Film program URANIANS curated by artist A.L. Steiner

Museum Brandhorst and FILMFEST MÜNCHEN are cooperating for the fourth time this year. For the 40th anniversary of the film festival, Museum Brandhorst and Queer Film Festival Munich (QFFM) are presenting the film and video program URANIANS, curated by New York-based artist A.L. Steiner.

URANIANS | Screenings | 26 June – 1 July, 2023
URANIANS is a unique journey through bodies, times and spaces with several premieres, homages and iconic contributions. It spans the futurist cyberpunk narratives and aesthetics of Shu Lea Cheang and Bruce LaBruce, with THE STROLL (2023) Kristen Lovell’s and Zackary Drucker’s distinctive archival look at the queer and trans-identified past of New York’s meat-packing district, and with MAMACRUZ (2023), Patricia Ortega’s unwavering exploration of sexual awakening in defiance of patriarchy. In ORLANDO, MA BIOGRAPHIE POLITIQUE (2023), philosopher Paul B. Preciado has 25 trans and non-binary persons take on the title role of Virginia Woolf’s queer novel “Orlando” to tell their personal stories.

URANIANS shows films by A.K. Burns, Jane Castle, Rick Castro, Shu Lea Cheang, Kajsa Dahlberg, Zackary Drucker, Shine Louise Houston, Lenn Keller, Bruce LaBruce, Kristen Lovell, Nyala Moon, Patricia Ortega, Marit Östberg, Peaches, Paul B. Preciado, Jennifer Reeves, MM Serra, Jan Soldat, A.L. Steiner, Ela Troyano, Lex Vaughn.

Screening & Panel Filmmakers Live!
With A.L. Steiner, Shu Lea Cheang, Bruce LaBruce, Jürgen Brüning
Museum Brandhorst | 30 June 2023 | 7 p.m. | Free admission
At Museum Brandhorst, A.L. Steiner will present COMMUNITY ACTION CENTER, a 69-minute sociosexual video made in 2010 from a collaboration with A.K. Burns. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with A.L. Steiner and international protagonists from the art and film scene, including artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang, underground cult director Bruce LaBruce, and producer and founder of the Pornfilmfestival Berlin, Jürgen Brüning. In conversation with Munich Film Festival programmer Julia Weigl, they will talk about representations of erotic encounters and queer sexuality in film, about community and collaboration, and about the charged genre of porn.

Homage Shu Lea Cheang
The films of Taiwanese American artist Shu Lea Cheang alternate between queer cinema, science fiction, pornography, and a networked scenario of installation and performance. Museum Brandhorst and FILMFEST MÜNCHEN are dedicating a tribute to the genre-crossing artist and showing five of Cheang's cinematic works since the 1990s. Her latest feature film UKI will celebrate its world premiere on June 28 in Munich.

“A.L. Steiner’s film program URANIANS and the tribute to Shu Lea Cheang bring together important aesthetic and discursive perspectives that counter heteropatriarchal representations of sexuality,” said Monika Bayer-Wermuth, chief curator at Museum Brandhorst. “We are very pleased that our long-standing cooperation with the Filmfest brings socially highly relevant topics into focus by combining art and film.” Monika Bayer-Wermuth is also a member of this year’s jury for FILMFEST MÜNCHEN’s CINEVISION AWARD.

About A.L. Steiner
A.L. Steiner utilizes constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, collaboration, performance, writing and curatorial work as seductive tropes channeled through the sensibility of a skeptical queer ecofeminist androgyne. Her work is featured in permanent collections such as the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and more recently in the Brandhorst Collection. Steiner is co-curator of “Ridykeulous,” co-founder of “Working Artists and the Greater Economy” (“W.A.G.E.”) and collaborates with numerous writers, performers, designers, activists and artists. She is Faculty at Yale University’s School of Art. In the foyer of Museum Brandhorst, she will collaborate with artist Mel E. Logan and TUM students to create the sound intervention “SPARK: Welcome to the Misanthropocene” on July 4, 2023.

Further information on the events can also be found at our calendar.

URANIANS takes place in conjunction with the exhibition "Nicole Eisenman. What Happened". The exhibition surveys for the first time the entire spectrum of the artist’s three decades of work in painting and sculpture.