Karen Finley

Acting

Karen Finley

Evanston, Illinois

Karen Finley is an American performance artist, musician and poet. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity.

Acting credits

Philadelphia poster
7.7

Two competing lawyers join forces to sue a prestigious law firm for AIDS discrimination. As their unlikely friendship develops, their courage overcomes the prejudice and corruption of their powerful adversaries.

Philadelphia

1993

No artwork available
NR

Heretic is composed from the outtakes of Joe Gibbons's no-budget feature The Genius, set to John Zorn's Naked City "soundtrack" album Heretic, and recomposed as a satire on Psychotherapy. Features original narration performed by Frank Snider. A study of editing and its relation to the mechanics of the brain, HERETIC initially poses as a preview to the Gibbons film which it then deconstructs and reforms into a satire on psychotherapy.

Heretic

Fresh Kill poster
5.3

Shareen and Claire, a lesbian couple living on Staten Island, find themselves ensnared in a vast conspiracy involving a ghost ship of nuclear refuse, ominous television commercials, and deadly cat food.

Fresh Kill

1996

The Hardcore Collection poster
NR

A fringe film collective of edge-dwelling New York nihilist punks and crazies whose main pathological protagonist triumvirate were voyeur smackhead Richard Kern, pouting artpunk Nick Zedd and damaged psychescream queen Lydia Lunch.

The Hardcore Collection

2000

Karen Finley Live poster
8.5

The Karen Finley Live DVD features performances of her works "Shut Up and Love Me" and "Make Love", which were presented in 2001.

Karen Finley Live

2004

12 Rounds poster
7.3

Brian Buzzini plays a bisexual boxer who's fighting his sexual orientation as well as his opponents.

12 Rounds

2000

Mondo New York poster
4.9

A young woman wanders around New York City and stumbles across a number of strange characters and settings that represent the "underground" areas of the city. She sees stand up comedy in Central Park, a prostitution auction, a voodoo ceremony, an S&M club, and a number of very interesting performance artists. These are just a few of the sights and sounds of New York that she encounters.

Mondo New York

1988

Aktionskunst International. Dokumente zum Internationalen Aktionismus poster
NR

A comprehensive documentation of new art movements from 1945 to the present day. Beginning with the "Internationale Situationniste," "Cobra," "Spur," and "Wiener Gruppe" groups in Europe, and moving on to the international Happening and Fluxus movements, including the Viennese Actionists, and from 1970 onward to international Body and Performance Art, which also encompassed media art—film and video—the documentary presents film and photographic material from these art movements.

Aktionskunst International. Dokumente zum Internationalen Aktionismus

1989

The Genius poster
7.0

A ramshackle underground SF satire set and shot in the self-absorbed art world of lower Manhattan, written, produced, and directed by Joe Gibbons, who also plays one of the lead parts. Gibbons plays a mad scientist who's developed a technique for transferring personalities from one person's body to another; he becomes obsessed with an outlaw artist (played by performance artist Karen Finley) who destroys paintings in various galleries as a form of anarchist, anticapitalist protest.

The Genius

1993

You Killed Me First poster
4.7

Elizabeth bristles at the religious directives of her parents, asserting her right to personhood outside demure hairstyles and turkey dinners, constructing voodoo dolls and entertaining other manners of dark drawing in her dank emo-den. When confronted with the humanity and hypocrisy of her tormentors, the young antihero vanquishes their belief systems (and bodies) asserting, "You killed me first!"

You Killed Me First

1985

Pranks! poster
10.0

Video accompaniment to the book of the same name released by RE/SEARCH magazine, featuring interviews with Survival Research Lab's Mark Pauline, Joe Coleman, Karen Finley, Boyd Rice, and Frank Discussion. "Five Fabulously Funny Interviews with Fiendishly Flamboyant Pranksters discussing diabolical (and sometimes illegal) deeds. Dazzling deceptions and put-ons from some of the most outrageous artists living today."

Pranks!

1988

The Hardcore Collection poster
7.7

This DVD features 13 provocative short films by Richard Kern. Color & B&W film shorts with Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins and more. Includes Death Valley 69 , The Right Side Of My Brain, You Killed Me First, The Bitches, The Sewing Circle, X is Y, Fingered, Horoscope, Submit to Me Now, My Nightmare, Manhattan Loves Suicides, Submit to Me, and Evil Cameraman. Music from Sonic Youth, Cop Shoot Cop, J.G. Thirwell, Butthole Surfers.

The Hardcore Collection

2012

Behind the camera