Felix Bernstein (born May 20, 1992) is a

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

ist,

video art Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting ...

ist, writer, and

cultural critic A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole. Cultural criticism has significant overlap with social and cultural theory. While such criticism is simply part of the self-consciousness of the culture, the social positions of ...

. Bernstein was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to poet

Charles Bernstein Charles Bernstein may refer to: * Charles Bernstein (composer) (born 1943), American composer of film and television scores * Charles Bernstein (poet) Charles Bernstein (born April 4, 1950) is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary sc ...

and artist

Susan Bee Susan Bee (born January 14, 1952) is an American painter, editor, and book artist, who lives in New York City. In 2015, "Photograms and Altered Photos from the 1970s" were exhibited at Southfirst Gallery in Brooklyn. She had one solo show at Acco ...

, and attended

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic ...

, graduating in 2013. Bernstein's art includes narrative films, poetry, short YouTube videos, durational performance videos, and live performances. In his work, he often plays characters based on cultural icons including:

Amy Winehouse Amy Jade Winehouse (14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011) was an English singer and songwriter. She was known for her deep, expressive contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres, including soul, rhythm and blues and jazz. A membe ...

Lamb Chop (puppet) Lamb Chop is a sock puppet anthropomorphic sheep created by the late puppeteer and ventriloquist Shari Lewis. The character, a female lamb, first appeared during Lewis' guest appearance on ''Captain Kangaroo'' in March 1956 and later appeared on ...

, Antony Hegerty, Leopold Brant (a parody of Peter Brant II), and

Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...

Work

Bernstein's first video was a satirical coming out video for YouTube made in clown make-up in 2008. In 2012, his first narrative film, Unchained Melody, premiered at

Anthology Film Archives Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema.Charles Bernstein Charles Bernstein may refer to: * Charles Bernstein (composer) (born 1943), American composer of film and television scores * Charles Bernstein (poet) Charles Bernstein (born April 4, 1950) is an American poet, essayist, editor, and literary sc ...

and

, the poet Cole Heinowitz, and the singer

Shelley Hirsch Shelley Hirsch (born June 9, 1952 in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York) is an American vocalist, performance artist, composer, improviser, and writer. She won a DAAD Residency Grant in Berlin 1992, a Prix Futura award in 1993, and multiple awards ...

. In 2012, together with Gabe Rubin, he co-performed and co-directed

Art & Language Art & Language is a conceptual artists' collaboration that has undergone many changes since it was created in the late 1960s. The group was founded by artists who shared a common desire to combine intellectual ideas and concerns with the creati ...

Red Krayola The Red Krayola (originally Red Crayola) is an American avant rock band from Houston, Texas formed in 1966 by the trio of singer/guitarist Mayo Thompson, drummer Frederick Barthelme, and bassist Steve Cunningham. The group were part of the 196 ...

's opera Victorine at the 2012

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

Felix Bernstein & Gabe Rubin Felix Bernstein (1992, New York, NY) and Gabe Rubin (born 1992, New York, NY) are an artist duo whose interdisciplinary work consists of noise, camp, and poet’s theater. The two artists have collaborated since meeting in 2010 at Bard College, whe ...

make music, stage shows, and videos around themes of impersonation, poly-sexuality, and persona. In January 2016, Bernstein, working with Rubin, debuted the stage show Bieber Bathos Elegy at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In February 2016, Nightboat published Bernstein's first poetry collection, Burn Book. His most recent work with Rubin, titled "Folie à Deux" (2018), will be featured at the David Lewis gallery.

Writing and criticism

Bernstein's work has been described as "zany" and "confessional." Bernstein's cultural criticism has been published in

The Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is a publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics. The ''Rail'' is based out of Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, criti ...

, Htmlgiant, The Volta,

The Believer Believer(s) or The Believer(s) may refer to: Religion * Believer, a person who holds a particular belief ** Believer, a person who holds a particular religious belief *** Believers, Christians with a religious faith in the divine Christ *** Beli ...

