LADA Screens: Narcissister

NARCISSISTER

Organ Player

14 November 2019

Against the backdrop of her colourful performances, acclaimed mixed media and performance artist Narcissister reflects upon the impact her mother’s life, illness and death has had on her work in this intimate scrapbook of a documentary. Through pointed and provocative set pieces, animation and calming, heartfelt home videos, the masked artist keeps her face under its shroud and yet bares her soul, tangling her identity with that of her mother and producing her most emotionally vulnerable work yet.

We are thrilled that Narcissister will be joining us for this event for a Q&A following the screening.

Dir: Narcissister

USA 2018, 91 mins

Cert: 15*

This event is presented in partnership with Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Festival which takes place in East London between 12-17 Nov 2019 .

Biography

Narcissister is a Brooklyn-based artist and performer. Wearing mask and merkin, she works at the intersection of performance, dance, art, and activism. She actively integrates her prior experience as a professional dancer and commercial artist with her art practice in a range of media including photography, video art, and experimental music. She has presented work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums, and galleries. Her art video Vaseline won Best Use of a Sex Toy at the 2008 Good Vibrations Erotic Film Festival. In 2013 she received a Bessie Award nomination for the theatrical performance of Organ Player and in 2015 she received Creative Capital and United States Artists Awards.

Interested in troubling the popular entertainment and experimental art divide, she appeared on America’s Got Talent in 2011. Her first feature film Narcissister Organ Player premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2018. Also in 2018 she had a solo exhibition at Participant Inc. gallery in New York. In collaboration with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, she is a Sundance Theatre Lab 2018 Fellow for the development of a new evening-length performance commissioned by the Soho Rep in New York that will premiere in autumn 2019. She will complete the Artpace Residency in San Antonio, Texas in summer 2019.

About LADA Screens

LADA Screens is a series of free, online screenings of seminal performance documentation, works to camera, short films/video and archival footage. It is part of Live Online, LADA’s dedicated space where you can watch short videos and films drawn from LADA’s Study Room or generated through our programmes and initiatives.

Each screening will be available to view for a limited time only, and will be launched with a live event at our space in Bethnal Green, London. Online art magazine, thisistomorrow will also feature the films on their website for the duration of the screenings.

LADA Screens is curated by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). LADA is a ‘Centre for Live Art’: a knowledge centre, a production centre for programmes and publications, a research centre setting artists and ideas in motion, and an online centre for digital experimentation, representation and dissemination.

For more information about LADA Screens please contact Alex Eisenberg.