A. L. Steiner (born 1967 in Miami, Florida) is an American
multimedia artist
Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditio ...
, author and educator, based in Brooklyn, New York."The art of communication, an interview with A. L. Steiner." I'm Yours website. Accessed 23 March 2014. Her solo and collaborative art projects use constructions of photography, video, installation,
collage
Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. ...
, and
performance
A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.
Management science
In the work place ...
. Steiner's art incorporates
queer
''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...
and
eco-feminist
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in h ...
elements. She is a collective member of the musical group
Chicks on Speed
Chicks on Speed is a feminist music and fine art ensemble, formed in Munich in 1997, after members Australian Alex Murray-Leslie and American Melissa Logan met at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts.
Though Chicks on Speed reached cult status th ...
; and, along with Nicole Eisenman, is a co-curator/co-founder of
Ridykeulous Ridykeulous is a curatorial initiative founded by artists Nicole Eisenman and A.L. Steiner.Miami, Florida. Steiner received a Bachelor of Arts in 1989 in Communication from George Washington University.
Steiner was Visiting Assistant Professor and M.F.A. Program Director the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California in 2014. In 2016, she was appointed Critic at the Yale School of Art and currently serves as the school's Senior Critic in Film/Video. She is also faculty in Bard College's MFA photography program.
Steiner is the recipient of th Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2017), the 2015–2016 Berlin Prize, and the 2015
Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate ...
grant.
Art work
''More real than reality itself'' (2014)
''More real than reality itself'' was a "multichannel video installation" for the Whitney Biennial of 2014. The piece aimed to examine political activism and documentary films, especially their use of linear narratives. The film was originally exhibited alongside the installation ''Cost-benefit analysis,'' a "collage of images of bodies and the environments they inhabit that amplifies the exchanges and encounters staged in the film." Steiner said of the piece,
t isa conduit to viewing other subjective histories hich has becomea platform for questioning intentionality and the relationship n order to givedocumentary or archival forms - a fragile and precarious place for both the object and subject.
''Community action center'' (2010)
From 2007 to 2010, A. L. Steiner and
A. K. Burns A.K. Burns (born 1975, in Capitola, California) is a New York-based interdisciplinary visual artist, working with video, installation, sculpture, collage, poetry and collaboration whose works address trans-feminist issues. Burns is currently a fel ...
composed ''Community Action Center''. It is a sixty-nine-minute socio-sexual video which utilizes
erotics
Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, ...
to express the personal sexual and political lives of the people in their community, with a largely queer focus. The video was filmed in New York State and Los Angeles.
In 2013, Burns and Steiner took the video on a fourteen city, ten state screening tour entitled ''Community Action Center or BUST!: The X-Cuntry Summer Tour.'' The tour culminated in October 2013, with an evening performance at The Kitchen, New York. The video was accompanied by live performances by Justin Vivian Bond, Nick Hallett, Sam Miller,
K8 Hardy
K8 Hardy (born 1977, Fort Worth, Texas) is an American artist and filmmaker.(2018, March 26). Hardy, K8. ''Benezit Dictionary of Artists.'' Retrieved 14 Dec. 2020, from https://www-oxfordartonline-com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/benezit/view/10.1093/ ...
, and other artists from the ''Community Action Center'' soundtrack.
''Greater New York'' (2010)
Steiner was one of 68 artists to participate in MoMA PS1's quinquennial exhibition, ''Greater New York''. Her contribution, entitled ''Angry, Articulate, Inevitable'', consisted of a collage of Steiner's photographs spanned across several walls.
''1 Million Photos, 1 Euro Each (minimum order)'' (2005)
''1 million Photos, 1 Euro Each'' is a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling collage installed at the John Connelly Presents' project room. It consists of photographs (mostly of women but also of men) and sexual nature shots of varying size. There is also a small television playing a rapid-fire,
stop-action
Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...
loop of the photographs on the wall and others, with text (often the title of the work) between them.
Activism
W.A.G.E.
A. L. Steiner is a co-founder of
Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.)
Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a New York-based activist group and non-profit organization whose stated advocacy mission is "to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract o ...
a New York-based activist group founded in 2008. W.A.G.E advocates that artists, performers and independent curators working with US institutions should be compensated for their work.