Rudy Lemcke – Artist and Curator
Upcoming Exhibitions and Projects
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Summer 2023
Back in my painting studio.
Spring 2023
Transit of Venus Installation Video, ICA San Jose.
Winter 2022/23
Video Projection for Transit of Venus installation.
Fall 2022
Installation proposal for Transit of Venus.
In the Fall of 2022, I started working on the paintings for The Transit of Venus installation for ICA San Jose.
Summer 2022
Game Boy painting installation, work in progress
Game Boy, Acrylic on Canvas painting installation. 12 x 12′, 2022
2020 / 2022
Post – Digital studio.
In the Spring of 2020 and into 2021 I made a conscious choice to stop working on digital art, move away from the computer screen and stand-up and return to painting after many years. After a year and a half of semi-isolation and painting every day, I began to slowly integrate back to the digital space, realizing there were common threads between my video game development, game board paintings and a new fascination with non-fungible tokens. I’m currently working in both analog and digital space to see where this leads.
View of my studio wall. Untitled Game Space 7′ x 9′ nine panels
Non-Fungible Token
Six Game Board Paintings
Rudy Lemcke, Untitled Game Space, Acrylic on Canvas, various sizes, overall 63 x 100″, 2021
Fall 2019 / Spring 2020
Work in Progress
The Fairies of Weimar is a video game that I was developing when Covid-19 hit. The project was shelved – at least for now.
The game is based on Oscar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet and is a tribute to the Bauhaus’s 100th anniversary.
June, 2019
Creative Labor presents:
Precarious Lives – Visual Art Exhibition
Curated by Rudy Lemcke
Thursday, June 6–Saturday thru June 29, 2019
Opening: Thursday, June 6, 2019 6–9pm
Main Gallery
Screening of Tongues Untied by Marlon Riggs
Celebrating the 30-year anniversary of the film’s release.
8pm Theater Stage
SOMArts Cultural Center
The artists in the exhibition include: Marlon Riggs, Barbara Hammer, Lordes Portillo, Rhodessa Jones, Carlos Loarca, René Yanez, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, RJ Muna, Nancy Hom, Justin Hoover, Michelle Tea, Bernice Bing, Madeine Lim, Tina Takemoto, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, Flo Wong, Lenore Chinn, Ester Hernandez, Ed Aulerich-Sugai, Sean Dorsey, Shawna Virago, Marcela Pardo Ariza, Scott MacLeod, Jordan Reznick, Mia Nakano/Visibility Project, Katie Gilmartin, Queer Ancestors Project Artists: Jorge Mata Flores, Joan Chen, Amman Desai, Corey Brown, Weyam Ghadbian, Sasha Solomonov, Amari Robinson, Renée Jones, Eva Ovalle, and CultureStrike Artists: Agana, Micah Bazant, Kevin Caplicki, Thea Gahr, Thomas Greyeyes, Nicolas Lampert, Fernando Marti, Colin Matthes, Mazatl, Nicolas Medina, Roger Peet, Gilda Posada, Jesse Purcell, Pete Railand, Favianna Rodriguez, Julio Salgado, Meredith Stern, David Tim, Rommy Torrico, Mary Tremonte, Erin Yoshi, Bec Young.
February 2019
Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts presents:
Sonic Event: Sarah Hennies, Kadet Kuhne, and Carla Lucero
With Bob Ostertag as Panel Moderator
Curated by J Carter and Rudy Lemcke
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Timken Hall, San Francisco
7-9 pm
Video Screening
NAVE space (next to Timken Hall)
6-7 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Sonic Event explores the embodied materiality of sound and the spectrum of sexual difference(s) in the work of three contemporary artists crafting the divergent velocities of sonic experience.
February 2019
Brave Spaces: Challenging Conversations in the Museum
Session / Intermediate / Public Programs Saturday Feb. 9, 2019
/ 11:30AM–12:45PM/ Location: Cyril Magnin III
Moderator: Janine Okmin, Director of Education, Bay Area Discovery Museum (formerly Associate Director of Education and Civic Engagement of the Contemporary Jewish Museum)
Speakers: Demetri Broxton, Senior Director of Education, Museum of the African Diaspora; Rudy Lemcke, Communications Director, Queer Cultural Center; Triana Patel, Educator, Youth and Family Programs, Asian Art Museum
Description: By the nature of their subject matter, exhibitions in identity- based museums often bring up controversial or challenging subject matter. How do education and public programs effectively tackle complex subject matter with diverse audiences? Learn about strategies and techniques utilized by four colleagues from identity-based museums located in San Francisco.Learning Objectives: Techniques and methods to address challenging subject matter in your education and public programs; How to tackle challenging topics with a variety of visitor demographics using scaffolding techniques and collaboration.
