Eyeblink: Smash the Patriarchy

Online ticket sales are now closed. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door starting at 8 pm.
$10 General / $8 Gardiner Friends, Pleasure Dome Members, Students

Co-presented by Younger Than Beyoncé (YTB) Gallery, Pleasure Dome, and Gardiner Museum

Please note: Students can use the coupon code “studenteyeblink” to receive a 20% discount on tickets. Student IDs will be checked at the door.

In support of the Gardiner Museum’s exhibition YOKO ONO: THE RIVERBED, Eyeblink is a three-part monthly screening and performance series that draws inspiration from Ono’s 1960s and 1970s filmmaking.

8 pm: Doors open
9 pm: Event starts

In her written instructions for her 1970 film Fly, Ono characterizes the film as, “about a fly going from the toe to the head of a naked body, crawling very slowly.” The conflict between voyeurism and empathy play a central role in Ono’s Freedom and Fly (both 1970), where female bodies are shown in positions of prolonged discomfort, invoking a mixed response from viewers of lust, revulsion, anger, and a shared unease.

This co-presentation with Younger Than Beyoncé (YTB) Gallery, Pleasure Dome and the Gardiner Museum is inspired by the underlying feelings of rage and empathy witnessed by the audience in Freedom and Fly.

In the Gardiner’s lobby, Pleasure Dome will screen Frances Leeming’s iconic The Orientation Express in an installation format. Her pop art animations are hitched to a feminist train of unending wit and corporate takedowns.

Upstairs, YTB Gallery has devised Smash The Patriarchy; a party engaging with enragement. Partygoers are encouraged to scream, shout, dance wildly and support each other’s righteous anger at the patriarchy. The party includes performances by Ronnie Clarke and Annie Wong which explore rage, empathy, and in the case of Wong’s We’re Winning So No Comment, multiple perspectives on intersectional feminism. Films by Kelsey Whyte depict the hellish discomfort of the model/actress in a dystopian photo shoot that invoke similar sensations of unease as in Ono’s films. These artworks spark outrage, but also encourage empathy and listening between different experiences and forms of oppression within feminism, and encourage conversation about how feminism has changed since Ono’s films were released in the 1970s.

Admission includes entry to YOKO ONO: THE RIVERBED.

Co-presenters

Younger Than Beyoncé (YTB) Gallery is a nomadic, D.I.Y. gallery for emergent and experimental art practices. YTB provides discursive space for critical conversations and risk-taking through new configurations of audience, artists, and community.

Pleasure Dome is an artist-run exhibition collective dedicated to the presentation of artist’s movies. Since the fall of 1989, PD’s porous board structure has ensured a shape-shifting openness to new artists, forgotten histories, and fringe presentation models. We have published books, posters and zines, organized tours, made zillions of studio visits and partnered with orgs the size of small asteroids and others that require specialized science gear just to pick them out of the landscape. We believe in artists first, the voice of the artist, the payment of artists. Everything else follows from that.

Header image: Still from a Kelsey Whyte work. Image courtesy of the artist / YTB.