Bernstein stages psychofictional scenes as lectures, essays, satire, and melodrama, using errant bodies of imagery and discourse to bore holes through crusty ideals. He is the author of Burn Book (Nightboat, 2016) and Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry (Insert Blanc Press, 2015), which the New York Times noted for its “blistering cultural criticism.” His writing has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, Poetry Magazine, Spike Arts Magazine, Bomb, Mousse, May Revue, Bookforum and Texte Zur Kunst.
Bernstein's video work with Gabe Rubin places characters in dialectical tension with each other’s fantasies and re-animate occluded and bizarre tropes from queer history. Their film Madame de Void (2018) reimagines 101 Dalmations as a sadomasochistic drag melodrama of seesawing desires. Bernstein and Rubin’s work has been presented at Luma Westbau, the Kitchen, MOCA Los Angeles, Issue Project Room, Anthology Film Archives, Artists Space, the Drawing Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Reena Spaulings Fine Arts, David Lewis, and Pilar Corrias Gallery. At the Whitney, they staged and performed Bernstein’s libretto Bieber Bathos Elegy in 2016 and Mayo Thompson’s Victorine (with Art & Language) for the 2012 Whitney Biennial. Their multimedia installation Vomitorium was presented at The Kitchen (New York) and LUMA Westbau in 2020.