THE PHANTASMAGORIA OF OFFENSE: THE MALE VERSION

FRIDAY AUGUST 15, 2020 @ 6PM

THE PHANTASMAGORIA OF OFFENSE: THE MALE VERSION Jess Irish • USA • 2018 • Opinion, Documentary • 7 minutes

The Phantasmagoria of Offense is an animated film lyric about the costs of image suppression. In the “male version” corporal images focus on the male body, presenting a collage history that contrasts the cultural anxieties around expressions of vulnerability and homosexuality with power and privilege within the dominant paradigm. The political ramifications of image suppression during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s is questioned alongside the well-intended requests for “trigger warnings.” If there is a take away message, it is that censorship is not an abstraction. It has a body count.

DIRECTOR

Jess Irish is a full-time faculty in the School of Art, Media & Technology at Parsons, The New School for Design, and has previously taught at Wellesley College, UCLA, and UCSB. Her design research focuses on the application of dynamic media to empower communities through collaborative information mapping and non-linear storytelling. Collaborative design projects include Visualizing Pipeline Impacts, DataMYNE and Urban Research Tool. She was a founding principle of OnRamp Arts, an award-winning digital arts non-profit in central Los Angeles that produces innovative new media projects such as Tropical America, in collaboration with local communities and artists. Her artwork in video, installation, print media situates an investigation into the relationships between information technology and landscape; architecture and ideology. Both her design work and art work have been exhibited and screen nationally and internationally, and have been featured in publications such as Art Forum, METROPOLIS, RES, and Artweek magazines, as well as various international journals. Irish received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine in 1996, and her second MFA in Creative Writing from The New School in 2016.