2010, HD Video, color
Curated by Karl McCool

Barracuda
6PM - 12AM, continuous loop

The Galactic Pot Healer is an installment in the ongoing series Whispering Pines, in which body-dysmorphic, hypochondriac Cynthia navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor. This episode finds Cynthia, dressed theatrically in blue velvet with green eye shadow and pink lipstick, distraught after accidentally breaking one of her favorite decorative pots. She receives several messages from her medicine cabinet that instruct her to take the broken pot to someone known as: The Galactic Pot Healer. The Healer, a headless figure in a fuchsia snuggie, is unable to magically reassemble the pot and Cynthia is offered a healing massage instead. A replacement pot is then poked and pinched from the skin of her back. The Galactic Pot Healer was inspired by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and his novel of the same name.

Shana Moulton works in video and performance. Moulton studied at the University of California, Berkeley and at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where she received her MFA. Moulton has also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine, and studied at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. Moulton has exhibited or performed at the New Museum, MoMA P.S.1, Performa 2009, the Kitchen, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Wiels Center for Contemporary Art in Brussels, and the 29th Ljubljana Biennial. Her work has been featured on Arte TV and Art21. Moulton lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Since it opened more than a decade ago, Barracuda has remained a staple of the New York drag scene and a perennial gay bar favorite. The late Tammy Faye Bakker Messner appeared here to promote The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and numerous gay celebrities have been spotted here over the years. The Barracuda stage will host Shana Moulton as her alter ego, Cynthia, in The Galactic Pot Healer, before the nightly drag show begins, toward midnight.