October 2019
Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts Presents:
Queer Pedagogy: Anthea Black in Conversation with Juan Carlos Rodriguez RiveraModerated by Lexi Adsit
Curated by Rudy Lemcke
October 2, 2018, 7-8:30 pm
Timken Auditorium, California College of the Arts, San Francisco
Art History often fails to acknowledge—and at times actively erases—the relationships, networks, and eccentric circles of influence that form the background of feminist and queer artists’ lives. Social exchanges, affiliations, alliances, amorous bonds, and even chance encounters that hold great meaning remain invisible in the face of “finished” artworks, exhibitions, and the history books. While developing The Feminist School of Painting at KADIST, artist Ad Minoliti embarked on a dialogue with many Bay Area artists and writers, including Sienna Freeman, Elena Gross, Anthea Black, and Kim Anno. Eccentric Conversations opens their exchange through a series of short, commissioned presentations, an open forum, and the presentation of a new zine to mark the occasion.
– Curated by Rudy Lemcke
August
BERKELEY ART CENTER
Artists in Conversation – Queer Technology
A panel discussion moderated by Dorothy Santos featuring exhibiting artists, Rudy Lemcke, Aaron Reed, Jacob Garbe, Lark VCR and curator, Elliot Anderson.
July
BERKELEY ART CENTER
Queer Technology
July 21 – September 7, 2018
above: channel one video | below: channel 2 interactive 3d game space
SFAI GRADUATE LECTURE SERIES
Rudy Lemcke : The New World: Of Video Games and Museums
San Francisco Art Institute, July 16, 6:30pm
Here is a web version of the SFAI lecture with slides.
“This talk focuses on Rudy Lemcke’s recent immersive installation and video game The New World (2017), created for the de Young Museum’s artist-in-residence program. It charts a path from conceptual art and Fluxus, to experimental video, net art and game development. The talk interrogates ideas of temporal and spatial shifts brought about by new forms of artistic representation, production and distribution, and opens a conversation about rethinking the place of “the museum” in contemporary culture.”
I’ll also be previewing my new video game, Cloud Forest.
Cloud Forest / Video Game – work in progress.
June
June 7 – 23, 2018
SOMArts Cultural Center
A History of Violence
Curated by Rudy Lemcke
Artists: Arthur Dong, Jason Hanasik, Bren Ahearn, Cassils, Jamee Crusan, Xandra Ibarra, Jaime Cortez, Julie Tolentino/Stosh Fila, Viet Le, Tim Roseborough, Angela Hennessy, Kadet Kuhne, Jamil Hellu, and David Wojanrowicz.
Full Exhibition Essay with Images: https://qcc2.org/history-of-violence/
PRESS
A History of Violence
Ryan Kost June 12, 2018
The San Francisco Chronicle
https://www.sfchronicle.com/art/article/Queer-art-exhibition-explores-shaping-force-of-12988225.php
Pride month: the exhibitions celebrating LGBT art in June
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jun/06/pride-month-lgbt-art-exhibitions-new-york-los-angeles
Celebrate LGBTQ Pride at These Powerful U.S. Art Exhibits
AFAR online Magazine
Sarah Buder 6.8.2018
https://www.afar.com/magazine/celebrate-pride-at-these-powerful-us-art-exhibits
More Exhibition Photos on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/queerculturalcenter/
About the Exhibition
The Turning, Queerly
A History of Violence
A History of Violence is a history of becoming.
Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, mal-development, or deprivation.”
It is perpetrated through politics, economics, and culture – and made real through human interaction. Poverty, social injustice, state sponsored brutality, racism, sexism, homophobia, intolerance, and oppression are examples of its instrumentality. All are symptomatic of systemic violence manifesting itself in our daily experience of the world.
The LGBT community was born and shaped by violence like this. Through social and cultural exclusion, criminalization, medical objectification, religious persecution, artistic censorship, familial rejection and historical erasures, our identities were forged—for better or worse.
We exist in a world where these dynamics of power and control are already operating for and against us. Because of this, the psychic and physical effects of violence are a part of who we are.
