Cart 0
Cart 0

PSYCHIC COMMUNITIES

Luminous Procuress (Steven Arnold, 1971)

Luminous Procuress (Steven Arnold, 1971)

Psychic Communities is a programme of exhibitions and events at The Horse Hospital looking at community-forming mechanisms that operate beyond verbal and visual transmission through sensual, sexual, spiritual, embodied and tacit forms of connection.

 
 
 
Unknown photographer, Untitled (Stephen Varble in the Typewriter Ribbon Dress), late 1970s.

Unknown photographer, Untitled (Stephen Varble in the Typewriter Ribbon Dress), late 1970s.

Curated by David J. Getsy, Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings to light the work of performance artist Stephen Varble (1946–1984) through the photographs taken by Greg Day (b.1944) of his costumes, performances, and collaborations.

In costumes made from street trash, food waste, and stolen objects, Stephen Varble took to the streets of 1970s New York City to perform his “Gutter Art.” With disruption as his aim, he led uninvited costumed tours through the galleries of SoHo, occupied Fifth Avenue gutters, and burst into banks and boutiques in his gender-confounding ensembles. Varble made the recombination of signs for gender a central theme in his increasingly outrageous costumes and performances. While maintaining he/him as his pronouns, Varble performed gender as an open question in both his life and his work, sometimes identifying as a female persona, Marie Debris, and sometimes playing up his appearance as a gay man. Only later would the term “genderqueer” emerge to describe the kind of self-made, non-binary gender options that Varble adopted throughout his life and in his disruptions of the 1970s art world.

 
Jimi DeSana, Stephen Varble, documentation of Gutter Art performance, November 1975.

Jimi DeSana, Stephen Varble, documentation of Gutter Art performance, November 1975.

In the United Kingdom and the United States, the 1970s were a time of economic anxiety and uncertainty. This decade also saw the flourishing of performance art that was confrontational to commercialism, to propriety, and to the public.

Dominic Johnson, author of Unlimited Action: The Performance of Extremity in the 1970s, and David Getsy, curator of The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble: Genderqueer Performance in the 1970s, will discuss the ways in which performance artists infiltrated public discourses, created extreme or aggressive works, and brought new questions about gender and sexuality to the fore.

 
Luminous Procuress (Steven Arnold, 1971)

Luminous Procuress (Steven Arnold, 1971)

Nocturnal Dream Show: Luminous Procuress

Saturday, 16 November 2019 | 7:30pm - late

A one-night only staging of a 'Nocturnal Dream Show' - Steven Arnold's infamous weekly midnight movie showcases held at San Francisco's 'Chinese Movie Theatre' in the 1970s which helped launch San Francisco's 'hippie acid freak drag queen troupe' The Cockettes into fame.

The evening's bill includes a screening of Steven Arnold's only film, 'Luminous Procuress', a selection of underground shorts from The Horse Hospital's archives and impromptu performances from special guests including the last chanteuse Anne Pigalle in a fantastical theatrical setting. A truly one-of-a-kind theatre-film extravaganza.

 
Image: Amy Gwatkin

Image: Amy Gwatkin

Drift Fright –_


Drift Fright – Performance and Live Installation

Saturday 23rd November 2019 | 7pm – late

New Noveta
Elena Bushueva
Sophie Sleigh-Johnson

Admission includes 'Psychic Communities' publication featuring an essay commission by Philomena Epps

Drift Fright – Reading salon with Sophie Sleigh-Johnson

Atlantis Bookshop [Off Site] | Tuesday 19th November 2019 | 7pm – 9pm

Drift Fright – Spatial Augmented Reality workshop led by Elena Bushueva

A workshop for Cockpit Wednesday Studio Project artists from Action Space, a visual arts organisation dedicated to artists with learning disabilities.

Wednesday 20th November 2019 | 11am – 2pm

Trapped in Drift Fright

Around the walls, the bed * We cutting, find the flow***Flee, but while fleeing, pick up a weapon Now, levels will be layered for the love of disruption***The head, wrangles

Crossing over crossing***makes drills see the person***Opening new lines of panic and joy.

New Noveta (the Taskers) are trapped in Drift Fright, a sinister force that prevents their leaving and is the current that transmits them, where co-performers Elena Bushueva (the Judge) and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson (Remote Viewer) mediate and weaponise their Drift in the Horse Hospital.

Disturbing the construction of the real: through projection, and digital avatars, temporal zones within and without the Horse Hospital, give time, presence and technology a life of its own. The Drift Fright is a current that carries this panic, sinister currents of city: but also a galvanising weapon. 

Psychic Communities –_ Drift Fright is a one-week residency for artists New Noveta, Elena Bushueva and Sophie Sleigh-Johnson to consider how anxiety and other invisible disabilities can be made perceivable and explore their mediation through sensory performance practices, bodies and audio-visual technology.

The residency features a newly commissioned collaborative live performance, a reading salon at Atlantis Bookshop with Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, and a Spatial Augmented Reality workshop led by Elena Bushueva for Cockpit Wednesday Studio Project artists from Action Space, a visual arts organisation dedicated to artists with learning disabilities.

 

LIP BAR

Wednesday, 11 December 2019 | 7:30pm - late

A circus of live and recorded sound, with live performances from Vindicatrix, Vanessa Cognizance and Shakeeb Abu Hamdan, as well recorded works from Charmaine Lee, Glands Of External Secretion, Piano Grande and Mark Gomez.

LIP BAR is a collaborative event organised by London-based curatorial projects Silver Road, Muckle Mouth and Apologies in Advance combining live and recorded sound and performance.