, Coldfront, Lemonhound,

Hyperallergic ''Hyperallergic'' is an online arts magazine, based in Brooklyn, New York. Founded by the art critic Hrag Vartanian and his husband Veken Gueyikian in October 2009, the site describes itself as a "forum for serious, playful, and radical thinking ...

, The Fanzine, and

The Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

. Bernstein's article-turned-book "Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry" is a critical and ambivalent survey of language poetry, conceptual poetry and the art in their lineage. Bernstein's central argument is that there has been a shift from language poetry's death of the author to conceptual poetry's death of the writerly to post-conceptual poetry's death of reading. The Goldsmith aesthetic, along with that of postpostmodernism in general ( Queer Theory,

Speculative Realism Speculative realism is a movement in contemporary Continental-inspired philosophy (also known as post-Continental philosophy) that defines itself loosely in its stance of metaphysical realism against its interpretation of the dominant forms of p ...

Metamodernism Metamodernism is a term that refers to a range of developments observed in many areas of art, culture and philosophy, emerging in the aftermath of postmodernism, roughly at the turn of the 21st century. To many, it is characterized as mediations bet ...

, Gaga Feminism,

Alternative literature Alternative literature (or alt-lit) is a literary movement strongly influenced by internet culture and online publishing. It includes various forms of prose, poetry, and new media. Alt-lit is characterized by self-publication and a presence on socia ...

New Sincerity New Sincerity (closely related to and sometimes described as synonymous with post-postmodernism) is a trend in music, aesthetics, literary fiction, film criticism, poetry, literary criticism and philosophy that generally describes creative works ...

), has brought a decline in incisive and dialectical criticality, an overemphasis on social networks, slapdash viral superstars, and a hyper-mediated institutionalization of affect through an unconscious structuralism that masks itself as a romantic return to sheer materiality and the great outdoors. According to

Capilano Review ''The Capilano Review'' (''TCR'') is a Canadian tri-annual literary magazine located and published in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh ( ...

Drawing on thinkers from Deleuze to Lacan to Love to Ngai to Badiou to Barthes to Perloff, and combining a Zizekian X-ray vision with the biting 'you can't scare me' of youth, Notes constitutes Bernstein's irruption into / refusal of the institutional avant-garde.

Laurent Milesi and Radu Vancu call ''Notes'' "one of the most savvy, brazen, ambitious poetic manifestoes of a generation." In the ''New York Times'',

Holland Cotter Holland Cotter is an art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Life and work Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. from Harvard College in 1970, wh ...

called Bernstein's "blistering cultural criticism," one of the best things in 2015 art. Notes was selected by

Seth Price Seth Price (born 1973 in Palestine) is a New York City-based multi-disciplinary post-conceptual artist. He lives and works in New York City. Early life Price was born in the village of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, Palestine in 1973. His pa ...

as the best book of 2015 in ''Artforum''. Price wrote,

Bernstein's book is basically a symptomology report, which is one definition of an artwork. Symptoms include youth culture, the avant-garde, queer theory, alt lit, and social media…Keeping a space open can be a political act, and that's what Bernstein's doing with his writing, or his persona, and maybe there's no difference. It's hard to say what this space is, but you could call it a space of trouble.

Publications

* ''Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry''. Insert Blanc Press. 2015. * ''Burn Book''. Nightboat. 2016.

External links

Personal web page

ORTV page (Bernstein/Rubin) (videos)

PennSound page

Felix Bernstein Skype Reading.
Poetry will be made by all.
Felix Bernstein Youtube Channel

Boyland.

. Brooklyn Film Festival, 2015.
Bieber Bathos Elegy
Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Shame of Shamelessness
Interview with Bernstein. Believer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bernstein, Felix American performance artists Poets from New York (state) Gay Jews Bard College alumni American gay writers Artists from New York City American literary critics American male poets Gay poets American video artists 21st-century American non-fiction writers Critics of postmodernism American YouTubers American LGBT poets 1992 births Living people American gay artists American male non-fiction writers 21st-century American poets Entertainment-related YouTube channels 21st-century American male writers