Bug Davidson (BFA 2006 Film and Video)
Bug Davidson just got back from a residency in rural Mexico and is nursing a summer cold with a beer at Ruby’s BBQ, near the University of Texas at Austin campus. An experimental filmmaker and performance artist, Davidson describes a piece they (Davidson prefers “they” to gender-specific pronouns) enacted at the residency, in which they offered free amulets to people in the local town square. “They were handmade trinkets that had a piece of writing in them,” Davidson says. “It translated from Spanish to say, ‘Amulets for weirdos.’ I had a great experience with two young people who were really thankful for the message, basically: ‘You’re not alone.’”A failed agriculture science student at Texas A&M, Davidson—who’s gone by Bug ever since getting hit by a Volkswagen as a teenager—applied to SVA on the encouragement of a girlfriend who had gone there. “I was like, ‘I’ll go to New York,’” Davidson says. “‘Why not?’ So I signed that promissory note.”Davidson’s art used to focus pointedly on LGBT issues but is now broadly influenced by history and music. For one performance piece, Davidson picked movies from their parents’ era—films that contained hate speech and violence toward queer people—and then watched that footage over and over. “The implication being this was something that I grew up with and it became so ingrained in who I am and how I see myself,” Davidson says.Davidson had just learned that a current piece, a video sculpture, had been accepted into the 2017 Fusebox Festival, in Austin. The work likens Bonnie and Clyde—as humans, not criminals—to Davidson’s mother and father. A video wall will broadcast 40 unique channels, featuring audio, actors and dancers. “I love narrative cinema, but my ideas don’t really come out that way,” Davidson says.

Above, Anchored Vessels and Vessels Aground (Rule 30) (2015), a collaboration between Davidson and dancer and choreographer Dany Casey.

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