<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Great to hear your queer paranormal stories Jess. I was
envious of the yurt on the intergenerational camping co-op until I read on. Energetics,
haunted homes, emotional misreadings… Your assessment: “Queerness, grief, and
the paranormal evade seeing and naming precisely because they are always
already slippery and out of reach” resonates with me in relation to ideas
connected to the Bennington show, if not in general.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">I’m very curious if the term “queer paranormal” brings up
anything for others. Particularly during this holiday week filled with family
and chosen family organized around whitewashed histories of the United States.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Hello again with my Two Chairs hat on. It looks like images
have been posted on the Usdan Gallery website, so if you’re interested to see
what the Queer Paranormal exhibition looks like, here it is. (minus Lana Lin’s
film, APRIORI’s outdoor plantings and the sound installation in The Lens).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">EXHIBITION OVERVIEW</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><a href="https://www.bennington.edu/suzanne-lemberg-usdan-gallery/archive/queer-paranormal" style="color:blue">https://www.bennington.edu/suzanne-lemberg-usdan-gallery/archive/queer-paranormal</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">As Jessica pointed out, seeing and naming are slippery and
out of reach, so I think the works in the show don’t fit neatly into categories.
However, for the sake of building a linear text, we shoehorned the work into
three themes: Haunted House, Haunted Past; Mediums, ESP and Extra-Human
Manifestations; and Witches and Witchcraft. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">When asked about our inspiration for the project, one Two
Chair member recalled that they were “interested in exploring the queer past
because so much has been written about queer futurity.” The bulk of the artists
have ended up in this first category, “Haunted House, Haunted Past,” which
Jessica also seemed to evoke. Here are descriptions, from our Two Chairs text, of
projects by Anna Campbell, Zoe Walsh, Sasha Wortzel, Senem Pirler and Tony Do. More on others tomorrow.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Senem’s work is also featured today on Usdan’s Instagram (vibrators, sound from
electromagnetic energy!):</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">SENEM PIRLER’S UNEARTHLY VIBRATIONS</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B5VbW1YFzKD/" style="color:blue">https://www.instagram.com/p/B5VbW1YFzKD/</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">//</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Haunted House, Haunted Past</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In Anna Campbell’s 2018 installation “You know it pisses you
off . . . *</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Campbell’s use of ornate “ribboned” marquetry text
suggestive of opulent</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">interiors is used here on wood panels installed to suggest
urinal dividers in a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">dive bar. The text consists of excerpts from the English
translation of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body. The use of dividers
embodies the split</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">subject suggested by Wittig through the narrator’s use of
the slash between</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">m and y (m/y), where two lesbian bodies disrupt bodily
boundaries and</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">seemingly deconstruct each other. Dive bar bathrooms
traditionally have</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">been sites for sexual encounters, but Campbell’s lengthy
title suggests a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">memorial function as well. The title character, Sandy, is
haunted by memories</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">of writing on bathroom walls as a closeted lesbian at a
moment when the bar</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">was the only place where she could be “out,” resulting In
her bitter refusal to</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">partake in the possible pleasures associated with expanding
horizons of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">queer subjectivity.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:10pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Campbell’s “I have nothing to declare except my genius,”
said Oscar Wilde to</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">the customs agent. (2017) is a set of bronze fig leaves
recognizable as</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">traditional devices used to cover the genitals of nudes in
paintings and</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">sculptures, often applied centuries after a work was
executed. Applied or</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">removed as public and bureaucratic sentiments moved back and
forth</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">between the censorious and the progressive, their metonymic
presence</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">references the ideological relations that are ongoing in
display between art</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">and audience. The intention is, perhaps, to imagine or
conjure a viewer in need</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">of “protection” from some other, a viewer who, like
Jackson’s Eleanor, might</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">otherwise be compelled to “put her hands over her eyes” when
confronted by a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“marble statuary piece” that “was huge and grotesque and
somehow whitely</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">naked…” (x)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Campbell notes as well a crucial reference that binds this
work to</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">contemporary LGBTQ discussions surrounding gender:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Concurrently, the complex politics of exposure prompt
recognition of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">the violence in defoliation. This is especially so at a
moment in which</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“biological sex” is perverted to mean not the range of
biological</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">diversity in regards to a spectrum of sexual
characteristics, but rather</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">an immutable, “true,” and binary classification that has the
effect of an</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">invasive cis-sexist kudzu. In such a moment, armor that is
both</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">affective and made of metal may be necessary.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In Zoe Walsh’s paintings, architectural spaces and figures
emerge uncertainly</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">from layers of translucent cyan, magenta, and yellow
acrylic. In this series, the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">photographic source materials are stills from the set of the
1984 gay porn film</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Ramcharger that Walsh found at the ONE Archives in Los
Angeles. While</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">searching through archives, Walsh notes the “serendipitous
encounter,” a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">discovery that stimulates further investigation and digital
manipulation for a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">series of paintings. They cite Elizabeth Freeman’s book <i>Time Binds: Queer</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>Temporalities, Queer
Histories</i> as providing an approach for thinking about the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">pleasure inherent in such encounters: “Freeman theorizes the
possibility of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">alternative relationships to history and develops the idea
of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">‘erotohistoriography’ in which ‘against pain and loss,