Is resistance possible?
The idea of resistance itself implies a point outside of the system from which to act and critique this violence. But what if there is no outside? If so, could there instead be a place of turning from within that might trigger the emergence of a new becoming, queerly? What would this turning look like? What would it feel like?
This exhibition explores the work of artists who have gazed deeply into the flame of violence, and reacted in ways that allow us a compelling look into queer existence.
Spring 2018
Cloud Forest Video Game. In development. Launch Summer 2018
January 2018
The Forum Presents: Rudy Lemcke
The New World: Of Video Games and Museums
California State University, East Bay AE1203
Art and Education Building – Room 1203 – Ground Floor
25800 Carlos Bee Boulevard
Hayward, CA 94542
Here is a link to this lecture converted into a web page.
The New World: Of Museums and Video Games, 2018.
The Queer Cultural Center’s Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts and Creative Labor’s Emerging Scholars Program present:
Queer Theory
with Jess Jung, Ricki Dwyer, Xander Lenc and Giovanni D’Ambrosio.
Moderated by Elena Gross and Julian Wong-Nelson.
Introduction by Jacqueline Francis Ph.D. (Chair, Visual and Critical Studies, CCA)
Organized by Rudy Lemcke and Greig Crysler
January 16th (Tuesday) 2018
7- 8:30pm
San Francisco LGBT Community Center
1800 Market Street, San Francisco
Queer Theory presents the Master’s thesis projects of four emerging scholars from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design working in the fields of architecture, visual culture, race, gender studies, and queer theory.
Weblink: http://bit.ly/2E7Elz3
October 2017
For More Photos visit Flickr Page.
October 2017
October 4–29, 2017
Wednesdays–Sundays, 1–5 pm
Artist Reception: Friday, October 13, 6–8:30 pm
The New World: Of Video Games and Museums
Rudy Lemcke, 2017
READ ARTIST STATEMENT ABOUT THE EXHIBITION HERE
Rudy Lemcke creates an installation that uses the museum as the site of a multi-level video game, using visual elements inspired by artworks from the permanent collection. The New World is a chance to explore through game-play new ways of thinking about the nature of the museum as a microcosm of our world and how we encounter different cultures, races, and identities. It allows viewers to consider different ways of seeing and exploring histories and identities that often go unnoticed or are hidden in plain sight. The installation gives an in-depth look at the multimedia techniques and process of creating a video game, from initial sketches through character development, level design, and final production. Lemcke works with visitors to create ideas for new game characters and interactions based on their experiences with the museum’s collection.
June 2017
National Queer Arts Festival 2017
From Self to #Selfie
June, 2017
SOMArts Gallery, San Francisco
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 1 – 5pm
On June 3rd, 2017, the opening exhibition of this year’s National Queer Arts Festival will be organized by Creative Labor – a visual art platform that grew out of the Queer Cultural Center’s twenty years of queer cultural production.
Curated by Creative Labor’s artistic director, Rudy Lemcke, the exhibition features the work of eight nationally recognized performance/video artists whose work reflects the cutting edge of the complex and intersectional issues we are encountering as queer artists and cultural activists. The exhibition consists of large-scale video projections that will be continuously screening in the main gallery of SOMArts Cultural Center through the month of June, featuring artists include: Kia LaBeija, Awilda Rodriguez Lora, Cassils, M. Lamar, A.L Steiner, Boychild, Tina Takemoto, and Evan Ifekoya.
April 2017
April 26th, 2017
4 – 7:30pm
Helzel Board Room, California College of the Arts
Queer Visual Culture
with Jamee Crusan (CCA), Jennifer Moreno (SFAI), and Jess Dorrance (U.C. Berkeley)
moderated by Sampada Aranke (SFAI)
organized by Rudy Lemcke
The Art of AIDS Activism
Thursday, Apr 6, 2017 • 6:30–8pm
Contemporary Jewish Museum
San Francisco, California
In response to the AIDS epidemic, San Francisco artists melded outrage and political activism to create a unique style of politically charged art. Panelists Rudy Lemcke, Dorian Katz, Ed Wolf, and moderator Tirza Latimer.
I’ve adapted my panel presentation for the web. You can view it HERE.
