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This Is Not A Dream at the Kitchen

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Tonight Dirty Looks presented THIS IS NOT A DREAM at the Kitchen. The film is a series of interviews with legendary and up-and-coming performers examining the intersections of film and performance in their work. Glenn O’Brien argued that his ‘TV Party’ series showed the humility inherent in showing the camera, showing the shoes or airing dead time on TV. Nao Bustamante explained, and I’m paraphrasing… “as long as I can low a little “woop” into the universe which liberates television and gets people thinking about multigendered amorphously sexual creatures…” And Vaginal Davis quipped, “I prefer bad reviews.” The film works to allow the multitude of artists that have looked at our media saturated culture and dared to speak back, a platform to better explain what they did and why they did it. And just about everyone seemed to try and encourage audiences to stand up and engage the world.

DIRTY LOOKS: ON LOCATION (http://onlocation.dirtylooksnyc.org/) is a month-long series of queer interventions in New York City spaces. Over the course of July, artist film and video will appear in these queer social spaces and former sites of queer sociality (like shuttered bars, bathhouses and former meeting zones). A new piece, a different setting on each night of July.

Gavin Butt and Ben Walters introduce their documentary ‘This Is Not A Dream’ followed by extracts of the interactive performance by Dickie Beau.

Talk Show: An Evening with Ugly Duckling Presse @ The Kitchen

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Have you noticed??? Everyone is breaking out of their cocoons and transforming into social butterflies. Just when you forget how much skin is on everybody’s bodies, Spring starts to morph into summer, proving the perfect time to release a book entitled Ten Walks/Two Talks. Ten Walks/Two Talks is a new book published by Brooklyn’s Ugly Duckling Press and written by Andy Fitch and Jon Cotner. The book explores ten walks and two talks that the authors had in New York City. Sound exciting?

As part of the release, Ugly Duckling Press presented “Talk Show,” an evening of interviews, poetry, and unscripted surprises in the format of a late-night talk show. Fitch and Cotner, hosted the evening, sometimes even succeding to be witty with poets Dodie Bellamy, Rachel Levitsky, Matthew Rohrer, Marina Temkina, Cecilia Vicuña, and interview-artist Alex Stein as their guests.

Rachel Levitsky and her pal Barb (a commercial fisherman from Alaska – can we slap 10,000 bad ass points on her shoulder??) were a bold highlight of the evening, weaving their texts over each others words and lulling the audience into submission.

Maybe I’m biased but my favorite writer of the evening was Dodie Bellamy reading from Barf Manifesto. She wore black tiger striped tights, and a full black outfit. She had this sleazy nerdy librarian vibe which felt right up against her bathroom inspired meta text that joyously fucked with and scattered all genre’s, bringing attention to the imposibilities of life’s compartamentalizing.

I saw Andy Fitch and Jon Cotner “perform” their Ten Walks/Two Talks in San Francisco last month at Books and Bookshelves and to be frank, I have my criticisms…. their demeanor is overtly smug, knowingly pretentious and they try so hard to be clever that it comes across as a gimmick. In the beginning of the night they talked about “making sense”… I don’t know about y’all but I’m with the Talking Heads on this one… The whole idea of their work seemed too forced and too specific. New York is one of the best walking cities in the world. You can go through neighborhoods and mini worlds all within a matter of blocks. You could walk 1000 walks and still find things to interest you here, so why a semi guided, psuedo whimsical, forcibly precious walk on page is necessary is beyond me. Find a friend of yours who’s sense of humor is consistent and take a walk with them. It’s summer time and everyone is naked. Steal food from Whole Foods instead of recounting forgotten conversations there, then take your stolen goods and picnic in the park. Fuck, even write something about it, jus elevate it beyond you’re own insular smirk.