Nottingham Contemporary

Collaborators Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz excavate forgotten “queer” moments by revisiting films and photographic imagery. Their complex and playful works unsettle traditional historical narratives and propose possible queer futures. In their latest film, I Want, Sharon Hayes, the American artist, replays a performance by Kathy Acker, the late experimental novelist, punk poet and feminist.

This exhibition was part of Alien Encounters – four solo exhibitions, each featuring new commissions. The four artists use performance, theatre and film. For them, fiction and alternative realities become ways of transforming and extending our understanding of identity, social norms and world history.

The idea for the season developed out of conversations with Collabor-8 Collective, Nottingham Contemporary’s young people’s group, and was curated to coincide with Circuit, our arts festival for 15 to 25 years olds in Nov.