January 2017
UNTITLED, Art Fair
San Francisco, California
January 13 – 17, 2017
Jan 15, 1:30pm—2:30pm
Curating in Conversation
Panel Discussion
Panelists:
Lovisa Brown, independent museum educator and former director of education at MOAD
Caren Gutierrez, Manager of School and Teacher Programs, the Asian Art Museum
Rudy Lemcke, Communications Director and Visual Arts Curator, Queer Cultural Center
Moderated by Janine Okmin, Associate Director of Education, The Contemporary Jewish Museum
Since its founding in 1984, the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) has distinguished itself as a welcoming place where visitors can connect with one another through dialogue and shared experiences with the arts.Ever changing, the CJM is a non-collecting institution that partners with national and international cultural institutions to present exhibitions that are both timely and relevant and represent the highest level of artistic achievement and scholarship.
Today, Janine Okmin, Associate Educator at the CJM, has organized a panel discussion on the topic of how identity-driven museums use contemporary art to change the conversation.
What role do identity-based arts organizations play in convening conversations about race, culture, gender, and religion? Four education representatives from local identity-driven institutions will discuss the messy work of using contemporary art as a springboard for dialogue about these challenging and timely issues. Panelists will share case studies as well as strategies for arts institutions of any type to implement programming that directly addresses identity.
December 2016
(Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude is a short film from 2015 that I’ve just uploaded to Vimeo.
I discuss this video in a recent interview about my work about AIDS.
Immemorial: The Poetics of AIDS; A Conversation with Rudy Lemcke by Tina Takemoto,
Art Journal Open (June 22, 2015). Go to Art Journal Open Interview
Rudy Lemcke
Self Portrait as a Gentleman in White after Frans Hals
Digital Image, 2016
Frans Hals, Dutch, 1580–1666
Portrait of a Gentleman in White, ca. 1637
Oil on canvas
Legion of Honor, Gallery 15
The final stop for the Art AIDS America exhibition opening December 2, 2016.
I can’t make it to the opening; but I’m going to try to see the show before it closes.
An amazing curatorial event. I am honored to be included.
November 2016
Books in Browsers VII will take place November 3 – 4, 2016 in San Francisco at Gray Area‘s Grand Theater in the Mission District. Going to this 2 day event…not presenting anything. A learning opportunity.
Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts and the Emerging Scholars Program presents:
Queer Visual Culture at the GLBT History Museum
with Julian Wong-Nelson, Elena Gross and Stathis Gerostathopoulos
moderated by Sampada Aranke
organized by Rudy Lemcke
November 9th (Wednesday) 2016
7-9pm
GLBT History Museum
4127 18th Street, San Francisco
Queer Visual Culture at the GLBT History Museum presents Master’s thesis projects of three emerging scholars who are working in the field of architecture, visual culture, race, gender studies, and queer theory. Elena Gross (California College of the Arts) will discuss Lorna Simpson’s artistic exploration of surveillance and the racial politics of public sex in her presentation,”The Body Remains: The Felt/Photography of Lorna Simpson”; Julian Wong-Nelson (San Francisco Art Institute) will discuss artist Tina Takemoto’s artwork based on Jiro Onuma, whose collection is on display at the GLBT History Museum in, “Fisting for freedom: queer gesture as temporal liberatory practice”; and Stathis Gerostathopoulos (UC Berkeley) will discuss his work on, “Spaces of Sexual Citizenship: Notes toward Fieldwork in Three American Cities.” The program will be moderated by Professor Sampada Aranke (San Francisco Art Institute).
Emerging Scholars Program (ESP) brings together recent graduates in the disciplines of Fine Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Environmental Design disciplines whose work explores gender identity and issues relevant to queer and trans people of color with Bay Area non-profit, community based arts and social service organizations for a series of conversations that will bring community perspective to their work and develop a network of queer scholars and community partners to foster collaborative research, workshops and cultural events that will enrich the lives of the queer community. This program is being organized by the Queer Cultural Center and Creative Labor.
October 2016
Co-organized “Douglas Crimp in Conversation with Tina Takemoto” as a part of the Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts program.
Crimp discussed his new memoir, “Before Pictures.”
Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts brings together locally and nationally renowned artists, writers, filmmakers, and scholars for a series of conversations to discuss a broad range of LGBTQI topics in the humanities, architecture, design, and the arts. QCCA is an on-going collaboration between the Queer Cultural Center, California College of the Arts, and U.C. Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design.
QCCA Organizing Committee: Rudy Lemcke and Tina Takemoto (co-chairs), Neil Schwartz, Tirza T. Latimer, and Greig Crysler.
