BIFF Panels: Queer Genius

BIFF Panels: Queer Genius

Oct 11 @ 7pm – 8:30pm: live panel streamed to social + website

This panel focuses on Queer Genius and explores what it means to commit to a lifetime of making artwork across mediums. Panelists will discuss the film, their work, collaborative poiesis and exchange, the concept of genius, and more. Chet Catherine Pancake’s Queer Genius celebrates the remarkable lives and work of five critically acclaimed and notoriously radical artists: Barbara Hammer, Eileen Myles, Black Quantum Futurism, Moor Mother, and Dynasty Handbag / Jibz Cameron by creating affectionate and intimate portraits that resonate across generations.

Panelists: Chet Catherine Pancake, Florrie Burke, Eileen Myles, Jibz Cameron

Moderator: Anna Scime

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About the Panelists:

Chet Catherine Pancake is an award-winning filmmaker, video, new media, and sound artist. They have exhibited at national and international venues such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA,) Royal Ontario Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Murray Art Museum Albury, Australia, Shanghai Conservatory – Shanghai PRC, and Academy of Fine Arts, Prague. Pancake’s narrative and experimental documentary work has been screened at over 150 venues nationally, as well as broadcast (entirely or as excerpts) in the US and UK on the Sundance Channel, PBS, FreeSpeech Television, and the CommunityChannelUK. Their films are nationally & internationally distributed by Bullfrog Films and Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and are held in permanent collections in over 75 university and museum archives nationally. Pancake is an Assistant Professor in the Film and Media Arts Program at Temple University.

Eileen Myles (they/them) came to New York from Boston in 1974 to be a poet, subsequently novelist, public talker and art journalist. A Sagittarius, their 22 books include For Now, evolution, Afterglow, I Must Be Living Twice/new & selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. In 2019 they wrote and directed an 18-minute super 8 film, The Trip, a puppet road film. See it on youtube. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim, a Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, 4 Lambda Book Awards, the Shelley Prize, and a poetry award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2016, they received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. In 2019 Myles received a poetry award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. In 2020 they got the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.

Florrie Burke, M.Ed., MA. is a consultant on Human Trafficking to governmental and non-governmental agencies. With over two decades of specialized experience, she is a leading expert on the victim-centered approach in human trafficking cases and collaborative efforts of criminal justice actors and survivor care providers. She is a founder of the Freedom Network USA and has done extensive training, speaking and consultation on Human Trafficking issues, trauma, torture, gender violence and exploitation both in the U.S. and internationally as part of the UNODC Global Training Initiative, the Department of State, the Warnath Group and the Institute for Intergovernmental Research. Burke serves as an Expert Witness on cases of human trafficking and has developed materials and trainings for first responders, criminal justice actors and others around the globe. Ms. Burke was awarded the inaugural Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons in May 2013. The Award was granted in recognition of “her sustained dedication and unparalleled leadership in combating modern slavery through the development and delivery of comprehensive services, the empowerment of survivors to move from slavery to independence, and the transformation of policy to eradicate all forms of human trafficking.”

Ms. Burke is the Executor and Arts Administrator of the Barbara Hammer Estate. Barbara was her spouse and partner for 31 years. Ms. Burke is actively involved in keeping the legacy of Hammer’s extensive body of work front and center.

Jibz Cameron is a performer, video artist and actor living in Los Angeles. Her multi-media performance work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag has spanned 15 years and been presented at MOCALA, PS1, Joe's Pub, The Kitchen, REDCAT, The Broad Museum, The Hammer Museum, New Museum of Contemporary Art New York, among others. She has been heralded by the New York Times as “the funniest and most pitch perfect performance seen in years” and “outrageously smart, grotesque and innovative” by The New Yorker. She has written and produced 7 evening length performance pieces, dozens of short works, 17,5897 video works and 2 albums of original music. In addition to her work as Dynasty Handbag, Jibz Cameron has acted in films, theater and television (internet web series no one has seen). She has worked as a professor of performance and comedy at NYU Tisch Performance Studies and Cal Arts as well as lecturing and teaching workshops at institutions such as Cornell University, UPENN, Wesleyan University and Yale University. Jibz Cameron also produces and hosts Weirdo Night!, a monthly comedy and performance event in Los Angeles.