Kickstarter

“Just over a year old, this underground-style series is already way above ground, bringing its adventurous, open-minded brand of avant-garde to the West Coast.”
Shana Nys Dambrot, LA Weekly

“[Dirty Looks] has brought new meaning to camp, parody and the marginal.”
Bruce Benderson, Out

“Best Monthly series in New York”
Kate Wadkins, of Hyperallergic 

Dirty Looks: On Location

Dirty Looks: On Location is a month-long series of queer interventions in New York City spaces. Over the course of July, Dirty Looks, a roaming series which typically hosts screenings on the last Wednesday of the month, will install film and video work in 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.

Think of it as a truly experimental festival. Dirty Looks: On Location will promote a greater understanding of queer history around New York City, as postcards placed at each installation will elaborate on the historic significance of each venue. The project will also expand on Dirty Looks’ mission, to engage viewers outside of the experimental film community or art world sectors, since the works on view will reach innocent bystanders and casual passers-by. July in New York is hot, sticky and social. Installing moving image works around the city in bars, centers and “haunted” venues allows for the free flow of viewers to engage and celebrate with work, in evening events that commemorate contemporary moving-image production and its precedents in queer culture.

The film and video work was selected by a committee of emerging curators from the art and film worlds: 

Tova Carlin
Paul Dallas (Columbia)
Kathryn Garcia
David Everitt Howe (Abrons Art Center)
Jamillah James 
Sarvia Jasso (Queering Sex)
Karl McCool
Bradford Nordeen (Dirty Looks)
Bryce Renninger (Rutgers University, formerly Newfest)
Abbe Schriber
Todd Shalom (Elastic City)
Ethan Weinstock (Independent Producer)
Jake Yuzna (Museum of Art and Design)

 About Dirty Looks:

Dirty Looks, a monthly platform for queer experimental film and video, has been in operation since January 2011. In that time we have screened experimental works by nearly 50 artists at venues like PARTICIPANT INC, Artists Space, Judson Memorial Church, P.P.O.W Gallery, White Columns (forthcoming) and the rooftop venue, Silvershed. We regularly receive attendance nearing 100 viewers and have reached crowds in excess of 200. We have partnered with queer institutions, like Newfest, MIX NYC, Spank, Union Docs, the L Magazine, Women Make Movies, Little Joe Magazine, Translady Fanzine, Birdsong Micropress, QT Reading series at Dixon Place, P***y F****t, and [ 2nd floor projects ] on events and publications and our screenings have been featured in publications like Bad At Sports, Gayletter, Art Fag City, Slant, Hyperallergic, the L Magazine, Time Out NYC and more.

In February of this year, thanks in part to generous Kickstarter contributions, Dirty Looks toured the West Coast, launching events at the Hammer Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Artists Television Access, California College of the Arts, Human Resources LA, Otis College of Art and Design, Grand Detour and Pacific Northwest College of Art, with a special preview screening at Yale Film Study Center. These events were covered by Out.com, Los Angeles Times, SF Weekly, SF Bay Guardian, LA Magazine, UCLA Daily Bruin, Yale Daily News and Broad Recognition. LA Weekly observed that the tour exhibited, “some of the smarter video artists working right now... Dirty Looks [explores] obsession and affection in a way that starts out kinky but ends up gapingly honest.”

Dirty Looks has also taken initiative in recontextualizing historical works that have fallen out of distribution, having commissioned new subtitles for Rosa Von Praunheim’s City of Lost Souls and Lionel Soukaz and Guy Hocquenghem’s Race d’Ep (in participation with Artists Space, premiering May 18th)

About our budget

The money raised via this Kickstarter campaign will help to pay artists and curators for their participation in the project. It will also cover the design and print costs for the street maps, which will guide viewers to the varying venues and to produce the postcards that will contextualize each installation. The tech needs for such an endeavor are great and a large portion of this money will go to mobile projectors, DVD players and other technical needs. See below for a breakdown of monetary expenditures:

Artist Fees / Print rentals - 29%
Curatorial Fees - 25%
Projector rental and tech materials - 14%
Print production costs - 14%
Graphic Design - 7%
Administrative costs - 5%
Craft services - 3%
Technical assistance (2x Tech Interns for the duration of the series) - 3%

The Rewards:

$10 LEVEL RECEIVES:

Swag buttons, cleaved from past Dirty Looks Postcard imagery and the Dirty Looks: On Location map, mailed directly to your door.

$25 LEVEL, ALSO CHOOSE BETWEEN:

Dirty Looks Tote bags, which come in gold DL on white or black with glow-in-the-dark DIRTY LOOKS logo screen printed across it. Designed by Deric Carner.