I went to this conference in Miami representing my organization Creative Labor and presented a case study of The Market Street Prototyping Festival 2016 in a Break Out Session on Art Washing. Google “Art Washing” if you’ve never heard that term before – it will be a concept that you can’t un-think.
August 2016
Fey Ontology (polytemporality) | 2016 from Rudy Lemcke on Vimeo.
This video was created as a stand alone video loop to be played on an HD monitor and media player – there are no credits or title when played as a stand alone.
12 Fairies. 36″ x 36″ each. acrylic on vinyl. Rudy Lemcke 2016
3 Fairies. 3D prints. 5x4x4 inches each. 2016
July 2016
Art AIDS America
July 13 to September 25, 2016
The Bronx Museum
My work Fin Again(s) Wake and The Uninvited are included in this traveling exhibition.
June 2016
I’m working in my studio on a new installation called Pansy Farm. It is a physical installation of 100 hand sewn purple velvet pansies that will have an augmented video game component as part of the installation. Just playing around now with the configuration of the pansies is physical space.
The outside wall of my studio painted as an “Endless Runner Game” – and working inside on my Pansy Farm project. A commentary on Queerness in the age of Game Theory.
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June 2016
Creative Labor: Queer-It-Yourself
Curated by Rudy Lemcke
June 5 – 24
SOMArts Cultural Center
934 Brannan St, San Francisco, CA
The exhibition is envisioned as a laboratory and experimental network for creating a sustainable queer culture and demonstrating the power of self and community organizing, re-creation, speculation, and transformation. Queer-It-Yourself culture invites artists to forge their own tools, visions and systems of exchange for confronting the everyday challenges of contemporary queer existence and to invent and re-imagine alternative modes of aesthetic and economic sustainability.
Drama Queer: Secuding Social Change
Curated by Jonathan D. Katz
Vancouver Queer Arts Festival. June 21 – 30
My video installation, The Uninvited (2006) will be included in this exhibition.
At the centre of this year’s festival is Drama Queer: seducing social change, a visual arts exhibition curated by Jonathan D. Katz. This exhibition explores the role of emotion in contemporary queer art as a form of political practice. As a mechanism to coalesce feelings and direct them with activist intent, emotion is increasingly central to much contemporary work. This exhibition places the queer use of emotion into a historical frame, arguing that the solicitation of an emotional response has been of central import at least since the 1960s, as underscored by critics from Frank O’Hara to Jill Johnston to Gene Swenson.
While much of the art world foregrounded formal innovation, leaving the nakedly emotional unacknowledged, even unseen, queers have long championed the emotional in contradistinction to the formal. A means to challenge the dominant formal values so often elevated by critics, while undercutting anti-expressive postmodernist tenets, emotion had the added value of returning the field of art-making to the socio-political present. With the advent of AIDS, this emotional undercurrent grew in force and power, challenging the equanimity of dominant culture in the face of holocaust. Nakedly manipulative, this earlier queer art sought to move the viewer into action.
Drama Queer solicits a range of contemporary work towards understanding how feelings function in our political present, and the different facets of art and emotion — political emotion, erotic emotion etc. Centred around three never before exhibited monumental paintings by Attila Richard Lukacs, this exhibition will explore art that seeks to engender social change through making the viewer an accomplice, queering their perspective or seducing them into seeing the world from a dissident vantage point.
Visual artists: Del LaGrace Volcano, Angela Grossmann,Monica Majoli, Attila Richard Lukacs, Kent Monkman, Andreas Fuchs, Vika Kirchenbauer, Zanele Muholi, Zackary Drucker,Laura Aguilar,Cassils, Andrew Holmquist, Keijaun Thomas,Shan Kelley, Joey Terrill, Carl Pope, Vincent Tiley, Sean Fader, 2Fik, Laura Aguilar,Bill Jacobson, Rudy Lemcke, Jesse Finley Reed, George Steeves.
Performance art pieces featured in this exhibition will take place during Art Party.