erotohistoriography</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">posits the value of surprise, of pleasurable interruptions
and momentary</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">fulfillments from elsewhere, other times.’” (xi) The
paintings explode their</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">origins by articulating a trans-subjective space both tangible
and abstract.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The photographic sources, while queer, are haunted by
masculinity. Through</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Walsh’s interventions, hyper-masculine cowboys appear
genderless. Steve</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Garlick queries whether “gendered identities are the
equivalent of haunted</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">houses melancholic structures inhabited by the lost other?”
(xii) If this is the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">case, Walsh has developed a methodology rooted in
abstraction that counters</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">the melancholy in favor of investigating “the pleasures,
dichotomies, and</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">varied materializations of trans-subjectivity.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="font-size:10pt"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Sasha Wortzel’s work resurrects queer histories that are
buried or undercelebrated.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Her works in this exhibition use poetic means and the human
voice</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">to “haunt” us with two such narratives.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In 2012, just before Hurricane Sandy, Wortzel researched the
life of Julie</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Mindler, the only female sailor to be admitted, in 1965, to
Sailors’ Snug Harbor</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">home for aged sailors on Staten Island. At Snug Harbor,
Wortzel developed a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">series of projects under the umbrella <i>Eight Bells</i> (2013). As part of this</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">research, the artist organized a “séance-like sea shanty
gathering and</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">recording session.” The resulting audio, <i>Siren</i> (2013), performed by eight</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">women, is transmitted in the CAPA Lens on campus (and,
incidentally, in the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">only land-locked state in New England). Wortzel explains,
“Eight bells is a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">nautical euphemism meaning finished. It signaled that a
sailor's watch on the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">ship was over, [and] the death of a sailor is also marked
with the ringing of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">eight bells.” This sonic work “references time as ongoing, cyclical,
and</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">collective. Created with eight voices, it sounds singular
yet is plural/collective/</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">they. It is the echo and reverberation of the eighth bell, a
bell that is ongoing,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">constant, a hum in the background, underwater, subterranean.
. . .” The</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">dreamy and shifting drone soundscape lures us into an
altered state of</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">attention as we attempt to decipher something at the edge of
legibility, a</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">conjuring of distant but resonant histories.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Wortzel’s video <i>We
Have Always Been on Fire</i> (2018) features artist Morgan</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Bassichis performing a sorrowful song (which he wrote) while
standing on</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">ocean dunes in early morning light. The scene, shot in a
part of Fire Island that</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">has long been a queer gathering place, is intercut with
archival footage by</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">queer nightlife documentarian Nelson Sullivan shot in 1976,
preceding the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">AIDs crisis. Though the piece operates as a celebration of
queer culture and an</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">elegy of loss, an additional layer of meaning emerges in the
thematic context</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">of witchcraft in the exhibition. The condition of being “on
fire” can thus be</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">read as a sign of persecution. The culture’s slow response
in finding a cure for</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">the AIDs virus was, essentially, a death sentence for many
in the queer</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">community.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Senem Pirler’s audio installation, <i>Unearthly Vibrations</i> (2019), directly evokes</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">how the paranormal made its presence known in the Hill House
narrative:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">sudden sounds and movements that seemed to come from the
walls were</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">expressions of the house that dared to speak the
unspeakable. Here the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">sounds are amplifications of electromagnetic energy, played
over speakers in</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">the third-floor corridor of Jennings. Electromagnetic energy
pervades the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">environment via our many technologies but is usually
undetectable. When</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">made perceptible, the rhythms and intensities seem to have
an unpredictable</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">logic. Pirler has heightened the presence of this unseen
energy through the</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">overt intervention of recording—via audio and video—a
collection of vibrators</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">in a fish tank. The playful campiness of the animated sex toys
make explicit</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">the forbidden erotics that are repressed or merely implied
in Jackson’s story.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">As the artist herself articulates, the situation enabled
through amplifying these</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">vibrating others is “an opportunity to listen to their queer
desires. . . . How do</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">these nonhuman bodies move and what do they sound like when
they are not</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">controlled by human bodies? What can we observe about
queerness by</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">listening to them?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Tony Do’s wall installation in Jennings—<i>The Eye of Providence</i> (2019)—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">consists of hundreds of lenticular prints of a “blinking
eye” that appropriate</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">and alter eyes depicted on the reverse of the Great Seal of
the United States</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">and on the U.S. dollar bill. Says the artist: “This project
seeks to both enchant</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">and alienate the viewer by suggesting an intersection of
power corresponding</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">to divine benevolence as well as to the “evil eye” of
state-corporate</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">surveillance.” In this context, the blinking eyes echo the
”eyes” of Hill House</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">as described by Dr. Montague, the paranormal investigator in
Jackson’s novel:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“It watches. The house. It watches every move you make.”
