Liz Magic Laser discusses new work that focuses on new production techniques and gestures of world leaders. The New York-based performance artist is best known for employing in her video work the “living newspaper” agitprop theatre technique, where actors are cast in performances entirely scripted from lines lifted directly from mass media and literature. We expect to see a lot of concrete examples of that.

Is it a good time or just really awkward to bring your friends to a hardcore home movie screening? Now’s your chance to answer this question: Anthology Film Archives is screening a bunch of queercore (or homocore) movies from the 1990s. The scene, brief albeit fertile, produced a number of explicit short films that made the names of artists many of us know today—Bruce LaBruce and Vaginal Davis to name just two of the better known artists. You’ll see these artists and more get fucked.

Jonesy, Fiend, Super 8 on HD, 3min., 1992

Greta Snider, Hard-Core Home Movie, 16mm, 5min., 1989

Jill Reiter, The Birthday Party, 16mm on video, 9min., 1993

G.B. Jones, The Troublemakers, super 8 on DV, 20min., 1990

Scott Treleaven, The Salivation Army, super 8 and video, 22min., 2001

Rick Castro, “3. Dr. Chris Teen Sex Surrogate” (from Three Faces of Women: a feminine trilogy), VHS, 25min., 1994

Greta Snider, Our Gay Brothers, 16mm, 9min., 1993

The life of one Boeing 707 airplane looks something like this: Acquired by TWA–>used in Israeli military operations–>stars in the Hollywood movie Speed (1994)–> heads to a scrap metal yard in the Mojave Desert. Hito Steyerl tracks its story as a means of examining tangled economies. Steyerl excels at pointing out how late-capitalist truth is often stranger than fiction, and here, how those two distinctions often blur. 

Basically an abstract painting show that melds primitivism with modernist abstraction and what’s described as the “Neuropsychology of changing states of consciousness”. Expect thickly painted mixed media canvases, that mimic organic forms. Painterly luminosity define these paintings as powdered quartz crystal, clay, silver leaf, beeswax, rabbit skin glue, oil, acrylic, wheat paste, mineral pigments and plant dyes carpet reflective surfaces.

Alt Space, the Bushwick-based gallery and outlet for independent press/fashion/music, is shuttering its Montrose storefront after one year. The space is the physical manifestation of music/culture blog/zine Alt Citizen, who assure us they’ll reopen with a new location somewhere in the early Summer.

To say goodbye, they’re hosting a one-night exhibition curated by Travis Egedy (a.k.a. Pictureplane) featuring work by Alexander Heir, Kelsey Niziolek, Lee Trice, Max Eisenberg, Milton Melvin Croissant III, and Rebecca Fin Simonetti. I personally know half of the artists from their warehouse days in Baltimore, so it’s a fitting finale for a gallery with the soul of a punk house.

This is the 18th annual two-day Postcards From the Edge fundraiser for Visual AIDS. Basically, hundreds of artists donate postcard-sized artworks to be sold anonymously for $85 each on Saturday and Sunday. The more you buy, there are discounts. What’s amazing about this tradition (apart from it benefiting a really good cause) is the possibility of buying work from an extremely valuable artist for under $100. This year for example, Martha Wilson, John Baldessari, Barry McGee, and Hans Haacke each donated a tiny artwork to the jumble, so you could end up coming home with a blue-chip piece. Then again, you never know. We recommend getting there as early as possible on Saturday, although there are better bulk discounts on Sunday after the show has been picked-over.

A new art and technology conference launched jointly by The New Museum and Rhizome launches this Saturday. Tickets for the event are sold out, but they do have a standby wait list. (In other words you have to show up Saturday and see if there’s a chair available.) Two panels will take place: Generation You – a discussion, on you guessed it, social media. Speakers include Jacob Ciocci, artist; Simon Denny, artist; Juliana Huxtable, artist; and Cathy Park Hong, poet with moderator Andrew Durbin, (poet and writer). The second discussion takes a look at the effect of social media on critique. Speakers include Brian Droitcour, Art in America; Michelle Kuo, Artforum International; Kimberly Drew, Black Contemporary Art, Laura McLean-Ferris, writer Jerry Saltz, New York magazine with moderator Ed Halter, (Light Industry)

Full-Day Conference Pass

• General Public: $30
• Members: $25

Single Session Pass: First Session / Second Session

• General Public: $20
• Members: $15

Metropolitan Structures continues its practice of curating extremely site-specific projects with this show, in which traditional and non-traditional media are positioned outdoors deliberately on a day with crappy, crappy weather. From the curators: “The old almanac forecast for the last weekend in January calls for snow and ice. Scott Keightley, Guy Nelson, Matthew Schrader, and Ashley Zangle have been working under this premise, relying on whatever external realities (snow, slush, a hurricane) present themselves for the exhibition. Locus of control is a term used in psychology to describe how we connect our actions with outcomes. It’s an apt concern here, as it embodies the idea of site contingencies. Indeed, it prompts us to ask, how do we respond when things seem out of control? Join us for the opening reception on Saturday, January 30th, 2-4pm, for an exhibition featuring installation, sculpture, and painting, plus snow and ice (maybe), and hot coffee and donuts (definitely).”

We listed this show opening for last Saturday, but it didn’t happen due to the snowstorm. So, you’ve got a second chance. Here’s what we said about the show last week:

In 2015, Carla Gannis began her Selfie Drawings series as a so-called 52-week self-promotional digital drawing experiment that saw the artist turn an inward gaze at how female representation. She asked how the framing of our electronic devices informed the representation of women and shared these reflections sequentially over social media. The work has now culminated in a body of new work featured in this second solo show at TRANSFER where the selfies have been re-inserted into looping 4K video works. According to TRANSFER’s Director Kelani Nichole, expect “two monumental projected altarpieces custom designed to the space, constructed specifically to display the four primary self-portraiture pieces, along with their corresponding predellas which extend Gannis’ narratives through her four phases of self-reflection.

We haven’t been to a ZODIACK event yet, but we’ve been hearing good things. The monthly series purportedly channels AREA, the legendary 1980s pop-up-turned-nightclub that combined installation, performance, artists-in-residence, and nightlife and featured artists such as Keith Haring and Grace Jones in their heyday.

Each month, the curators bring installation artists, musicians, performers, and DJs together over a theme related to a different sign of the Zodiac. This month’s, Capricorn (co-hosted by AFC friend Molly Rhinestones), invites attendees to dress up as one of the following categories:

BERLIN BABIES

METAL WERKERS

NSA OPERATIVES

TECHNO TITANS

DECONSTRUCTIONISTS

We’re not sure what the above categories have to do with mythological goats, but we’re into it. There will also be visual artwork by Kim Tran, Arthur Kozlovsk, OCULUSDRIFT.TV, Lady Olive (EVOO), Michowl, FKA T.A.T.S., Pablito Velez, and Pineapple Dreams along with live performances from Bushwick-art-drag personal Lady Simon, Alexis Convento, and musical acts Pləbeian and VIOLENCE, in addition to industrial DJs. What a perfect way to warm up after a day of schlepping all over the cold, cold city. RSVP on the website for $7 admission (otherwise, it’s $12).