A blurry image shows several people standing close together bathed in red light.
Representative Image by Lauren Bakst. Courtesy of the artist.

Lauren Bakst

after summer, or not in the kitchen (the bed, the bathroom, the dance floor and other spaces)

On View: December 11-December 14, 2019

The Kitchen at Queenslab, The Kitchen OnScreen

Time:

8 pm

While in residence through The Kitchen at Queenslab, Lauren Bakst will develop a new performance project titled after summer, or not in the kitchen (the bed, the bathroom, the dance floor and other spaces). Lessons from encounters; a love story between desire and abjection; movement that emerges from contact: after summer is a map of and for an everyday erotics.

In Bakst’s words: “after summer begins where my previous work More Problems with Form left off, which involved my mother and I reenacting a scene from Chantal Akerman’s 1978 film Les Rendez-Vous d’Anna. In rehearsing, performing, and filming this scene together, we were able to have an encounter that would not have been possible with the scripts we already have for relating to each other. after summer begins with the question of what that gesture opened up—a re-orientation of the erotic from the most intimate (in bed with mom) to refractions of an expanded social field. I am paying attention to the unexpected, inopportune, and inappropriate formations of intimacy that emerge in minor social and psychic spaces. What forms of unknowing do these encounters propose? This is the landscape of my desire, and I will try to move through it.”

Curated by Matthew Lyons.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Created and performed by Lauren Bakst Lighting Design by Madeline Best Sound Design by Ian Douglas-Moore Video Design by Ryan Holsopple Costume Design by Chanterelle Menashe Ribes Publication Design and Printing by Connie Yu

BIO

Lauren Bakst is an artist, writer, and scholar working through experimental performance. Her practices engage the social life of study and the possibilities of dissonant communion. Lauren's performance works include after summer, or not in the kitchen (the bed, the bathroom, the dance floor and other spaces) (2019) and More Problems with Form (2019). Her writing has been published by Wendy's Subway and she has been a part of the editorial team of the Movement Research Performance Journal. Lauren has taught at University of the Arts School of Dance and The Cooper Union. She is currently working toward Vol. 3 of the School for Temporary Liveness and is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania.

FUNDING SUPPORT & CREDITS

Lauren Bakst received a Late-Stage Production Stipend grant from Mertz Gilmore Foundation and residency support from MANA Contemporary. This program is made possible with support from Howard Gilman Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, and The Harkness Foundation for Dance; and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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