Teenage Dream Sequence: Seduction of the Eye

December 15 – January 5
Performance Sunday December 15, 6pm
Exhibition Opening Reception, Thursday December 19, 6-9pm

Microscope is pleased to present KATHERINE BAUER, Teenage Dream Sequence: Seduction of the Eye, the third in a series of live film performance events and exhibitions, following the 2010 Black Sabbath Black Mass and this year’s Invocation of Joan of Arc, which took place at Cité Internationale des Arts, in Paris. With Seduction…, the New York-based artist continues her series inspired by coming of age rites of the American female teenager – rock & roll rebellion, teen idolization, “dirty” novels, etc. – addressing that time of transition in an interpretation of Georges Bataille’s 1928 “The Story of the Eye”.

”[Seduction…] is about the seduction of the eye, of seeing and the desires that it creates. Or of not seeing… about what we do not see… what is not there, what is imagined, in the way that [Bataille’s] novel is not about sex but desire and fantasy of discovering unknown secrets of life and death of birth and excess, death and denial.” KB

Seduction… opens with a 16mm film performance event (on 12/15) that doubles as an apparatus for the live production of photograms, which along with the film loops, projectors and ephemera from the event – the only evidence of the event that took place – will be mounted in an exhibition (opening on 12/19). The experiential, mysterious, and uncertain nature of Bauer’s work draws influence from 1960s expanded cinema, the ritualism and black magic of Kenneth Anger, Viennese Actionism, and body art among others. Seduction… may also be seen as a “literal cinema”, or a work in which content is further considered as an exploration of the material and technological nature of celluloid film and its projection.

During the performance, light from 16mm film loops, projecting images of the eyes of the female performers onto their actual eyes, exposes photosensitive paper, positioned as both stage and backdrop, to capture impressions of the bodies and objects in the room. Bataille’s concepts of vision and liquids surface in the performance culminating as an erotic presence, summoned and transferred through milk, urine, and raw egg. Sound is an important and purposeful coalescence of the voices of the performers reading excerpts from Bataille’s “Story…”, analog synth compositions, and the hum of the rotating film strips.

The artworks in Seduction… are conceived not as remnants or residues, but as temporal crystallizations – the filmic surface itself composed of crystals – of the forces at play during the performance. Bauer states, “…the images are not representations, just as the performance is not an adaptation of The Story of the Eye – instead they are presentations, making its content present…”

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KATHERINE BAUER works primarily with 16mm film and its material potential for sculpture, photography and installation. Much of her work involves mythologies, folklores, and narratives. Her work has previously exhibited at Participant Inc., NY; Shoot the Lobster, Dusseldorf, Germany; Place Gallery, Portland, Oregon; and Immanence Gallery, Paris, France among others. Bauer holds a BA in film and electronic arts from Bard College and a MFA from NYU Steinhardt (2013). Bauer currently lives and works in New York.