SELECTED WORKS OF CHARLES LUM aka CLUBLUM

At Collective:Unconscious, 279 Church St. (south of Canal St.)
April 14th, 7:30 pm, $5                                                                                                          

MIX NYC is pleased to present selected videos of Charles Lum, longtime
contributor to our annual festival. Lum’s short video collection has been exhibited internationally. Varied in content, most works deal confrontationally with gay sexuality ethics and how the changing realities of HIV affect culture and personal experience . Running time 55 minutes.
 at Collective: Unconscious
 279 Church St.
 "black  (n, adj.)"
2005, Video, Color, Sound, 4 min.
 Places Microsoft Word's Dictionary definitions of the word "black" over dance floor footage and a two-camera interview with performance artist EggMan at the infamous Black (‘circuit’) Party in New York.
 A video about sub-cultures, behavior and the flexibility of definition, "black  (n, adj.)" weaves through a verbal dialogue of unsafe sexual activities from a context where such behavior is normative. The definitions invite the superimposition of an AIDS fearing political climate of viral hysteria over the opposite context of uninhibited sexual license. In stark affect, "black  (n, adj.)" exposes social power as manifest within language itself.

OVERDUE CONVERSATION
2004/2006, Video, Color, Sound, 9 min.
A confrontational work that analyses media, intimacy and AIDS in triple critique, Overdue Conversation aims at the deconstruction of the documentary interview by creating a triangle between two differing individual video perspectives and the audience. By eliminating camera crew and crosscut editing, the video-maker, subjects, and audience become witnessing participants and editors in a candid video confrontation over sexual truthfulness. Forced to choose ‘sides’ viewers must make their own decisions on issues of personal vs. public freedoms, privacy, HIV disclosure, sexual dynamics and legality.

IML 2003/part one: Pissies Not Sissies  

2005, Video, Color, Sound, 9 min.
"IML 2003-part one: Pissies Not Sissies" is the first installment of a trilogy exploring the International Mister Leather Contest, the largest gathering of leather S& M enthusiasts in the world.
"Pissies Not Sissies" takes dueling cameras into the contest men's room to raise questions of performance, embarrassment, desire and voyeurism in a confrontational and shocking display of fetishism. This invites an analysis of assimilation and conformity within subcultures that still demand an “acceptable” public face. In “Pissies Not Sissies,” “the IML Boys” dare to step into the stall, to see it, to taste it, and then show it to all!

IML-2003/part three: DOG EAT DOG- 2005

12 Minutes
DOG EAT DOG  is the third installment of a trilogy depicting the antics of the IML Boys, a group of New York artists attending the 2003 International Mister Leather Contest in Chicago. Lively dog dedicated pop songs and three cameras re-create the immersive ambiance of this intense and overwhelming fetish convention experience. The inherent nature of performance in sexual identity is observed through the IML Boy’s live participation in the first ‘sanctioned’ Puppy Party event at IML.

SEX MANIC

2006,Video, Color, Sound, 5 min.
Reflecting a post-antiviral arena of sexual promiscuity for urban gay men, the monologue appears to indict members of the gay community for violating HIV disclosure laws. Is criminalization a threat to the already tenuous environment of optional disclosure, status awareness and personal sexual responsibility normalized within some gay communities?

Morning, Noon & Night            
2004,Video, Color, Sound, 10 min.
Morning, Noon & Night is a haunting trilogy about living a day with AIDS.
Abstract, direct and unapologetically candid, three short films are stitched together like a photographic collage with outtakes from "The Hours" as their glue.
 "Electric Calf" is an abstract rumination about the body's malfunction, "Pills" races through the endless rituals of medication, and "Glory" brings you into the dark world of an actual clandestine encounter.

INDELIBLE
2005, video, Color, Sound, 8 min.
Indelible is a cavalcade and crescendo of appropriated images that suggest an aborted narrative about emasculated machismo, femininity, fear, shame, bloodlust, sexual desire, disease, retribution and death in an American pop cultural spray of blood and semen that builds to an explosive, cathartic climax.