Wednesday, October 16, 2024 at 7:30pm
A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner's Community Action Center
361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn
Presented with MIX NYC
Community Action Center, A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner, 2010, digital projection, 69 mins
“CAC is also a singular achievement, a thrilling, generous representation of a community of friends, lovers, and intimates. It is critique and satire and the thing itself. It is the question and its answer.”
- David Velasco
When artists A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner created Community Action Center, they did so because it seemed as though nothing quite like it had ever existed: a sexually explicit feature film, made by women and queers for viewers like themselves, devoted to exploring the outer edges of gender aesthetics and erotic expression. An omnibus of lavishly staged vignettes, Community Action Center includes the participation of luminaries such as Wu Tsang, Gloria Maximo, Ashland Mines, and Justin Bond, with others appearing under pseudonyms such as Max Hardhand, Stargeizer, Jacques Strap, and Mai Khunt.
“Community Action Center is a sociosexual video which incorporates the erotics of a community where the personal is not only political, but sexual. This project was heavily inspired by porn-romance-liberation films, which served as distinct portraits of the urban inhabitants, landscapes and the body politic of a particular time and place. Community Action Center is a unique contemporary womyn-centric composition that serves as both an ode and a hole-filler. Because the video contains sexually explicit content, the term ‘porn’ is relevant and the artists have an interest in exploring the trappings of the term itself. Sex, sexuality and the complexities of gendered bodies are inherently political. Queer sex and feminist agency is a shared acknowledgment of reciprocal penetration. This project is a small archive of an intergenerational community built on collaboration, friendship, sex and art. The work attempts to explore a consideration of feminist fashion, sexual aesthetics and an expansive view of what is defined as ‘sex.’ Burns and Steiner worked with artists and performers who created infinitely complex gender and performance roles that are both real and fantastical, set to a soundtrack of music and original compositions by artists culled from the worldwide sisterhood. The video seeks to expose and reformulate paradigms that are typical of porn typologies, intentionally exploiting tropes for their comical value, critical consideration and historical homage. Using the gallery to exer/exorcise the mystical and discreet lost spaces of homosocial configuration, the artists have created a reason and a space to reflect on the cultural realness of homo-grown lesbian sexuality. The work aims to be a hedonistic and distinctly political adventure.”
AKB + ALS
Followed by a conversation with Burns, Steiner, and Velasco.
The Kitchen will be hosting a soundtrack release for Community Action Center on October 8.
Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door. MIX is doing a benefit raffle before the show, which you can get in on for a few dollars more.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.
P.S.: If you can’t make it that night, you can always read the Cliffs Notes.