Emma Bee Bernstein

David Ambrose on Emma Bee Bernstein’s "self-portrait with red eyes"

During the pandemic, I have been thinking a lot about separation and division. When you open my front door, you’re given the choice of two doors. Turn left and you enter my studio space. Turn right and you enter my office space, a room filled with two sources of inspiration: my art collection and my library. The past few months I have struggled to balance those rooms. Buried between the stacks of books, you will also find a small television set which has lately carved out its own space, as I ritualistically watch the evening news while eating my dinner. Across from my chair is Emma Bee Bernstein’s Untitled (Self-portrait with red eyes), a photograph taken in 2006, when she was twenty-one years old. Bernstein, too, is seated, legs crossed, but without a table and only a beige hallway in front of her. She appears slightly below my eye level wearing a red silk bathrobe, black stockings and high heel shoes. Her chair-back is pressed up against the wall. To her right, a floor lamp with teetering lamp shade casts a wayward halo in her direction.

Emma's Dilemma: Henry Hills's film featuring Emma Bee Bernstein, with an appreciation by Kevin Killian

Microscope version

PennSound presents a full-length (83 minute) version of Henry Hills's film Emma's Dilemma (1997-2012), which had its premiere at the Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn). Kevin Killian has written an appreciation for this release. 

WATCH HERE

There are two sdditional, autonomous, sections of the film
(more information on these two films at PennSound):
Richard Foreman: "King Richard"
Ken Jacobs: "Nervous Ken"

Links to excerpts from the film:
"Maybe (or, In Pursuit of Parker Posey)"
 "A Lee Ann-thology of Concrete Poetry"  (4:00)
 "Julie Patton"  (4:10)
"Printed Matter,"  with Kenny Goldsmith  (3:13)
 "Susan Howe"  (3:35)

Kevin Killian on Emma's Dilemma:

Emma Bee Bernstein, Exquisite Fucking Boredom: Polaroids at Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn)

Emma Bunny, Polaroid, estate of Emma Bee Bernstein © 2007

Exquisite Fucking Boredom
Polaroids by Emma Bee Bernstein
May 24 - June 25, 2012
curated by Phong Bui
Opening Reception Thursday, May 24, 6-9pm

Exquisite Fucking Boredom

a film by Emma Bee Bernstein

Emma's Nursery Rimes

Two works from 1991

Emma, Susan, and I moved to Buffao in August of 1990. I did these works in the following Spring, when Emma was turning five.  Some of these xerox-generated pieces, an extension of Veil, and many of which focussed on my own hand-written mss and notebooks, were collected in Ray DiPalma's Hot Bird Mfg as Language of Bouquets  in 1991 (9 sheets, stapled at top).  This set of work involved overpriting, rather thant overwriting, as in Veil.  The two images here are quite different that the others in this series: I overlayed a drawing of Emma's over the printout of "Emma's Nursery Rimes." The poems, from July 1990,  were published as part of a  collaborative book with Bee, Little Orphan Anagram (New York: Granary Books, 1997) and later collected in  Girly Man. Emma always said she wrote them.

Emma Bee Bernstein @ Sibila

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