RSVP here: queer-art.org/rsvp-to-blue-velvet-and-hen-his-wife
Streaming links here: queer-art.org/streaming-links-for-qaf-summer-2021
BLUE VELVET
1986. 120 min. Directed by David Lynch
HEN HIS WIFE
1990. 13 min. Directed by Igor Kovalyov.
In David Lynch’s 1986 neo-noir thriller BLUE VELVET, a young man returns home and happens upon a dismembered human ear, a discovery that brings about many strange occurances, criminal encounters, and psycho-sexual awakenings. A self-fashioned detective (played by seemingly innocent Kyle MacLachlan), the young man’s obsession with solving the mystery leads to a romance (with the enigmatic and tortured Isabella Rosselini) that excites and disturbs his sense of self, culminating in a emotional collision course between the straight and perverse.
For the final month of the summer season of Queer|Art|Film Club, join us for a conversation about Lynch’s enduringly creepy cult classic with video artist Aimee Goguen, whose porn aesthetics and B movie style videos document kinky sexual subjection and bullying. Goguen was first introduced to the film in the 5th grade by her Aunt Janet, who gave her a VHS tape of BLUE VELVET along with a copy of William Burroughs’ 1959 novel, Naked Lunch. “I knew I was on to something if I loved it and my mom hated it,” Goguen says of Lynch’s “slow moving action film.” Blue Velvet’s play of darkness and shadow felt strangely familiar to Goguen’s internal sensibility and her physical surroundings in a gloomy military town in rural Washington state. She tried to figure out the lighting on her own, filming on her family’s Hi-8 camera, which she still uses to shoot analog video today. Along with Blue Velvet, we will discuss the Kafka-esque short experimental animation, HEN, HIS WIFE by Russian artist Igor Kovalyov, about a couple that receives an unexpected visitor and unwelcome revelation of the inhuman in the home.
Aimee Goguen on BLUE VELVET:
“You know when you watch something and it’s in you for a long time, and as an adult you can still feel that special feeling? It confused me that something could be so slow and so addictive, that a slow moving picture could captivate me. BLUE VELVET was the first real, perverse adult movie I saw, before getting into Araki’s NOWHERE and Waters’ PINK FLAMINGOS. It illuminates something that’s in everybody: the strange, weird, obsessive, and romantic.
Aimee Goguen on HEN, HIS WIFE:
“I always pay attention to the way animators imagine movement. In HEN, HIS WIFE, Kovalyov generates depth in two dimensions, creating a psychedelic horror that collapses background and foreground into a delirious play of psychic surfaces. Like Lynch’s BLUE VELVET, the timing generates a high energy space for the viewer to inhabit.”
Aimee Goguen is a video artist who combines analog video with animation elements. Her work often re-imagines scenarios of bullying and putrefaction as staged, repetitive actions. Her work has shown internationally including at CASSTL, Panel LA, LAXART, Vox Populi, Participant Inc., and White Columns. She co-curated Afterglow: summer video series with Harry Dodge. Recent residencies include Human Resources Los Angeles and the ONE Archives. She is currently making an experimental animation of Debbie’s Barium Swallow, a short story by Laurie Weeks, in collaboration with Olivia Taussig. She earned a BFA in Film and Video and an MFA in Fine Art at The California Institute of the Arts. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Queer|Art|Film is supported by HBO and presented in partnership with IFC.