The Together Studio
Artists-scholars-filmmakers Five Foxes (Susan Potter and Kiki Loveday) present an exhibition and suite of public programs, exploring the queer erotics of early cinema.
The Schaeffer Fine Arts Library at the Power Institute is proud to be hosting "The Together Studio", an experiment in community, Sapphic memory, protection and connection.
The Together Studio is an exhibition and accompanying suite of public programs presented by Five Foxes (Kiki Loveday and Susan Potter), a duo of award-winning artist-scholar-filmmakers working at the intersection of lesbian, queer, trans and feminist media histories and experimental, process-driven approaches to film history for the present.
The Together Studio is presented by Five Foxes (Susan Potter and Kiki Loveday), with support from The Power Institute. Kiki Loveday's visit is made by possible by the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) at the University of Sydney.
Exhibition
"The Together Studio"
Tues 13 - Fri 16 October
Schaeffer Fine Arts Library
RC Mills Building, University of Sydney
An interactive pop-up exhibition exploring the queer erotics of early cinema. Drop in for soft space featuring experimental video and an interactive ‘selfie’ time machine.
Public Programs
"Together Tonight!"
To accompany their exhibition "The Together Studio", Five Foxes present a series of screenings, talks and conversations focused on the erotics of early cinema.
All events are free, and will take place in the Schaeffer Seminar Room, RC Mills Building, University of Sydney. No registration required.
Reading Out Loud and Sapphic Screenings
Wed, 7 October
4:00-5:00pm, and 5:30-6:30pm
Join us in reading out loud together a selection of inspiring, challenging, theoretical and poetic works in the history of sexuality. Bring a paragraph or a page you’d like to read out loud, talk out, share or think together about.
Then, view and discuss some of the most iconic—and some of the most obscure—films of early cinema’s transitional era (around 1907-1913). Screenings will include Sappho films and works by the period's two best known womxn directors, Alice Guy and Lois Weber.
Artist Talk
Kiki Loveday, "Pleasure’s Past: Real Photo Postcards and the Sapphic Erotics of Silent Cinema"
Tues, 13 October
5:00 - 6:00pm
A presentation and exhibition walk-through with Fives Foxes member Kiki Loveday, SSSHARC John Mitchell Kirtley Creative Practice Fellow 2026.
Screening
"Closing The Together Studio: Transitions"
Fri, 16 October
5:00 - 6:00pm
The Together Studio pop-up exhibition closes with a screening of two video works:
- Traffic in Kisses (2022) explores the erotics of early cinema through the genre of the kissing film; and
- Transitions plays with archival remnants from “the transitional era” of film history (1907-1913), when the vibrant film cultures of the fairground, sideshow, circus and peepshow arcade were subsumed by movie theatres and narrative cinema.
People
Kiki Loveday
Kiki Loveday is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar working at the intersection of queer and feminist media historiographies. Their creative work has been exhibited from The Coney Island Film Festival (NYC) to The Huntington (LA). Loveday’s scholarly work has been published in peer reviewed outlets including Feminist Media Histories, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, the Women Film Pioneers Project, Early Popular Visual Culture and is forthcoming in multiple anthologies. Her 2021 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Gender and Feminisms Caucus Graduate Student Essay Award was followed by the prestigious SCMS Dissertation Award in 2023. She cofounded the Women in the Director’s Chair Oral History Project at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. They are currently SSSHARC John Mitchell Kirtley Creative Practice Fellow 2026, University of Sydney, Australia.
Susan Potter
Susan Potter is an award-winning scholar and filmmaker, and Senior Lecturer in the School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney, on Gadigal Country. Across diverse critical, creative and collaborative projects, her research investigates the relation of cinema as modern mass medium to the intensification of sexuality since the late nineteenth century, and audiovisual media's role in queer identity and culture formation. Her monograph, Queer Timing: The Emergence of Lesbian Sexuality in Early Cinema (2019), was awarded the 2020 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for Best Single Work, Anthology, Multi-authored or Edited Book in LGBTQ Studies, Popular Culture Association. Susan is also co-director of The Just Archives Collaboratory, which aims to bring together archivists, researchers, artists, educators, and cultural organizers to investigate the politics of care, ethics, and histories of queer and trans archives.