LINE RIDER 3 FULL

Hell, the first time I spent a concerted amount of time with other trans people outside the confines of the internet was a retreat where we spent hours just hanging out and painting. I’m not one to generalize, but I can pretty safely say queer people go absolutely bananas when given the opportunity to make art of any kind.

LINE RIDER 3 FULL

As the guitars from the accompanying Car Seat Headrest song kick in, however, the screen grows noisier, and the riders flit around each other, expectant and hesitant, as we see a diary entry, a budding queer crush blooming into a first love, and then suddenly there’s a rainbow and the clouds are no longer black silhouettes but bright, bright, white, and the sky is blue and clear and they’re kissing, and-Īnd I’m wondering to myself, why did this take so long? In a world full of queer people, and out of all the art we’ve made, why has it taken Line Rider, out of all the art media in the world, this long to produce a single track with a depiction of a queer relationship? You might think I answered that question at the start of this review - after all, it’s a young medium with few active artists - but there’s more to it, I’d say.

My Boy is a noticeable departure from this pattern, with an opening section that’s tender and sweet, a gentle “we won’t be alone” refrain sung with two different voices, the riders’ personalities embodied in the different styles of text Hofmann fills the screen with. Ava Hofmann’s newest release, My Boy (Mirror to Mirror), is not just exceptional in its breaking of new ground, but in the utter glee it takes in the act of doing so, a kind of window-crashing, glass-smashing, we’re-here-we’re-queer abandon that cements a piece of art as simultaneously of the moment and timeless.Īva’s previous pieces in Line Rider have ranged from messy and loud ( BELLS, You Want It? ) to quiet and thought-provoking ( Three Memories of Snow, sodomite ), encompassing a number of emotional spaces as a collective body of work, but tightly focused as individual experiences. Owing to its youth as an art medium (working stolidly through its second decade) and its lack of large-scale community (with active membership barely approaching triple digits), Line Rider often shocks newcomers with the sheer glut of ground yet to be broken.

Line rider 3