Empty History

20.11.19 – 13.12.19
Vtape, The Researcher is Present Curatorial Residency

Lucas Michael (New York, NY), Deirdre Logue (Toronto, ON), and Paul Wong (Vancouver, BC)

The resultof a yearlong research residency at Vtape, Empty History examines how artists use video to un-work the narrative conventions of queer history. Empty History thinks through that which representations of historical progress cannot do, as well as the ways in which such representations erase and obscure forces of inaction, non-productivity, and worklessness. The works on display pursue pleasure in the broken, the unchanging, and the everyday. They refuse resolution and finality, opening up a space of perpetually unfinished business in which action always already fails to result in change. And this is not for lack of care. At stake is the negotiation of an intensified lateral movement that exists in between meaning and disfunction, acting out and stepping back, seeking change and giving up. Within the frame of the screen, life itself is presented in a fixed state. Highlighting performances that cannot be assimilated into totalizing narratives of shared history, EmptyHistory raises the possibility of curating “queer” beyond teleology.

Images courtesy of Vlad Lunin