$40 LEVEL RECEIVES:

Poster art by Mike Kuchar, produced exclusively for the Dirty Looks: On Location fundraiser (image slightly sanitized for Kickstarter purposes)

Mike Kuchar, Director At Work, 1971. Acrylic on board. 20.75x20.75 inches Courtesy of the artist and [2nd floor projects], San Francisco.Open edition poster, 18x18 inches

$50 GETS YOU EITHER:

Postcard Book, comprised of each of the 31 cards places at the Dirty Looks: On Location installations. Each card has a glossy 4-color front and a back which details the historical significance of each location and the relevance that the moving-image work or performance has to that setting. Books come in a Tote with Buttons and Map.

An artist edition t-shirt, featuring a watercolor by Curt McDowell of the legendary George Kuchar! Curt McDowell, George Kuchar, produced between 1968-1978, watercolor on paper, Courtesy of the Curt McDowell Estate and [2nd floor projects], San Francisco. Silkscreen on white t-shirt. Open edition available in S, M, L, XL.

An artist edition t-shirt featuring a drawing by Luther Price, whose work the New York Times recently praised in their review of the Whitney Biennial as "some of the show's best pictorial art... In these entrancingly delicate, implicitly violent works, life, chance, obsessive art making and an intense artistic psyche descended from Pollock, Rauschenberg and Jack Smith... flashes before your eyes." Luther Price, The Devil Made Me Do It, 1990s courtesy of the artist and PARTICIPANT INC. Silkscreen on black t-shirt. Open edition available in S, M, L, XL

$75 LEVEL RECEIVES:

Exclusive Dirty Looks DVD, featuring original film and video by Dirty Looks artists! A rare opportunity to own experimental work on a home video format.

$100 LEVEL GETS THE DIRTY LOOKS: ON LOCATION BUNDLE

Tote stuffed with your choice of the Luther Price or Curt McDowell tee, the DL DVD, Postcard Book, Map and Buttons.

$250 PLEDGE RECEIVES:

Tote with BOTH the Luther Price and Curt McDowell tee, DL DVD, Postcard Book, Map, Buttons.
+ Special invite for 2 to a private opening reception with the artists, in advance of the opening event at PARTICIPANT INC, featuring a special performance by Tara Matiek.
+ Free admission to the next year of programming at Dirty Looks and the ability to reserve advance seating.

This is the ultimate collection, in support of Dirty Looks: On Location, granting you exclusive access to all of the events on offer, this summer and beyond...

$250 EDITIONED PLEDGE:

Adam Shecter, Hope Theres Somone, 2004/5. Silkscreen on paper. 12.5x16 inches. Editions 1 and 2 of 3. Courtesy of the artist. (Taken from the animated video from Antony and the Johnsons' song)

$350 UNIQUE PLEDGE:

Jonathan VanDyke, Untitled Person 04, 2004. Gelatin Silver Print, 5 1/2 x 3 5/8 inches. Edition of 5. Courtesy of the artist.

Jonathan VanDyke, Untitled Person 07, 2004. Gelatin Silver Print, 5 x 5 5/8 inches. Edition of 5. Courtesy of the artist.

$500 UNIQUE PLEDGE, CHOOSE BETWEEN:

Original Artwork: Glen Fogel 'From Jamie (date unknown, blue ink),' 2011 Archival pigment print on paper 57 x 44 inches Open edition Courtesy of the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts

Dani Leventhal, Medium, 2012. Mixed medium drawing, 24x18 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

A.L. Steiner (with A.K. Burns), Community Action Center (Stevie Lijks), 2010. C-pring digital photo, 10x13 inches. Open edition, courtesy of the artists.

(Both images have been slightly censored due to the regulated nature of Mr. Kickstarter)

$750 UNIQUE PLEDGE:

Gary Indiana, Gavin Lambert, photographic print. Courtesy of the artist.

$1,000 UNIQUE PLEDGE, CHOSE BETWEEN:

Michelle Handelman, Lord Henry from Dorian, a cinematic perfume, 2009. 11x14 inches. Edition 3/5. Courtesy of the artist.

Liz Magic Laser, I Feel Your Pain rehearsal at the 5pm showing of Anonymous at Chelsea Clearview Cinemas on October 29th, 2011. Featuring Audrey Crabtree, Ray Field, Annie Fox, Kathryn Grody, Rafael Jordan, Liz Micek, and Ryan Shams, 2011. digital C-print. 16x20 inches. Artist proof 1 (edition of 5 with 2 APs)

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*All product images are mock-ups. Actual incentives may vary slightly.

Video contains the following:
Soundtrack: "I Wanna Know," by Shadow Lover

Stills:
Lionel Soukaz and Guy Hocquenghem, Race d'Ep, 1979
Charles Atlas, Mrs. Peanut Visits New York, 1992/99
Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina, At Least You Know You Exist, 2011
Michelle Handelman, 'Lord Henry in Dorian, a cinematic perfume,' 2009
Curt McDowell, Production Stills from Sparkles Tavern, 1974
Michelle Handelman, Dorian, a cinematic perfume, 2009
Luther Price, Ribbon Candy, 2003/4
Rosa Von Praunheim, City of Lost Souls, 1983
Luther Price, Clown Part I, 1992
© the artists

Video by: Adam Keleman