As a queer feminist, I find representations of myself in American culture seldom. When I do, it’s more often in music (Le Tigre, The Gossip) than in the art world. Seeing Wynne Greenwood‘s video work with K8 Hardy last Saturday night made my queer feminist little light shine brighter than it has in a long time.
New Report, 2005. With K8 Hardy.
At Hiawatha Artist Lofts, she showed several of her and K8′s videos as the first event in Feminist Form, Wynne’s screening series of feminist and queer video from the Pacific Northwest. The screenings will take place monthly, with future locations and dates to be announced.
The videos were pretty simple in form, yet boundless conceptually. In several, Wynne and K8 were news anchors, both named Henry. They plodded forward in their pursuits as news anchors without entirely knowing what they were doing. They were pregnant with. . . motivation, mostly. The videos are hilarious, but at the same time, breathtakingly serious. I think I was sitting on the edge of my seat the entire screening.
For one, they’re sitting as though on a panel; the panelists are Henry Iragary (K8), Henry Stein-Acker-Hill (Wynne), a furry pussy (K8′s, we presume) and a breast (Wynne’s, supposedly). Henry and Henry are pregnant with deliberation as they try to talk about the objectification of women. I, for one, felt pregnant with anticipation during their attempts— which were all the while animated by the dislocated (“cut off– as if by a knife”) body parts floating sheepishly next to them. Oh yeah, also: K8′s legs are spread under the table with a camera pointed at her crotch, and Wynne’s shirt is haphazardly pinned up to reveal her left breast.
There are so many things that can go wrong when one attempts to represent feminism that the disappointingly few self-proclaimed feminist artists seem to have largely given up. A self-proclaimed queer feminist, Wynne Greenwood has not given up, and when you encounter her work you forget that feminism was ever considered a bad word. At least, that’s the way it seemed last Saturday. And each month the crowd is just going to get bigger.
Thank you, Wynne. I’m so glad you live in my city. And I’m so glad the city we live in knows you’re a genius.
