FELIX BERNSTEIN
The Threshing Zone

June 28 & 29 | 7 PM
Greene Naftali, 8th Fl

The Threshing Zone is a manic lecture on the erogenous body.

How to develop a new theory of desire from its remainders and sore spots—what’s been written off as infantile or degenerate? Bernstein draws on a glut of visual sources to diagram what psychoanalysis could never metabolize, from medieval anatomy books and medical archives to astrological charts and visceral animations. The fluidity of the slideshow format confers its own propulsive logic, linking the evidence—whether found or fabricated—through loose affinities of shape and form: rims become cracks or vanishing points that give way to the cavities of fossilized shells, then liquefy into TikToks of oozing slime. The Threshing Zone crosses the empirical and the outlandish to map these wayward drives, forging new models of identity formation written on the flesh.

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FELIX BERNSTEIN stages psychofictional scenes as lectures, essays, satire, and melodrama, using errant bodies of imagery and discourse to bore holes through crusty ideals. He is the author of Burn Book (Nightboat, 2016) and Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry (Insert Blanc Press, 2015), and has performed at venues including Artists Space, LA MOCA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Animations and topologies made in collaboration with Gabe Rubin and Matt Bruinooge