.K. Burns, Åsa Elzen, Clark Solack, Hanna Wilde
How can we name and use identity categories to promote a more heterogeneous and more equal art scene? Litia Perta, Faculty at the Language and Thinking Program at Bard College, will moderate a conversation with Hanna Wilde, Director of the Swedish headquartered Högkvarteret; as well as Åsa Elzen and Malin Arnell of the Swedish-based Yes! Association; Clark Solack: curator, writer and co-editor of RANDY; A.K. Burns: artist and co-editor of RANDY; to talk about the transatlantic queer and feminist communities that underpin their practices; as well as the stakes, struggles and successes in each instance.

For a full schedule of events please visit, the Armory website.

pregnant patron penny pot
March 3 – April 15, 2012
Opening reception: Saturday, March 3, 6 – 8pm

pregnant patron penny pot unites a series of sculptures with wall-mounted works comprised of colored fabric, inset with photographic reprints. The freestanding three-dimensional works are clad in Formica evoking figurative sculpture through the intimate scale of the body. Using a paired-down geometric vocabulary of delineation to form openings—the line, the edge and frame imply what is in, what is out, what passes through and what passes us by. These works congeal as skin and surface, the flesh-toned faux-marble aspires to and usurps the most solidly traditional of sculptural and architectural materials.

The sculptures converse with the series of image-on-fabric pieces while standing firm in material contrast, opening an associative space between production, reproduction and labor. The fabric works are scaled to the digital and printed page, reflecting the economy of easy handling and exchange. The images were sourced from The New York Public Library Picture Collection and are hung limply from the wall like flaccid picture planes wedged in place with pennies dug into the surface of the drywall. The reprints include a chair constructed from a figure in bondage, a prehistoric fertility stone carving, an archeological dig, hands shaping a pot on a spinning wheel, laborers on strike, a war memorial, among other images.

The penny secured images form a unique kind of soft sculptural relief held in place by our smallest monetary unit, linking sculpture, the logic of built forms, to a larger cultural symbology, full of value and signification – the pregnant patron penny pot.

Wu Tsang’s Wildness screens at MoMA, Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 8:00 p.m!

Wildness 2012. USA. Directed by Wu Tsang. Wildness is a portrait of the Silver Platter, a historic, LGBT-friendly bar on the eastside of Los Angeles that has catered to the Latin immigrant community since 1963. With a magical-realist flourish—the bar itself becomes a character in the film—Wildness captures the creativity and conflict that ensue when a group of young, queer artists of color (Wu Tsang, DJs NGUZUNGUZU, and Total Freedom) organize a weekly performance art party, called Wildness, at the bar. What does “safe space” mean, and who needs it? The search for answers to these questions creates coalitions across generations. 75 min.

RANDY presents:
Queers in Space

Friday, January 27, 2012
Participant Inc. / 253 E. Houston St. between Norfolk and Suffolk
7-10 pm

RANDY magazine is very pleased to present a double-feature event at Participant Inc. Join us for this otherworldly pairing of the cosmic films No Gravity and Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same.

No Gravity (2010, dir. by Silvia Casalino, 60 min.)
Silvia Casalino is a Space Engineer working for the French Space Agency, CNES who dreams of going to space. Confronted with social stereotypes, Silvia finds her intellectual mentor in the feminist theorist Donna Haraway, who introduces her to cyborg culture. Her dreams become reality as she embarks on an unusual and bizarre journey, which leads her to the icons of female space travel. An essayist documentary, No Gravity is a personal story and a take on the history of women in space and the relationship between gender and technology.

Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (2011, dir. Madeleine Olnek, 75 min.)
In this mash-up of lo-fi New York City romantic comedy and a sci-fi B-movie, space aliens are sent to Earth on a mission to save their planet by infiltrating New York City’s lesbian dating scene. Two of the aliens, fall into an unfortunate romance with each other, but the third, meets Jane (Lisa Haas), an Earthling of mild manners who lives an uneventful life and works in a stationery store. Unaware that the sudden object of her affection is an alien (despite her bald head and monotone speech), Jane falls hard. Meanwhile, two undercover government agents are following Jane in order to find the spaceship and cover up the existence of the aliens.
*Official selection of 2011 Sundance Film Festival*
RSVP HERE

$5 suggested donation

@ PARTICIPANT INC.,

Friday, January 27th

Please join us for the next iteration of // BROWN BEAR //a migrating site specific salon.

We will be premiering our new 3 channel video instillation FAMILIARITY WITH TODAY IS THE BEST PREPARATION FOR THE FUTURE as well as providing FREE haircuts!

/// Saturday January 7th /// 5 – 9pm /// in the Great Hall of the Brooklyn Museum///

Come check out the NY installation of ‘HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture’ and many other exciting talks and happenings that day:

5 p.m. Interactive Performance: The Brown Bear is a migrating, site-specific salon series. Brooklyn based artists A.K. Burns and Katherine Hubbard will be providing free hair cuts, fades, and chops within a new three-channel video installation, ‘Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future’.

6 p.m. Artist Talk: Artist Lyle Ashton Harris

7 p.m. Curator Talk: with HIDE/SEEK curator Jonathan Katz

8–10 p.m. Dance Party: DJ Tikka Masala

Free tickets available at the Visitor Center at 5 p.m onwards

MORE INFO:
www.brooklynmuseum.org/visit/first_saturdays.php

WE’VE REACHED 60%!! 8 DAYS LEFT, HELP US ALL SUCCEED!

Hello friends and supporters,

We wanted to update you on the USA Projects fundraiser – we’re 60% funded + have reached an INCREDIBLE $16K!
We have only 8 days left to raise the remaining $9K.

This fundraiser will fund a tour of the project to rural LGBTQ community centers in the U.S. (this tour will not happen without these funds!!) and will provide all 50 performers, musicians & crew member with fees for their contributions to the project.

We must reach our goal of $25,000 – in 8 DAYS – by 21 Dec. to be granted any of the money- it’s either all or nothing!

If you haven’t yet donated— wait no longer.  Time is running out. PLEASE consider donating today!

A huge thank you to all those who have pledged. please don’t forget to spread the word, and if you can, increase your donation- even if it’s by $5, $10 or $25 or $100 (…or more, if you’re able!).

EVERY DONATION- SMALL & LARGE- COUNTS AND BRINGS US CLOSER TO COMPLETION. WE CAN DO IT!!

www.usaprojects.org/project/community_action_center

**USA Projects accepts international donations  as well**

IT TAKES A COMMUNITY!
Thank you all,
A.K. & A.L.