Luminous Procuress (1971) A FILM BY STEVEN ARNOLD. Colour, Sound, 74mins, 16mm. 

Filmed in 1971, Luminous Procuress is underground American artist STEVEN ARNOLD’S surreal adventure into a Trans-parallel world. Obliterating definitions of gender boundary, Luminous Procuress constructs a sense of the transcendental and mythical, where female and male fluidly interchange and fuse in unison. Lauded by Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol, it’s an anarchic vision of a utopia where sexuality is in a process of total liberation, transgressing duality, beyond male and female. An authentic expression of visual extravagance in queer cinema at its best.

ART IS REVOLUTION, OR IT’S NOTHING.

– Steven Arnold

An underground maverick, Arnold’s work celebrated his love of sexual anarchy, mythology, and surreal fantasy through drawing, painting, photography, set design and film. Sex, death, religion and psychedelia are recurrent themes in his work, explored through constructions of highly dramatic and theatrical portraits – an Alternative Gospel with a motley crew of countercultural creatures as modern-day deities. Arnold developed a certain reputation as a “West-Coast Andy Warhol“. Working from his studio in Los Angeles – an old pretzel factory which he converted and baptised ZANZIBAR STUDIOS, Arnold was himself as flamboyant a creation as the characters in his art.

Pulsing through consecutive homoerotic tableaux and mystical performances, Luminous Procuress is a film beyond narrative. Set to an experimental psychedelic sound score conjuring outer space, the characters converse in a new unknown language, through darkened rooms, across banquets, in some kind of space-age temple, and in forests. Exhibiting Arnold’s love of costume for physical transformation, San Francisco’s most notorious psychedelic hippie drag troupe THE COCKETTES take on a central role in the film. Melding to Arnold’s search for spirituality, The Cockettes bring their psychedelic aura and majesty, performing rituals, becoming high Priestresses and generally transcending the mundane to become what seem to be divine creatures. As a snide comment on religion, a pope with an upside down cross appears, fornicating with some crazed nuns.

Playing around with decadence, extravagance and radical self-expression, Dionysus is surely at play here. As much as in JACK SMITH’S Flaming Creatures (1963) (from which Arnold drew inspiration) and the films of KENNETH ANGER, the spirit of DIONYSUS, God of chaos, and destroyer of limits is ignited through various rituals, banquets, orgies and dances. Curious hybrids are created, with Luminous Procuress taking on a trans-cultural, trans-millenial nature, with an incarnation of Tutankhamun even appearing. This could be Arnold’s meditation on past conceptions of deity, the eternal and infinite: “Androgynous nature lies in every male and female. Although it is rooted in antiquity, it contains a powerful message for our own time. Spiritual perfection consists precisely in rediscovering one’s androgynous nature”, said Arnold.

A haunting vision.

Text by Sophie Pinchetti