(xiii) Dr. Montague’s</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">observation eerily references surveillance technologies
today that track our</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">movements with cameras and through our constant interaction
with GAFA</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">(Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple). Whereas the queer
paranormal gaze is</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">destabilizing (and not ontological), the state corporate
gaze is a disciplinary</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">and heteronormative apparatus; its main purpose is to
maximize the capitalist</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">system of production and consumption. The queer/paranormal
gaze</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">doesn't necessarily counter capitalism but remains resistant
to, somehow</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">outside of, capitalist logic.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">/</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">* Full title: <i>Anna Campbell, You know it pisses you off,
because like today,</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>everything is so open
and accepted and equal. Women, everyone goes to</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>where they wear
slacks, and I could just kick myself in the ass, because of all</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>the opportunities I
had that I had to let go because of my way. That if I was</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>able to dress the way
I wanted and everything like that I, Christ, I’d have it</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>made, really. Makes
you sick. And you look at the young people today that</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>are gay and they’re
financially well-off, they got tremendous jobs, something</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>that we couldn’t take
advantage of, couldn’t have it. It leaves you with a lot</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>of bitterness too. I
don’t go around to the gay bars much any more. It’s not</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>jealousy, it’s
bitterness. And I see these young people, doesn’t matter which</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>way they go, whatever
the mood suits them, got tremendous jobs, and you</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>just look at them, you
know, they’re happy kids, no problems. You say ‘God</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>damn it, why couldn’t
I have that?’ And you actually get bitter, you don’t</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>even want to know
them. I don’t anyway. ‘Cause I don’t want to hear about it,</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>don’t tell me your
success. Like we were talking about archives, you know</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>where mine is,
scratched on a shit-house wall, that’s where it is. And all the</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>dives in Buffalo that
are still standing with my name. That’s it, that’s all I got</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>to show.”</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">NOTES CONTINUED</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">(x) Shirley Jackson, <i>The
Haunting of Hill House</i> (New York:
Penguin,</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">2006), 79.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">(xi) Elizabeth Freeman, <i>Time
Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>Histories</i> (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 95.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">(xii) Jenen and Munt, <i>The
Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i>Cultures</i>, 27.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">(xiii) Jackson, 62.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">//</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Thanks for listening. <3</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Rachel / Two Chairs</p></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 5:04 PM Jessica Posner <<a href="mailto:jlposner@gmail.com">jlposner@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------</div><div><br></div>Hi, Everyone! <div><br></div><div>I hope you’re starting to slow down before the gear up of going to or returning to wherever it is you may be going or whatever it is you’ll be doing this emotionally fraught week. I am hoping that everyone on here has a moment to catch their breath and find some rest within. I am grateful to be invited to be invited to participate on this thread—as I feel like I was only just here on the thread remembering Carolee Schneeman, Barbara Hammer, and Grace Quintanilla! Thank you for this invitation, M. </div><div><br></div><div><div>I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to write about this week, but there are a few things that I think I’d like you to know about where I am within the QUEER PARANORMAL. I’ve been living deep in PARANORMAL QUEERNESS these last few years—and certainly this last year. This is going to get personal. </div><div><br></div><div>I feel like it might be helpful to explain the reasons I believe Margaretha invited me to contribute this week, as none of these things are really addressed in my professional bio or website (lolz). Please know that I offer this to you with tenderness and care: </div><div><ol><li>I was a colleague of