12th Annual Experimental Lecture
NYU’s Cinema Studies Department and Undergraduate Film & TV Department present the 12th Annual Experimental Lecture
Friday, Nov. 11, 2022, 7:00 PM
Michelson Theater, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor
Free and open to the public in-person. RSVP required.
"Under Our Skin - An Exquisite Copse"
Peter Cramer and Jack Waters
with DJ Econ
"As a queer interracial couple living with AIDS, our background as filmmakers and dancers transitioned into a media driven interdisciplinary practice largely due to the conditions of living in a viral culture. Our interest in collaboration is a direct result of our desire to create a radically different environment for making art and cinema. The Covid pandemic has also accelerated our drive for an interactive relationship with our audience, both live and virtual. Receiver becomes producer. Lecture becomes lab becomes party! We use our gender fluidity with its transgressive inclination against racial and nationalistic containment as a catalyst for change - at the very least exposure to difference both pleasurable and uncomfortable."
Photo by Mike Bailey-Gates
Since 2008, the Experimental Lecture Series has presented veteran filmmakers who immerse themselves in the world of alternative, experimental film. Our intention is to lay bare an artist’s challenges rather than their successes, to examine the gnawing, ecstatic reality of the work of making art. Our previous speakers for the Experimental Lecture Series have been Peggy Ahwesh, Craig Baldwin, Abigail Child, Nick Dorsky, Bradley Eros, Ernie Gehr, Barbara Hammer, Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas, Carolee Schneemann, M.M. Serra.
- Programmed by Lynne Sachs
Free and open to the public. RSVP required. NYU ID and Violet Go pass OR proof of vaccination and approved campus access needed for entry. Absolutely no exceptions.
Preferred seating on a first come, first served basis. Plan to arrive early.
Artist Biography
Named “New York City’s Most Radical Queers” by I-D Magazine, multi-media artists Peter Cramer and Jack Waters are constantly in the process of creating performances, films, videos, installations and works of social practice. Musically minded as well, their queer-skinned kitchen band NYOBS performed “Memories That Smell Like Gasoline - Reading David Wojnarowicz” at the Whitney and “Spaghetti Wrestling” in Naples, Italy. Their 40-year collaboration includes dozens of projects including a live cinema/action of Wagner's Ring Cycle for the legendary queer media festival MIX NYC and “Sunscreen Test Boulevard In The Sand" made for the art activist organization Visual AIDS. Waters performed the title role of Jason Holliday in the acclaimed 2015 indie film “Jason and Shirley” for which he is a co-writer. The film is in the collection of MoMa with a recent run on The Criterion Channel. His film “The Male Gayze” was included in the Whitney’s “Black Male: Representations of Masculinity In American Art”. On the cusp of the coronavirus pandemic, Cramer and Waters premiered “GENERATOR - Pestilence Part 1” in 2020 at the East Village’s renowned avant-garde theater La Mama. Waters and Cramer are co-founders and directors of Le Petit Versailles, a community art garden in the Lower East Side that screens free experimental, underground movies outside under the trees.
Raised in 70s and 80s post-hippie California, DJ Econ has collaborated with Peter Cramer and Jack Waters at such legendary NYC spaces as The Lusty Loft, The Cock, MIX NYC, and Le Petit Versailles. His electronic and acoustic experimentations transverse cinema and music. Whether working the dancefloors or layering outlandish film audio, Econ has been building bridges across the NYC underground for over two decades.