constellations #99: in community
Also: You are invited to an IRL constellations reading next month!
Hi again.
Big news! On November 24, in honor of constellations #100, I am holding a reading at Topos Too in Ridgewood. It is going to be so good! I have invited some beloved friends to read: poet and artist Madeline Zappala; writer and editor
; writer (and my karaoke icon) , and others to be announced. So much brilliance in one room, one night only, I can hardly believe it! I am going to read something, too. The event is free and open to all, and I really look forward to seeing you there!
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Last week I went to see a screening of the film Community Action Center, a “69-minute sociosexual video” made by the artists A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner in 2010. The New York Times magazine called it one of the 25 works of art that “define the contemporary age,” and their description goes like this: It’s “a celebration of queer sexuality as playful as it is political” in which “a diverse, multigenerational cast engage in joyfully hedonistic acts of private and shared pleasure.” (I think that is an accurate, tactful, non-explicit way of describing what is, by its nature, a very explicit film.) The screening I saw was actually part of a celebration of the film’s excellent soundtrack, which has just been properly released for the first time on Cruisin Records.
Watching the film, which I had been hoping to see for several years, I found it extravagant and fantastical, but also so funny and wry and sensual and intimate. It is a film about sexuality, yes, but its subject is just as much care and togetherness. I love the way the individual scenes continually point out and then genuinely subvert stereotypes and clichés of sexuality (the kind of thing that so much art about queerness and feminism and eroticism claims to do, but so rarely actually accomplishes). There was a conversation with the filmmakers afterwards, and Burns and Steiner mentioned how, in the early days of screening the film, they’d ask the audience if it should be considered art or porn; inevitably, the resulting conversations would be about where those particular lines are drawn, and how they get drawn, and who gets to draw them, etc. (Maybe those questions feel dated to you now? But I think in the time when the film was first being screened, they stirred useful conversation. And, unfortunately, considering the wave of panic over queer sexuality that we’re currently living through, the way certain powerful bigots are trying to demonize and pathologize pretty much all queer expression, I think they’re relevant in new ways.)
During the audience Q&A after our screening, one person asked a question about representation that was a little muddled, and the artists took it as an opportunity to talk about their decision to participate in the film — that is, to get in front of the camera themselves. They said something like, It felt like a feminist ethic to us that you shouldn’t exploit your friends unless you exploit yourself, too, which got a big laugh, but not because it was a joke. It struck me as sweet, and I kept thinking about it afterwards. It felt like an expression of empathy, of what it means to make art in community: You have to know the stakes for everyone, and if you have any power, you have a responsibility to make those your stakes, too. Genuine commitment, genuine reciprocity.
I saw CAC with my friend Madeline, who had seen the film once before, in 2018; as we were leaving the screening last week, they found the texts we had exchanged about it back then. “I’m still just freaking out,” they had texted me, alongside a list of queer microcelebrities who had been in attendance. I, texting jealously from hundreds of miles away, immediately sent back “Omg” six times in a row.
The idea of gathering together is central to the film — to its creation and its content and its reception. CAC was made to honor the artists’ friends and collaborators, and a “prerequisite” of the film, Burns has explained, “is that it be viewed in a group setting.” The artists have never, for example, uploaded it online so it could be easily streamable; they want people to be together in person to see it. Their choices around the film, and the experience of seeing it, made me think about the particulars of experiencing any art in a group setting. I can immediately recall the warm feeling of watching friends play a show, or shouting alongside someone I love to a favorite song, or talking a mile a minute together after leaving a museum; I remember traveling out of state with a group of friends to see reunion shows for bands we never thought we’d see live, or running into an acquaintance at a screening. But what is most memorable in those group settings, I think, isn’t only the people you already know. A small example: There was one person at our CAC screening with an incredibly distinctive laugh, who found lots of moments in the film worthy of a big, hearty, weird chuckle. Our screening wouldn’t have been the same without them — their laughter opened up a new way of finding delight and humor in certain moments of the film for me, and probably for others around me, too. Probably I now will think of that person’s loud laugh anytime I think of this film. This indelible impression can also be made by, like, really tall guys who stand in the front of rock shows (I almost had the experience of a Bikini Kill show ruined this way) or people who won’t shut up in a movie theater, or whatever. But generally, I think the risk is worth the reward, of letting ourselves change and be changed by art and by those who share our interest in it. Anyway, if you get the chance to see this film — if a group setting happens to come your way — I really recommend it.
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Here are some other things I have been consuming lately: the launch of the NPR Music book How Women Made Music at The Strand; Intermezzo by Sally Rooney; the songs “Much Ado About Nothing” by Waxahatchee and “Reckless” by Kassie Krut; the EP First Time / Alone by Greg Mendez; Julien Baker and Torres at Webster Hall; the thrilling New York Liberty victory in the WNBA finals (the very end of which I watched on my phone during an hour-long Amtrak delay); Megalopolis (lol); Anora (loved it); the new independent music journalism site Hearing Things; breakfast at Phoenicia Diner (thank you to
for all her Catskills recommendations!); one perfect fall afternoon in Baltimore; cookies from Rose Ave in DC; a handful of drives north and south of the city during which Matt and I couldn’t shut up about how good the foliage has been***
This time last year I was: getting married; and before that: listening to my peak foliage playlist(s), writing about listening to Hop Along, and thinking about Stockholm
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Thanks for reading. See you at Topos Too in a month <3
xo,
M