Margaretha’s before we became friends—academics in the same department. We became friends after I insisted that I help ghostbust her house about a year ago around Halloween. I don’t know that the details matter much, but it was very intense, and we did it. Using sound, plants, potions, reiki, song, movement, and rhythm (and a variety of other tools); we managed to flip the energetics of a building that had been constricted for years. It was very powerful, and no one was surprised that we were able to do this. </li><li>I’m queer! I host a bi-monthly women’s event called FLANNEL at Wunderbar in Syracuse, NY. This October, I conducted a group ritual with at least hundred other queers in a parking lot. I burned mugwort harvested and dried from Margaretha’s garden. It was magic. I also had people screaming at the tops of their lungs on the dance floor all night— it was medicine. Please reach out if you’re interested in coming to our next one. </li><li>I’ve just returned from my father’s large suburban house in Philadelphia. His wife (who was quite cruel to me) died on my birthday last year (Oct. 3, 2018). I would spend the next few weeks preparing and hosting Shiva at their home. It was perhaps the most difficult weeks of my life. Part of the preparation for these weeks of mourning (for which I was excluded as a non-blood relative) included rendering a 3,600 sq foot home I never lived in ready for dozens of guests in a mater of three days. Neither my father nor his wife learned to let go of material things, so their home held 70+ years of stuff, paperwork, and memories. In some rooms, there was little room for anything else. With my help, my father has been purging his house in an effort to get it to market. Remarkably, he has done it (through some tough love and my own adaptation of Marie Kondo’s energetic methods). But as the house is now emptied of things, it is booming with the echo of my step-mother. She died while she was across the country, and had always intended to return to her big house filled with the things of her life. But now that she’s gone, as well as most of her things, her vibration echos loudly from the corners of drawers, rooms, and closets. My father wasn’t ready to do energy work to clear this yet, and the house hasn’t sold in a market in which it should have. I sprinkled dried plants in those corners before I left on Sunday. The feeling is that of a photograph. Before he became an engineer, my father was a photographer. He’s kept a darkroom in every house he’s lived in (which is many). </li><li>I built a yurt on my family’s intergenerational camping co-op in the Summer of 2018. One one hand, it happened with such grace and speed that it felt destined. But then many signs appeared that suggested this was not right: a severely sprained ankle, two concussions, hundreds of <span style="border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;line-height:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:Oxygen,sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Monotropa uniflora </span><span style="border:0px;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;line-height:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;font-family:Oxygen,sans-serif,Arial,Helvetica;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);font-style:normal">sprouting up around my yurt where nothing else would grow. Nightmares. Strife in personal relationships. I pulled some tarot cards about the yurt and it was always: images of lightning, of towers falling. In March of 2019, I was notified that my baby yurt had been crushed by a 100 ft, old growth tree that had been stuck by lightning. No-one was injured, but the yurt was destroyed. I had intended to share this space as a retreat for artists and healers, but this plan is now indefinitely stalled. I cannot afford to rebuild. </span></li><li><font face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">My art practice is largely a vehicle for bringing embodied energy work to the public. I spend great ef<font color="#333333">fort and focus on understanding the energetics of the language and materials I employ creatively— employing poetics as a method to move people into a state of emotional openness and transformation via their bodies. </font></span></font></li><li><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">My mother (with whom I have a very fraught relationship) revealed to me, literally from her hospital bed, that she believed me to be a person that I am not. In fact, the person she believed me to be was the opposite of who I have spent my life becoming. She misunderstood me on a soul level. This was very painful to hear and feel. </span></font></li><li><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">I’ve experienced a variety of sudden and mysterious physical ailments over the last few years. All of them occur suddenly, have no medical root, and resolve with the assistance of homeopathy, acupuncture, herbs, diet, and rest alone. Energy work is the only think that helps. </span></font></li><li><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">My relationship to academia is the most contingent it’s ever been at this moment, and it has always been contingent. I am starting Yoga Teacher Training in January, and am conducting embodied movement and yoga workshops in Central New York. This work feels good, but I’m not sure it is right.