BREAK
PART TWO:
Companions
During a three month residency serving as the Goethe at LUX Artist in Residence, Liz Rosenfeld created a new filmic work entitled, Fuck Tree. After spending time in the LUX film archive, Liz came across Luther Price‘s film, Sodom (1989.) At the time of its completion, Sodom was questioned for its depiction of the AIDS Crisis and reflections on ‘pre- AIDS’ gay culture. After extensive research into the history, methodology and imagery of Sodom, Liz decided to create a new film which portrays an infamous tree in the cruising area of Hampstead Heath and reflects on her own questions relating to queer historical public space and shifting ecologies. Taking from Luther Price's methodologies of eroding film, Rosenfeld buried parts of her original print in the LUX Garden and also soaked it in her own cum. Together, Rosenfeld considers these works to address questions dealing with queer dystopia, a positive embrace of apocalypse, invisible genocide, while drawing parallels between the way information was publicly disseminated in the early days of the AIDS/ HIV crisis, and the current spread of information about climate change and environmental destruction. She has made Fuck Tree as a companion piece to Sodom, specifying that it can only ever be screened publicly alongside Luther Price’s film.
SODOM (1989, 25 min) by
dir Luther Price, US, 1989, 25min
‘Power, control, brutality – all are there, companions to lust and pleasure – even the sex and death equation whether related to AIDS or not… Sade and Bataille both explored the darker side of sex, as has Kenneth Anger. It seems to me that Luther Price has upped the ante. I see Sodom as part of a tradition whose precursors, perhaps, are Anger’s Fireworks and Genet’s Un Chant d’Amour. These films, now distanced by history, challenged received notions of sexual portrayal and were controversial in their time. There have been few films that dealt with gay sexuality since.’ – Michael Wallin
FUCK TREE
dir Liz Rosenfeld, 2017, UK, 9 min
Created as a companion work to Luther Price's infamous film, Sodom (1989,) FUCK TREE is an encounter of a relationship between the filmmaker and a historically infamous tree in Hampstead Heath. Rosenfeld's experimental film portraits her afiar with this tree, and it's usefulness in the way that ecology has and continues to holds space for queers to conviene, fuck, and occupy public space.
TRT: 80 min
Presented in association with LUX.
Doors: 6pm