DUPLEX is pleased to present Magic Hour, a film festival and photograph show, exploring experiments in queer visual representation at The Box Saturday, June 22nd and Sunday, June 23rd, 2019.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
DUPLEX is honored to be hosting this series at The Box on the weekend leading up to the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Historically, such nightclubs have doubled as sites of liberation, confrontation, and inclusion through long histories of drag, burlesque, and performance embracing otherness and cultivating queer communities. Magic Hour pays homage to the Box, Stonewall Inn, and the spaces that came before them, which have long served as sites of refuge and resilience.
Programmed by Rebecca Celli, Both/And brings together short film, documentary, and video art that transgress binary categorization. Liquid, amorphous, flipped, such films revisit archives in elliptical visions, using subversive form to engage indeterminate, underrepresented queer pasts and reflect on the present. Recalling the process of making Birth of Gabin, a personal documentary exploring trans-identity and ambivalence, Elsa Aloisio writes “I made this film upside down.”
Matthew McMahon explores performance and theatricality in relation to contemporary queer identity in a photographic series from his book American Butter. Installed along the upstairs walls of The Box, McMahon chronicles his daily life and invites viewers to voyeuristically follow his movements through crowded nightclubs, fantastical parties, and intimate moments.
Filmmakers include Elsa Aloisio, Isidore Bethel, Cheryl Dunye & Ellen Spiro, Betzabé García, Lucas Habte, Aminah Ibrahim, Carlos Motta, Finn Grey Paul, Qigemu, Irit Reinheimer, Alex Schmidt, and Tourmaline.
AMERICAN BUTTER
Book Launch
Photographs by Matthew Mcmahon
Edited by Hollie Pollak
Matthew McMahon explores performance and theatricality in relation to contemporary queer identity in a photographic series from his book American Butter. Installed along the upstairs walls of The Box, McMahon chronicles his daily life and invites viewers to voyeuristically follow his movements through crowded nightclubs, fantastical parties, and intimate moments.
BOTH/AND
Film Program by rebecca celli
featuring 12 short films, documentaries, and video art.