</span></font></li><li><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">My partner works at Syracuse University (where I have taught, may teach again, went to undergrad, and worked as staff and faculty), which has been besieged by white supremacist hate crimes over the past few weeks. I do not know that I can accurately describe the soul-level grief and pain that comes along with being a member of a minority identity targeted by hate crimes within your own community. It is, at times, unbearable. It is no question why people with the means to leave these kinds of contexts do. It is no question that those with the capacity to organize will. </span></font></li></ol><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica">It’s been a harrowing year for me (for the reasons listed above, but also for additional personal and professional reasons I won’t discuss here). I’ve been taking time. I was discussing the past year with a friend who is a queer artist working in spiritual realms, and she asked me what I needed in order to do the things I know I need to do next. She meant to help, but it felt overwhelming: accountability, deadlines, ways of turning up the pressure, lists, strategic planning, etc. I know all of these things, but they are of no use to me now. I told her I just needed time. I needed time to shift my own energy, and to slow down enough to allow a momentum to catch up with all of this grief. In this past six, twelve, and eighteen months I’ve experienced layers compounded grief. Grief is certainly a space with a way of keeping a very specific kind of time.</font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica">It makes me think of what Jose Esteban Munoz made so saliently clear in his first few paragraphs of <i>Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity:</i><span style="font-style:normal"> Queerness is on the horizon</span><i>. </i>If we read this along Sara Ahmed’s theory of queer phenomenology, we understand that the horizon is oblique—slippery. If we believe what Munoz and Ahmed are saying, then queerness is always out of reach. It’s sitting in time. Looking. Slipping. Navigating gravity on a round earth that is always already spinning, tilted. I think of how now all we have of Jose is his words, echoing like a photograph. </font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica">This is what I’ve learned this year: Not everything that forces change is a blessing. Sometimes painful things happen for no reason, but that does not mean that they will not change the course of your life. I do not believe that the breaking of a curse and a blessing are the same things. Some things hurt much more than the others, and we must make these distinctions. </font></div><div><br></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica">I believe some of the most powerful energetic medicine is seeing, naming, and accepting things for what they are. Queerness, grief, and the paranormal evade seeing and naming precisely because they are always already slippery and out of reach. In order to accept them, to work with and through them; we must learn to recognize exactly what it is we cannot yet see. </font></div><div><br></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica">I hope these notes are interesting as a framing device for my approach to this concept of the Queer Paranormal—which for me, is deeply personal. </font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica">Tomorrow I hope to lighten things up a bit, by sharing my favorite queer paranormal story of the notorious, early 20th century French medium </font><a href="http://jessicaposner.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/BirthofEctoplasmDuringSeancewiththeMediumEvaCJulietteAlexandre-Bisson.jpg.jpg" target="_blank">Eva C. and her lesbian lover, conspirator, and photographer Juliette Alexendre-Bisson</a><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span> (</span></font><a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/284437" target="_blank">image record</a><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span>, via the Met.)</span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span>In queerness and grief, </span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span>Jess</span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span>Jessica Posner</span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><a href="mailto:jlposner@gmail.com" target="_blank">jlposner@gmail.com</a></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><a href="http://jessicaposner.com" target="_blank">jessicaposner.com</a></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><a href="http://vimeo.com/jessicaposner" target="_blank">vimeo.com/jessicaposner</a></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><br></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div><div><font color="#333333" face="Oxygen, sans-serif, Arial, Helvetica"><span><br></span></font></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><br><font size="2">Rachel Stevens<br><a href="mailto:racheljstevens@gmail.com" target="_blank">racheljstevens@gmail.com</a><br><a href="mailto:rachel.stevens@hunter.cuny.edu" target="_blank">rachel.stevens@hunter.cuny.edu</a><br>NYC</font></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font size="1"><br></font></div><div dir="ltr"><a href="http://rachelstevens.net/" style="font-size:x-small" target="_blank">www.rachelstevens.net</a><font size="1"><br>Editorial Board – <a href="http://www.mfj-online.org/" target="_blank">Millennium Film Journal</a></font></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:x-small">Adjunct Assistant Professor – </span><a href="http://ima-mfa.hunter.cuny.edu/" style="font-size:x-small" target="_blank">IMA MFA</a><span style="font-size:x-small">, Film and Media Studies, Hunter College, NYC</span><font size="1"><br>Curatorial Collaborator – <a href="https://www.facebook.com/twochairsprojects" target="_blank">Two Chairs Projects</a></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>