April 2016
Sunday April 10, 2016, 6pm
Speculative Genealogies and Precarious Futures
Alley Cat Books
3036 24th St, San Francisco
Free and open to the public
Screening:
Desirée Holman, Troglodyte, 2005
Rudy Lemcke, (Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude, 2014
Việt Lê, Eclipse (Ruby), 2015
my gaze // yr gaze presents “Speculative Genealogies and Precarious Futures,” an evening screening of short films by Desirée Holman Việt Lê, and Rudy Lemcke. Fantastical and absurd, Holman’s Troglodyte (2005) investigates ideas of violence, sex, animism, and nurturance by animating a primal horde chimp-like creatures. Lemcke’s (Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude (2014) poetically reimagines the Orpheus myth by juxtaposing his fantastical fairy world alongside Jean Cocteau’s queer classic Orphée. Việt Lê’s Eclipse (Ruby) (2015) takes viewers on a multisensory poetic journey of trans diasporic movement and meaning accompanied by music from controversial, legendary musician Dai Lam Linh. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and guest curator Tina Takemoto.
March 2016
(Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude | Melbourne Queer Film Festival| Rudy Lemcke | USA
November 2015
How AIDS Changed American Art. Lecture by Jonathan D. Katz. Mills College. November 11th, 2015.
AZT drawing from my Fin Again(s) Wake series 1989 was used on the postcard and poster for the lecture and discussed in the context of the Art, AIDS America exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum, October 2015 – January 2016.
(Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude | Florence Queer Festival| Rudy Lemcke | USA
September 2015
The Tacoma Art Museum asked me talk about my Foscarnet drawing for their audio tour of Art, AIDS America exhibition – opening on October 3rd. I created this short movie using a picture of the drawing and the text I wrote about the piece.
July 2015
Working with Google Cardboard Virtual Reality Kit.
June 2015
June 24 & 25, 2015
Roxie Theater, San Francisco
(Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude | Frameline39 | Rudy Lemcke | USA
Ticket Link: http://ticketing.frameline.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=3566&FID=52
2 still images from (Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude
June 22
Immemorial: The Poetics of AIDS; A Conversation with Rudy Lemcke by Tina Takemoto,
Art Journal Open (June 22, 2015). Go to Art Journal Open Interview
June 6, 2015 – 6 – 7:30pm
Art Talk: – Art, AIDS, WeHo
In conjunction with the Art, AIDS, America exhibition
With co-curator Dr. Jonathan D. Katz (right to left) and participating artists Ann Meredith, Joey Terrill, Rudy Lemcke and Moderator Tina Takemoto.
Installation view of The Uninvited (2003) and Foscarnet (1989) (l-r) at One National Gay and Lesbian Archives. Los Angeles. Photo taken at the opening reception.
Installation Diagram for The Uninvited (2003)
February 2015
The Uninvited was originally made with Flash as an interactive Net Art project in 2003. I then remade the project as a single channel video using After Effects a few years later.
I just remastered it this year in HD for the exhibition Art, Aids, American that will be opening this summer in Los Angeles. The exhibition is curated by Jonathan D. Katz and Rock Hushka for the Tacoma Art Museum.
January 2015
This piece was inspired by Quentin Meillassoux’s book, “The Number and the Siren.”
December 2014
(Orpheus) The Poetics of Finitude – 2014
I “deconstructed” my augmented reality Orpheus project (Orpheus in the Tenderloin National Forest) so that I could represent it as a single channel video – it’s a very different approach to the material than the one I used in the augmented reality piece. Unfortunately, I can’t show it online because it contains clips from Cocteau’s “Orpheus” and I have an agreement with the Cocteau estate that I will only screen it in festival venues and as a part of my lecture on Orpheus that I’m presenting in L.A. this summer. But here are a few screen grabs.
September 8, 2014 (postponed – TBA)
There and Back: From Fluxus to Augmented Reality
Guest Lecture
SUNY Buffalo
August, 2014
Attended Google Glass Design workshop
(who could have predicted the demise of Glass just a few months after this posting)
June 8, 2014
Comic Art Convention
Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco
I’ll be showing my new graphic novel, Orpheus at the Cartoon Art Museum Comicon.
April, 2014
Orpheus
Launch of Orpheus in the Tenderloin National Forest.
March, 2014
Orpheus
My children’s book, Orpheus.
Orpheus Book from Rudy Lemcke on Vimeo.
I’m getting ready to launch an Augmented Reality installation based on this book at the Tenderloin National Forest.
October 7, 2013
Intersection for the Arts
MY OTHER SELVES
7pm
MY OTHER SELVES: A CLEVER think tank panel featuring Bay Area media artists whose work
explores the personal as political in their creative projects and productions.
