Brotherhood is Powerful: The Pornography and Video Art of Norman Yonemoto
This presentation focuses on the pornographic films and video art of gay Japanese American artist Norman Yonemoto. In both his porn and art work, Yonemoto injects a powerful queer and Asian critique through narrative content and experimental form. His hardcore feature film, Brothers (1973, directed under the pseudonym Jason Sato), was hailed as the "first anti-war gay porn film." In this talk, Nguyen reads Yonemoto's pornographic and video art practices alongside each other to bring out the formal, generic, and narrative similarities, and differences to highlight his unique queer Asian American authorship.
The author of A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Duke University Press, 2014), Nguyen Tan Hoang is Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of California at San Diego. A video artist and cultural theorist, Nguyen's experimental videos Forever Bottom!, PIRATED!, and K.I.P. have been screened internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Nguyen has also programmed film, video, and performance for MIX NYC: New York Queer Experimental Film Festival and the San Francisco Internaional Asian American Film Festival.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Ethnic Studies, Performance Studies Graduate Group, the Department of Film & Media