Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House)

Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House), a project I co-curated with the curatorial collective Two Chairs and Anne Thompson, Director of the Usdan Gallery at Bennington opens October 31st!

 

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Photo: Peggy Ahwesh, still image from “Nocturne” (1998)

Photo: Peggy Ahwesh, still image from “Nocturne” (1998)

Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House)

Curated by Jillian Brodie, Cindy Smith and Rachel Stevens of Two Chairs; and Anne Thompson, director of Usdan Gallery, with special thanks to Two Chairs collective members Yinan Cheng, E.H. Dalton, Tony Do and George Wichelns

October 29-December 7, 2019

Halloween Opening Party | October 31, 6:00 pm
Screening of The Haunting | October 31, 8:00 pm
Lecture by Patricia White | November 5, 7:00 pm
Artist Talk and Screening | November 19, 7:00 pm

Participating Artists

Peggy Ahwesh, APRIORI (techno-botanical coven), Anna Campbell, Tony Do, Lana Lin, Susan MacWilliam, Senem Pirler, Macon Reed, Zoe Walsh, and Sasha Wortzel.

Queer Paranormal (an exhibition concerning Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House) presents a range of artistic practices “haunted” by historical, political, and sexual difference. Taking Jackson’s gothic horror classic and its 1963 film version as jumping-off points, the exhibition identifies queerness in themes including witchcraft, the uncanny, the stranger, and the haunted house as undiscovered country and object of desire. Site-specifically located in North Bennington, where Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill HouseQueer Paranormal installs artworks in locations across the Bennington campus, including the Jennings music building—a former mansion believed to be haunted and said to have partly influenced Jackson’s portrait of Hill House. Works in mediums including painting, sculpture, film, video, and sound are spectral in their subject matter and occasionally positioned to otherworldly effect, such as pieces by Senem Pirler and Sasha Wortzel that perform sonic hauntings of everyday spaces.

 

…more info on the Queer Paranormal PRESS RELEASE

 

culture-irelandQueer Paranormal is made possible in part by a grant from Culture Ireland

 

See Stream: Chapter 3

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Stream: Chapter 3, our exhibition in South Windham, Vermont on August 4th and 5th was super. You can see the work in context by visiting the links below. Like Two Chairs on Facebook to get future updates on Two Chairs projects.

FOREST
artists here: Yu Jin, Juneau Projects, Zoe Walsh.

STREAM & AROUND
artists here: E.E. Ikeler, Yu Jin, Louise Lawler, Arrow Mueller, David Nash.

MEADOW
artists here: Peggy Ahwesh, Annie Berman, Kenneth Pietrobono, Rachel Stevens, Marina Zurkow.

 

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grid_streamaround grid_meadow

 

 

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Stream 2 Catalog

Stream 2 CatalogJust in time for Stream 3!

The Stream: Chapter 2 (helpless) catalog is finished and available for download.

Includes work by:

Peggy Ahwesh
Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin
Tony Do
Ingela Ihrman
E.E. Ikeler
H. P. Lovecraft
Shana Moulton
David Nash
Caleb Nussear
Jennifer Reeves
Rachel Stevens
George Wichelns
Brian Zegeer and Rachel Frank

 

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Save

Stream: Chapter 2 (helpless)

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Stream: Chapter 2 (helpless)
August 1st (12-5) and 2nd (11-4) 2015
South Windham, VT

An exhibition happening next weekend! Survivalist Cinema will be returning, this year with a line-up of experimental shorts called Anthroposcenic.

More on the 2 Chairs website.

On the screening:

ANTHROPOSCENIC

A program of moving image work to be screened in the Survivalist Cinema, a solar-powered micro-cinema housed in a wilderness lean-to. These experimental shorts reimagine the ‘figure in the landscape’ trope, calling upon consumer objects with mystical properties, “machinema,” low-tech sci-fi performance, post-production, and decomposition to augment or devolve bodies and personhood in relationship to the landscape.

Peggy Ahwesh, She Puppet (2001, video, 15 min.)
In She Puppet Ahwesh edited hours of playing the game Tomb Raider to redirect the narrative of the character Lara Croft from a goal-oriented tour through obstacle-laden adventure-scapes to one more dark and speculative.

Torsten Zenas Burns and Darrin Martin, ARK3: THE WATERWAY SCENARIOS (2015, video, 13 min.)
This newly edited piece furthers Burns’ and Martin’s research into “diverse speculative fictions including re-imagined educational practices, crypto-utopian musicals, appropriated horror genres, paranormal phenomenon, re-animation choreographies, cos- play, and trans-human love stories.”

Shana Moulton, Whispering Pines 3 (2004, video, 7:33 min.)
Moulton’s pained alter ego Cynthia interacts with household objects that operate as channels to surreal experiences or transcendent New Age epiphanies.

Jennifer Reeves, Landfill 16 (2011, 16mm film transferred to video, 9 min.) Reeves temporarily buried outtakes from her 16mm double projection When It Was Blue to “let enzymes and fungi in the soil begin to decompose the image. [She] then hand- painted the film to give it new life.”

Brian Zegeer and Rachel Frank, Far Rockaway (2012, mixed-media animation, digital video, 4:53 min.)
This music video was filmed at Dead Horse Bay, a Far Rockaway landfill that has since erupted onto the beach surface. Made in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the film imagines a vengeful nature at odds with human endeavors.

 

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Stream catalog + Stream 2

streamcatalogThe catalog for last summer’s Stream exhibition is here. You can see and read about all the site-specific projects around a stream in southern Vermont. Thanks to Cindy Smith and Wolfgang Berkowski for their great work on the exhibition and the catalog.

Planning for Stream II, which will happen in August, 2015, has begun. My solar-powered Survivalist Cinema will return, but this year I am curating a program of video on the posthuman and the anthropocene.