Tag Archives: Institute of Contemporary Art University of Pennsylvania

QUEER PLAY AT ICA

Curated by Nayland Blake and Kate KraczonTAG—PROPOSALS ON QUEER PLAY AND THE WAY FORWARD showcases more than a dozen video, sculpture, painting, installation, photography, and performance works, including Living Room, by A. K. Burns.

“I’m interested in genres because they give me something to push against—I don’t care about staying true to a genre, rather I’m interested in finding its edges, exploring what it is through what it isn’t…

“[The video installation] Living Room is very dark and dystopic, bodies are constantly under duress of some sort, until the last scene in the basement when there is a liberating dance sequence. In this scene, the dancers are all wearing t-shirts with language extracted from recent campaign slogans. So the shirts say ‘Or Bust,’ ‘Her,’ and ‘Again.’ Those bodies are moving, dancing in and out of sync, recirculating and reinscribing this language with a new form of agency. The video works are all set in a speculative present, where the now and fantasy can interact.” — A. K. Burns*

TAG—PROPOSALS ON QUEER PLAY AND THE WAY FORWARD

Through August 12.

Institute of Contemporary Art

University of Pennsylvania

118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia.

A.K. Burns
Video stills from Living Room, 2017.
2-Channel HD color, sound, 36min.
Images courtesy of the artist, Callicoon Fine Arts, NY and Michel Rein Gallery, Paris.
(Keyon Gaskin and A.L. Steiner below.)