OR119

Join us for a post-screening conversation with artists Peggy Ahwesh and Jacqueline Goss, in person.

OR119 is a theoretical musical about scientist and social thinker Wilhelm Reich, recorded in his home and laboratory in Rangeley, Maine. In this playfully performative piece, the writing and work of Reich, one of Freud’s favorite students, are put to melody and into conversation with contemporary feminist writers interested in “the orgone”, or universal life force that Reich centered in his studies of the erotic. Working with a group of friends and students, filmmakers Peggy Ahwesh and Jacqueline Goss wish to inspire a revitalization of Reich’s primary tenet: “Love, Work, and Knowledge are the wellsprings of our lives.” (Peggy Ahwesh and Jacqueline Goss, 2023, digital, 59 minutes)

Preceded by two shorts: Philosophy in the Bedroom, Part 2 (Peggy Ahwesh, 1993, Super 8mm to digital, 8 minutes), and SAG COLAB #1, (Jacqueline Goss and Rebecca Wolf, 2020, digital, 7 minutes)

Free. registration required.

About the Artists

Peggy Ahwesh is a Brooklyn-based media artist whose work spans a variety of technologies and styles in an inquiry into feminism, cultural identity, and genre. Ahwesh applies discourses of film theory to themes of gender subjectivity and social relations through improvised situations, found footage and low-end technologies while turning the conventions of realism on end.  Ahwesh came of age in the 1970s with S8 filmmaking, feminism, and the punk underground in Pittsburgh. In 2022, she received The Acker Award, which honors contributions to the downtown NYC art community. Find her online at Senses of Cinema’s Great Directors Critical Database, World Picture Journal #4, and the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

Jacqueline Goss makes movies about scientific systems and how they change the ways we think about ourselves. Her work has shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the New York Film Festival, and the International Film Festival at Rotterdam, among many other venues. She is a recipient of awards from the Alpert Foundation and Creative Capital. Goss teaches in the film and electronic arts program at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, New York.