Neither Forever Nor Instant
Neither Forever Nor Instant, 2013
two-channel video installation, stereo audio, 14 min.
dimensions variable
Neither Forever Nor Instant is a two-channel video. It is the collaborative project of Parallel Lines (David Kelley, Jeannine Tang, Mike Cataldi, Hans Kuzmich, and Jens Maier-Rothe), a group of artists and historians, and FIERCE (Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment), an organization led by queer youth of color, whose activism in the West Village and the piers have engaged the queer histories of these neighborhoods, and redirected their urban development.
The content draws from FIERCE's West Village Walking Tour, where members, allies and donors are introduced to sites with historical and political significance for FIERCE's campaigns and community organizing. These include Stonewall Inn, Lucille Lortel Theatre, Northern Dispensary, and future sites of action such as Pier 40, a possible location for FIERCE's queer youth center. In 2010, Parallel Lines built a studio in " QEJ" Queers for Economic Justice's offices (a FIERCE-allied organization), to stage and shoot FIERCE's tour preparation; following which each tour venue was filmed, and actions conducted along the stairwells and empty lobby of Pier 40– bracketing the material and geographical possibilities of political action, with spaces of rehearsal, transition and projection.
Credits:
Performers: Christopher Baez, Manny Vaz, Adohnes K. Ahn, and Jeff Barua-Valverde
Exhibitions
- Kindred Solidarities: Queer Community and Chosen Families (curated by Anjuli Nanda Diamond and George Bolster), The 8th Floor, New York, NY, 2021-22
- Memories of Underdevelopment (programmed by Cassandra Guan), Temporary Agency, Brooklyn, NY, 2015
- Writing with the Other Hand is Imagining, Beirut, Cairo, Egypt, 2013
Bibliography
- Amber Jamilla Musser, "Solidarity: In and Through the Work of Kinship." In Kindred Solidarities: Queer Community and Chosen Families, edited by George Bolster and Anjuli Nanda Diamond, 1-13. New York: Rubin Foundation, 2021.
- Thomas J. Lax and Jeannine Tang with A. Naomi Jackson, Parallel Lines, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and Marvin J. Taylor, “Queer Pier: 40 Years,” Art Journal 72, no. 2 (2013): 106–13.
- Michael Cataldi, David Kelley, Hans Kuzmich, Jens Maier-Rothe and Jeannine Tang, "Residues of a Dream World: The High Line, 2011," Theory, Culture & Society 28, nos. 7–8 (December 2011): 358–89.