VIDEO BURNOUT
“Because if memory exists outside of the flesh it wont be memory because it wont know what it remembers…”—The Wild Palms, William Faulkner
As we all—I’m sure—know, perception can be a very slippery field. Externally, the images in the world—history, entertainment, etc., completely permeating our landscape—in their exponentiality, are also a part of ourselves. In the least case that world exists within our living memory, but one must remember that the external images—they do depend on us.
“And all that remained before us was an empty, glowing window, a rectangular hole piercing the opaque night, showing our aching eyes a world composed of lightning and dawn.” —Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille.
Internally, the images we encounter in every step of each day can be modified quite easily with drug use, role-playing, trance states, vitamins, yoga, and so on—states of mind. Both planes will remain elusive and fleeting, resurfacing only in glimpses, upon close analysis, or in nostalgic reminiscence. The forces at play, in both the internal and external fields, are so numerous and great that a complete archeology of them would be nearly impossible—but they are there nonetheless.
“Butch Hancock once said of Elvis Presley’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956: ‘It was a dance that was so strong it took an entire civilization to forget it. And ten seconds to remember it.’”—Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus.
Initially this program was organized around a very loose theme: videos about drugs and/or television, as the two themes most closely resembled the two planes I described above, and it was easier to describe than what I attempted to just now, in the previous paragraph, to the video-makers I was soliciting. I don’t know that this video program is really about drugs and television at all; of course it’s about something…it could simply be a small reflection of an archaeology of a train of thought, and perhaps that’s all it really needs it be.
Edie After Hours, Seth Kirby, 2005 (5.5 minutes)
An analogue disco processing, from the Maysles’ Grey Gardens, of Edie
dancing with the American flag as the world around her whirls into jagged bits
of feedback. N.B.: strobing effect, if you are epileptic or otherwise strobe-sensitive
please use caution.
Dark Stars, by Marisa Olson, 2006, (2 min)
Samples from VHS video games and internet video are fed back through analog
processors in this witty and poetic comment on race and Warholian fame.
Ringo Zapruder, by Dale Hoyt, 1981 (5 minutes)
A remake of Brackage’s Desistfilm that also asks whether the hysteria
of Beatle-mania might have had something to do with their first single’s
release date falling just six days after the Kennedy assassination.
II: MK & A, by Sarah McKiel, 2006 (37 seconds)
Sarah McKiel’s project NSM Fashions includes a book, and a long sequence
of videos, mostly made about and during television viewing. This video watches,
repeatedly and in slow-mo, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen on Saturday Night Live
screaming.
Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Paul Bush, 2001 (5 minutes)
The 1941 film version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remade with a schizophrenic
photographic apparatus. This video concretizes the thematic by transposing it
into the structural. Based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The Possible Fog of Heaven, by John Knecht, 1993 (10 minutes)
Speaking for the first time from the afterworld, Elvis describes his experience
of Heaven. This is told through the tape’s structure, predicated upon
the King’s last prescription.
II: Caitlin, by Sarah McKiel, 2006 (25 seconds)
From NSM Fashions. Caitlin, from Degrassi Junior High, in a rainy and somber
moment writhes across the screen.
pulse pharma phantasm, by Les LeVeque, 2002 (6 minutes)
A frame-by-frame weaving of nine different pharmaceutical television commercials
into a pulsating hallucination.
N.B.: strong strobing effect, if you are epileptic or otherwise strobe-sensitive
please use caution.
It Did It, by Peter Brinson, 2001 (17 minutes)
Using the scientific method, Brinson evaluates himself and his video before
and after taking Prozac to determine whether or not he needs anti-depressants
and if they have an effect on his storytelling.
I: Subplot, by Sarah McKiel, 2006 (2.5 minutes)
From NSM Fashions. An interventionist approach to the experience of experiencing
America’s Top Model, in this special instance where models meet a publicist
to talk about self-image and, by proxy, eating disorders: dissecting it, enveloping
it, and turning away.
Mummenclean, by Anonymous, 2005 (2 minutes)
A conceptual Swiss cleaning service thwarts its own productivity after discovering
some un-consumed cocaine; the disco returns.
Docu-Duster, by Donigan Cumming, 2001, (3 minutes)
To be a man, to be a hero, to be a wife; three conflicting voices inhabit the
filmmaker as he re-enacts the climax of Delmar Daves’ 3:10 to Yuma.
Jean Genet in Chicago, by Frederic Moffat, 2006 (26 minutes)
A queer re-writing of the events surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention
in Chicago from the point of view of French writer Jean Genet, whose presence
unearths the difficult alignment of political and sexual desires.
II: Length of the Body, by Sarah McKiel, 2006. 30 sec
From NSM Fashions. “We don’t want to have shoulders for earrings—like
this.” An exercise show is examined in a moment of absurd parlance.
# # #
www.mixnyc.org
Friday, November 10th, 8pm
3LD Center for Art and Technology
80 Greenwich Street
R or 1 to Rector Street; 2,3,4,5 to Wall Street; A, C to Fulton Street