Carson Parish

Visual Description: Two CRT TV monitors are set up on industrial tv containers facing in opposite directions. One TV sits on a slightly taller container and depicts a looped segment from a black and white film created by the artist. The other TV depicts a colored looped video clip of an award’s show. 

Curatorial Description: Carson Parish’s two-channel video installation delves into the July 2004 issue of the pornographic gay men’s magazine Bound & Gagged which identified the uncomfortable parallel between sexual acts in BDSM and abuses in the U.S. military industrial complex. An editorial in this issue, written by B&G founder Bob Wingate, criticized the horrific accounts of rape and documentation of torture enacted upon detainees by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He also acknowledged that the photographs of humiliation, first shared by CBS News in April 2004, resembled depictions of consensual BDSM printed in his magazine.

While the imagery and language featured in Identical Twins of Totally Different Characters can feel confronting, the hand-processed documentary and archival material—cut and spliced together—is intended to make visible the interests of a niche community. Parish's work shows how the queer BDSM community, a small and often marginalized group, has a strong voice in opposition to imperialist violence. It also brings to the fore issues relevant to our current political climate and, so as not to repeat history enacted as recently as 20 years ago, implores us to engage in difficult conversations.

Identical Twins of Totally Different Characters was created with Bob Wingate and Lee Clauss. Cinematography by Derek Howard. Produced by Jean Sonderand and Yehuda Newman. With assistance from Gary Wasdin and Mel Leverich of the Leather Archives & Museum (LAM).

About

Carson Parish is an arts administrator, educator, and filmmaker based in New York. His work employs 16mm film to tell stories about queer history, particularly kink communities and the impact of the AIDS epidemic in alternative spaces. His films have been shown at Newfest LGBTQ+ Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Fest, Chicago Underground Film Fest, Xposed Queer Film Fest in Berlin, and Anthology Film Archives, among others. In his day job, he produces film exhibitions for The Museum of Modern Art and teaches experimental film and video at the School of Visual Arts. His curated and co-curated exhibitions include "Now We Think as We Fuck": Queer Liberation to Activism, The Experimental Narratives of Warren Sonbert, Carte Blanche: Samuel R. Delany, and full retrospectives of Shirley and Wendy Clarke and the Canyon Cinema archive.