Monday Oct 7, 21013 @7pm
Description
Storytelling has been used as a means of empowerments for a variety of marginalized racial, sexual
and political identities. This panel features media artists who use themselves in their art to illustrate
the value of selfexpression, critical reflection and collaboration that form part of broader social
transformations generated by their creative practice. Hosted by Cheryl Dunye with artists Rudy
Lemcke, Kim Anno, Kingston Farady and Ali Liebegott.
Still image from my video presentation – a preview of Orpheus in the Rhododendron Dell. Image by Lenore Chinn.
Kim Anno, Cheryl Dunye and Me at the CLEVER event. Photo by Lenore Chinn.
September 13, 2013
de Young Museum, Koret Auditorium
Golden Gate Park
7pm
Bernice Bing in her studio, circa 1960s. © Bernice Bing Estate.
Asian American Women Artists Association premiere of “The Worlds of Bernice Bing,” a documentary short film. The film will be introduced by Cynthia Tom of AAWAA. After the screening there will be a Q&A with the Project Director, Jennifer Banta Yoshida, artists Lenore Chinn and Rudy Lemcke, moderated by Mark Dean Johnson, Professor, San Francisco State University.
Me, Lenore Chinn, and Jen Banta Yoshida at the Bernice Bing Panel at the de Young Museum.
Jen Banta Yoshida, Moira Roth, me and Lenore Chinn at the Bernice Bing event.
June 18, 2013
Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts
Volume 18, Issue 1, 2013
Special Issue: On Fire
(Artist’s Page in Performance Research Journal. The link above takes you to the the online version of the Journal published in June, 2013)
May 7, 2013
Radar Reading Series
San Francisco Public Library
Photo @Rink Foto 2013
For Radar I showed one of my short films from The Sounds of Silence exhibition/screening and previewed one of the sections from my new Augmented Reality installation for Golden Gate Park, “Orpheus in the Rhododendron Dell.”
February 1 – February 28, 2013
The Sounds of Silence
The film component of the exhibition Silence, the Sounds of Silence comprises experimental films, two feature films, and a documentary that explore silence as either subject or medium. Ingmar Bergman’s masterful The Silence describes the terrible quiet left behind by God’s absence; Pat Collins’s windswept Silence follows an audio recordist as he reconnects with the source of sound; and Philip Gröning’s reverential Into Great Silence closely portrays the muted days of an alpine monastery. Two programs of experimental films amplify the theme, tracing the use of silence and hushed sound from the 1940s to the present.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
7:00 p.m.
Sourcing Sound: Experimental Works
Rudy Lemcke and Darrin Martin in person. Experimental media typically seeks to undermine the logic between a sound and its source, but this program pursues a different path, where sound and image are unified by the medium. Includes work by Warner Jepson, Robert Russett, Scott Wolniak, Van McElwee, Stephen Vitiello, Darrin Martin, and Rudy Lemcke. (77 mins)
December 6, 2012
To Be Determined #2
The Sounds of Silence: Three Evenings of Film
Rice Media Center, Houston
Program 3
Sourcing Sound & Image (76 minutes)
Monday September 24, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
Sourcing Sound & Image tends more towards electronic work but in this installment the source of sound and picture is intimately wed. In some cases, the same pulse or data has been split to form an image and a sound, so the two are inseparable expressions of the same impulse.
Self-Portrait Warner Jepson (1975, Sound, 45 mins, 6 min excerpt, Color, Video)
Primary Stimulus Robert Russett (1977, Sound, 13 minutes, B&W, 16mm)
Flash Art Scott Wolniak (2011, Sound, 5:13 mins, Color, Video)
Lightning Field Rudy Lemcke (2003, Sound, 2:30 mins, B&W, Video)
Radio Island Van McElwee (1997, Sound, 11:40 mins, Color, Video)
Light Reading(s) Stephen Vitiello (2003, Sound, 10:44 mins, Color, Video)
Monody in Harmony Darrin Martin (2004/5, 17:20 mins, Color, Video)
Waterlilies Rudy Lemcke (2003, Sound, 4:04 mins, B&W, Video)
Brilliant Noise Semiconductor (2006, Sound, 5:47 mins, B&W, Video)
RIP Remy Charlip (1929 – 2012)
I had the pleasure of working with Remy on this little Flash animation in 2000 as part of Qcc’s Net Arts commissioning project. The music was written for Remy by his partner Lou Harrison. I re-formatted it as a Quicktime movie and put it up on YouTube a few days ago. Bittersweet.
