1978/2012, live performance on video
Curated by Ethan Weinstock
Participant Inc (formerly El Mirage)
8 – 10 PM

In Unauthorized Interviews, voiceovers from archival interviews are lip-synced by an ensemble of impersonators (including Liza Minelli, Grace Jones, and Andy Warhol) to emphasize the cultural movement of the late 70's early 80's – in particular, Jane Pauley on location at Studio 54 interviewing Steve Rubell and Michael Jackson just after The Wiz had completed shooting. Each interview will take place between 1978-1980. The final reenactment will be from the closing night of the club when Diana Ross serenaded the club owners, Rubell and Schrager.

In his videos, performances, and assemblage, Mateik cast himself as myriad theoretical and cultural transvestites from media culture, competitive sport, and weird science. This practice includes regular participation in a collaborative process that fosters transfeminism, an inclusive feminism that integrates the lived experience of genderqueer people and extends important feminist concerns beyond the limits of rigidly defined gender. His videos are distributed by the Video Data Bank.

Participant, Inc. currently occupies the same building that from 1999 until 2006 was the home of El Mirage, a gay S & M sex club. While the club received a tepid review from Michael Musto in the Village Voice (he complained that every man there that night was decidedly a 5, "not good looking, not bad looking; not young, not old; not to die for, not to die from"), it was apparently good enough that the undercover investigator from New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene visited the establishment 30 times and observed 228 acts of anal sex or fellatio involving 232 people. The club was shut down by the city in 2005.