Join us Thursday, March 27, at 7 pm, for a screening in our series a field of bloom and hum on film. This series, inspired by the exhibition a field of bloom and hum, is part of Whole Grain: Experiments in Film & Video.

The Hatred of Capitalism Program Notes

Inspired by queer filmmaker/performance artist Jack Smith—who was known for making art from detritus and for believing trash could be a fount of creative potential— this program of six films and videos embraces the magic of making something out of nothing. Postwar queer underground tactics were picked up and transformed by later generations who made powerful artworks with modest means and a spirit of play and transgression.

Little Stabs at Happiness (dir. Ken Jacobs, US, 1959–63, 15 min., 16mm)
Featuring Jack Smith. “Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement, as well as breaking out of step.” – Ken Jacobs

The Troublemakers (dir. GB Jones, US, 1990, 20 min., digital)
Surrounded by the vestiges of conspicuous consumption, four down-on-their-luck characters struggle to survive outside of society, fashioning their own aesthetics of poverty while navigating a surveillance state. Shot in the condemned home of director GB Jones and actors Caroline Azar and Bruce LaBruce, the film cost the price of the Super 8 film.

That Fertile Feeling (dirs. Keith Holland and John O’Shea, US, 1992, 9 min., digital)
Featuring Vaginal Creme Davis and Fertile La Toyah Jackson, this madcap punk comedy was part of the 1992 VHS Fertile La Toyah Jackson Video Magazine. Fertile’s water breaks as she and her friend Vaginal are watching TV. Turned away from the hospital because they don’t have health insurance, Fertile goes into labour on her boyfriend’s floor.

The Scary Movie (dir. Peggy Ahwesh, US, 1993, 8 min., 16mm)
“Peggy Ahwesh’s The Scary Movie [is an] amazingly complex (and just plain amazing) film informed by a wide range of issues and concerns, including feminism, psychoanalytic theory (especially Jacques Lacan), home-movie aesthetics, film genre conventions, and the notion of self-reflexivity in film…” – Patrick Friel

You Are a Lesbian Vampire (dir. Theo Jean Cuthand, US, 2008, 3 min., digital)
In the dark night of a prairie city, a vampire considers her future with a fetching mortal. But requiring blood for sustenance brings a host of problems to the relationship.

At Least You Know You Exist (dir. Zachary Drucker, US, 2011, 16 min., digital)
Investigating the erasure of transgender history, Zachary Drucker engages in a trans-generational dialogue with Mother Flawless Sabrina inside her New York City apartment—a salon for queers and artists since 1968. The acts the artists perform are embodied repertoires that transmit memory, identity and culture across time and space.

About a field of bloom and hum on film

Weaving together historical and contemporary film/video works by artists, this five-screening series, guest-curated by Jon Davies, pulls out threads and expands on the exhibition a field of bloom and hum, which focuses on queer lives and networks. How do we survive both individually and collectively when we are under threat? How does “queer” reimagine what kinship can be? What can we do for our elders and for those who will come after us? What lessons does the queer and trans past hold for our fraught present? Rethinking body and voice, the personal and the political, and the space between the living and the dead, each program draws on a queer cultural practice that was key to the 1980s–1990s—the era when the word “queer” was first reclaimed to name a new wave of radical activist, artistic and intellectual activity catalyzed by the (ongoing) AIDS pandemic—and considers its meaning, power and value today, in a time of great peril. All shorts programs bring together 16mm film and video.

a field of bloom and hum on film Screenings

– Thursday, March 20, 6 pm: A Room of One’s Own

– Thursday, March 27, 7 pm: The Hatred of Capitalism

– Thursday, April 3, 6 pm: The Dancer from the Dance

– Saturday, April 5, 2 pm: Eternal Homes of the Transient Heart

– Thursday, April 10, 6 pm: The Personal Is Political

All screenings are free and open to the public.

About Jon Davies

Jon Davies is a curator, writer and scholar from Montreal. In 2023, he received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University and co-curated the 68th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Queer World-Mending, with artist Steve Reinke, which took place at Skidmore College. He is the 2024–2025 General Idea Fellow at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

About Whole Grain

The Tang Teaching Museum’s Whole Grain series explores classic and contemporary work in experimental film and video. Whole Grain is organized by Assistant Director for Engagement Tom Yoshikami.