A.K. Burns (b. 1975) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator focused on the body as a site of social and political tumult, who uses video, installation, sculpture and drawing to query the space between materiality and language. Each chosen medium reflects her personal bond to cultural phenomena, questioning and reshaping “economies of gender, labor, ecology, and sexuality”.

Selected exhibitions: Fault Lines, Callicoon Fine Arts, New York (2017, solo); ANY MEANS, Michel Rein, Paris (2017, solo); Shabby but Thriving, The New Museum, New York (2017, solo); What We Know that We Don’t Know, Kadist, San Francisco (2017); A.K. Burns, A Smeary Spot, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland (2016, solo); A SMEARY SPOT (opening of Negative Space), Participant Inc., New York (2015, solo); Poetry parade for Site and Sight, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015, solo); Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2014).

A.L. Steiner (b. 1967) utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, performance, writing and curatorial work. She describes herself as a “skeptical queer eco-feminist androgyne”. Her artworks are often made in collaboration with numerous writers, performers, designers, activists and artists. Steiner is co-curator of Ridykeulous, co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) and a collective member of Chicks on Speed.

Selected exhibitions: From Self to #Selfie, Queer Cultural Center @ SOMArts, San Francisco (2017); The Public Body .02, Artspace, Sydney (2017); Divided States of America, The LGBT Community Center, New York (2017); 30 Days of Mo:)rning, Koenig & Clinton, New York (2016, solo); Greatest Hits, Arcadia Missa + Deborah Schamoni Galerie, London (2016, solo, with Phoebe Collings-James); The Sun Placed in the Abyss, Columbus Museum of Art (2016); The Artist’s Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2016); On Limits: Estrangement in the Everyday, The Kitchen, New York (2016); Come & Go, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2015, solo); The Art Of Our Time, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2015).
She participated in the SeMA Biennale: Mediacity 2016 (Seoul), the Whitney Biennial (New York, 2014) and the “Made in L.A. 2014” biennial (Los Angeles, 2014).

This film is inspired by the the porn production aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s, especially lesbian ones, a tribute to this historical moment infused with an act of emancipation. The work of the two artists is a contemporary feminist manifestation that serves both as a poem and as a safety valve. Sexuality and the complexity of gendered bodies are intrinsically political. Therefore, the film is the archive of an intergenerational community based on friendship, sex and art. The artists reflect on the cultural reality of gay sexuality and, at the same time, aim at a distinctly hedonistic and political adventure. The film explores the expansive vision of what is defined as “sex” and revisits the typical paradigms of porn, deliberately exploiting the comic aspects, mingled with critical considerations. For this film, actors and performers have created gender roles, both real and fantastic, on a soundtrack stemming from international sisterhood.

Images:

1. A.K. Burns [left] & A.L. Steiner [right], Portrait

2. A.K. Burns & A.L. Steiner, Community Action Center (2010), video still, courtesy of: A.K. Burns, A.L. Steiner; Callicoon Fine Arts, New York; Deborah Schamoni Galerie, Munich; Koenig & Clinton, New York; photo credits: A.L. Steiner