Steve Reinke is joining us to share his ongoing video essay Final Thoughts alongside a showcase of his other short essay work in The Genital is Superfluous: Final Thoughts, Series Four. Final Thoughts is Reinke’s on-going video essay. Components will be added until his death.
The Genital is Superfluous: Final Thoughts, Series Four follows a previous program Rib Gets in the Way: Final Thoughts, Series Three which was made for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. In that video, the narrator, having recently turned 50, takes stock of his life and decides which projects to continue and which to abandon.
Throughout this program, Reinke tries different methods to structure his disparate, aphoristic materials into compellingly coherent essays. In his video, The Natural Look, constructed from footage found on-line, it takes as its theme all things placental and structures itself around a movement from the human, through the animal and vegetal, to the mineral. Particular aphorisms of Clarice Lispector and E. M. Cioran structure this journey. A Boy Needs a Friend takes friendship as its ostensible theme, but really is about queer bonding.In Welcome to David Wojnarowicz Week, the narrator proposes a new holiday and outlines, day by day, how he celebrated it in 2016. Through his unique diaristic approach, Reinke adopts an intimate, frankly confessional voice, full of humor and good-will. He will be in attendance for discussion following the film talking about his approach to the essay, identity, and performance.