July 27, 2012
I’m in the Film program of this show at the Menil Collection. The exhibition and film programs are coming to UAM/PFA in January, 2013.
SILENCE
July 27, 2012 – October 21, 2012
Menil Collection
Houston, Texas
Silence is a powerful force. It can produce profound emotions or conjure startling sensory experiences, and it seems inextricably linked to the passage of time. A prerequisite for contemplative thought, silence has become a scarce commodity in today’s media-saturated world. The exhibition and catalogue project Silence considers this important and little-examined subject in modern and contemporary art. Ranging from uncanny to incantatory to experiential, its broad range of works are not all without sound, but all reflect the many ways artists invoke silence to shape space and consciousness.
Organized by the Menil Collection and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Silence features paintings and sculptures from the Menil’s permanent collection as well as works by an international group of artists. Additionally, it includes a film and video series on the subject under development by curators at the Pacific Film Archive. Artists featured in Silence include Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, David Hammons, Tehching Hsieh, Jennie C. Jones, Jacob Kirkegaard, René Magritte, Mark Manders, Christian Marclay, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Max Neuhaus, Robert Rauschenberg, Doris Salcedo, Tino Sehgal, and others.
FILM
Mondays in September, 2012 Rice Media Center
The Sounds of Silence: Three Evenings of Film
Steve Seid, video curator at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, presents a three-part screening series of experimental films and video works dating back to 1936. A Kind of Hush examines the aesthetics of silence in avant-garde practice; Sonic Slippage and Sourcing Sound emphasize the use of sound as a subversive tool and subject of study.
A Kind of Hush (91 minutes)
Monday, September 10, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
Opening reception, 6:00 p.m.
Includes works by Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, and Nam June Paik, with an introduction by Steve Seid
Sonic Slippage (76 minutes)
Monday, September 17, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
Includes works by Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin, Bruce Conner, and Steina
Sourcing Sound (76 minutes)
Monday, September 24, 2012, 7:00 p.m.
Includes works by Rudy Lemcke, Semiconductor, and Scott Wolniak
Here are the two pieces that are going to be in the film program in case you can’t make it to Houston!
Lightning Field (2003)
[youtube url=”http://youtu.be/1E4LL4tk5B4″ width=”480″ height=”320″ autohide=”1″ fs=”1″ rel=”0″ showsearch=”0″ showinfo=”0″]
Waterlilies (2003)
Note: Waterlilies was retitled Wormholes and included in my Search for Life in Distant Galaxies hybrid web narrative piece in 2011. The original 2003 piece is in the program.
[youtube url=”http://youtu.be/3h30VS4C6pQ” width=”480″ height=”320″ autohide=”1″ fs=”1″ rel=”0″ showsearch=”0″ showinfo=”0″]
June 1 – 26, 2012
I’m recreating part of my City of the Future (after Tarkovsky’s Solaris) – Installation from 2007 for this exhibition.
It’s a dual channel video projection. The first video City of the Future (view below) , plays as a continuous loop on one wall. On the opposite wall is a cycle of 10 videos including Wittgenstein and the Problem of other Minds (view below) . To see the original installation and videos go to the Navigation bar at the top of the page.
City of the Future (loop)
[youtube url=”http://youtu.be/f0-kILQvQXo” width=”480″ height=”320″ autohide=”1″ fs=”1″ rel=”0″ showsearch=”0″ showinfo=”0″]
Wittgenstein and the Problem of Other Minds
[youtube url=”http://youtu.be/SrtKX3x95wI” width=”480″ height=”320″ autohide=”1″ fs=”1″ rel=”0″ showsearch=”0″ showinfo=”0″]
June 10, 2012
Atlanta-based performance collective John Q (Joey Orr, Andy Ditzler, and Wesley Chenault) join GLBT Historical Society Artist-in-Residence E.G. Crichton and artist/Queer Cultural Center co-founder Rudy Lemcke for an evening of visual and performative conversation exploring the intersection of archival research and the creative process. The group will present provisional findings of their current collaborative archive exchange.
The Search for Life in Distant Galaxies project involved creating a fictional archive that was in fact loosely based on bits and pieces of archival material cobbled together from the GLBT Historical Archive in San Francisco. I will be discussing that project and a collaborative project in development with E.G. Crichton and John Q.
March 2 – April 25, 2012
Bookstore
A temporary store of over 1,000 artist books, zines, & other unusual print publications.
My children’s book it in this exhibition/bookstore.
