“What’s Your Story?” at Bureau of General Service – Queer Division

By Martha Wilson

(BGSQD, photo by Ed Woodham)

Hosted by 2022 festival curator, Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn, “What’s Your Story”, featured six artists who were also doing works on the street [for the STORY festival]. This  [public] program was their opportunity to tell stories which related to their work as artists:  Nick Daniels, Jana Greiner, Juan Hernandez with Mai Tran, Vivek Sebastian, Heather Sincavage, and Yu-Ching Wang.

Nick Daniels started the program by telling the story of his intention to hook himself to the Empire State Building to drag it to another location; but he settled on dragging the High Line instead.  At the end of the program, a viewer asked where he was going to drag it?  And he answered, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”  But his discussion also included the trauma of being a trans-gender artists who is allergic to one of the ingredients in the drugs administered to transition.

Juan Hernandez was not present because he is an incarcerated artist.  He is serving a life sentence and living his life in a prison, which has its own social rules and economy.  Work is paid very poorly, so strategies for getting along abound.  His testimony was played off a smartphone by Mai Tran.

Vivek Sebastian told the story of the role that lottery tickets play in his home country of India and here in New York City and Long Island.  Ironically, it’s the rich people who can afford to buy lottery tickets.  He makes magic tokens out of the cards that are discarded.

Heather Sincavage told the story of piecing together the story of having been abused by her partner.  As reported in The Body Keeps the Score, a book about the history of trauma treatment by the medical industry, victims of trauma often can’t remember the details of their experience, which nevertheless the body retains as anxiety, flashbacks, paralysis, and other debilitating symptoms.  Heather finally learns to drive the stick-shift car she bought and finally throws her partner out of her life.

Perhaps my favorite story of the evening was by Yu-Ching Wang, who joined three seemingly unrelated incidents:  The COVID mask mandate; the plastic bag ban; and being called “Chinese, mask” by two white men.  She felt weird because she is not Chinese, so she thought if she covered her head, people would not know her identity.  She used a Key Food plastic bag from a collection of them gathered when plastic bags were ubiquitous; and the image of her wearing it weirdly shows the Key Food logo taking the place of her mouth.

(photo by Sara Kaplan)

Martha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, who over the past five decades created innovative photographic and video works that explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. She began making these videos and photo/text works in the early 1970s while in Halifax in Nova Scotia, and further developed her performative and video-based practice after moving in 1974 to New York City, embarking on a long career that would see her gain attention across the U.S. for her provocative appearances as political personae. In 1976 she founded, and as Founding Director Emerita, continues to help direct Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art, further challenging institutional norms, the roles artists play within society, and expectations about what constitutes acceptable art mediums. marthawilson.com