PYT
4:04 min., 2004
In Never Never Land identities collide and adult imperatives of binary gender have not yet taken hold. We suspend our disbelief and salute a constant state of preadolescent gender. In the tradition of the pantomime, the lead roll of Peter (the principal boy) is played by a woman. Michael Jackson plays the modern day Peter Pan in a state of arrested development. PYT throws social codes of masculinity into crisis and suggest Michael Jackson, Peter Pan, and Mateik are theoretical and cultural transvestites.

TARA MATEIK

Tara Mateik is an artist and educator living in New York City. In 2002 he founded The Society of Biological Insurgents (SBI), an embryonic cell organization that wages strategic operations to overthrow institutions of compulsory gender. Through video, installation, and performance he fulfills the mission of SBI. Sport and gender are developing themes within his work. Most recently he performed a reenactment of the Battle of the Sexes where he plays both Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

In addition to his own work he has collaborated with collectives and artists including Paper Tiger Television video collective to produce short videos that demystify and democratize the media. In 2000 he co-founded Dykes Can Dance with Emily Roysdon and JD Samson.

Mateik’s writing and work has been published in Felix: A Journal of Media Arts and Culture, LTTR, a queer feminist art journal and North Drive Press #2 .

Mateik graduated from Hampshire College in 1997 with a BA in Video and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in 2004 with an MFA in Intergrated Electronic Arts.

Currently he teaches at CUNY Staten Island in the Media Culture Department and runs the Education Department at Art in General.