Directing
Ricerche: three uses Pier Paolo Pasolini’s brilliant 1963 film, Comizi d’Amore as the guidepost for a contemporary inquiry into the “sexual problem” in the United States. While the political climate in post-war Italy in 1963 was deeply distinct from that of the United States in this contemporary moment, both are sites of a persistent political condition in which so-called value-based policy and ideology act out symptomatically to cover up underlying economic and political vulnerabilities.
Ricerche: four is the last in a decade-spanning series of works by Sharon Hayes focusing on sexuality and gender in the United States. In each video, the artist asks probing questions of an assembled collective. Here, three groups of LGBTQIA elders reflect on their lives, loves, and identities. Hayes adopted her interview style and the name of the series from from the 1963 film, “Comizi d’Amore” (“Love Meetings”), in which the filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini moved across postwar Italy interviewing Italians about sex and sexuality, examining the shifting values of the period. Now, with similar moralistic undercurrents running through American culture, Haye’s video underscores the endurance of chosen community. Against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic and the unfurling impact of social media, Haye’s work asks what it means to gather now [Whitney Musuem]
