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Tuesday, April 9, 2002
Dirges And Sturgeons: Artists Vs. Technology
By Kevin John
Curator Astria Suparak has come to my hometown, Milwaukee, once
already — with Sexuality Malfunctioned, an itchy, extremely
disturbing program of films and videos whose images seemed to scab
over our entrenched self-regard. Now she's back on tour with Dirges
and Sturgeons (check out astriasuparak.com for dates)
and the results are much more user-friendly, although itchiness is
certainly on the plate.
The organizing principle this time is YACHT: Young Artists Challenge
High Technology. I'm not sure I'd be able to thread every film in the
program through this acronym, nor if it's even necessary. But
certainly Seth Price's "Industrial Synth" (2001) has a lot invested
in low technology. Most of this 15-minute video is taken up by an
ancient computer adventure game where the player examines the
dot-matrix environment and tries to elude death (and Death). For
Price, discarded or outmoded technology offers an opportunity to
reacquaint ourselves with the personal in history, a perpetual
accessing of memories in an effort to stave off mortality. And so the
player's final examination never goes through, and the effect is
devastating.
For itchiness, we have Lawrence Elbert's "Whitney: Mama's Little
Baby" (2000). Whitney Houston, played here by a drag queen, mounts a
drugged, terrifying monologue in her parked car. With the camera
shooting from the wide-angle distorted perspective of Houston's child
in the back seat, the audience receives all the abuse, paranoia and
cracked-out affection. The cinema chair becomes a restraining child
seat as we become helpless witness to La Whitney telling us we're
ugly and spitting up rotten Lunchables. There's not much compassion
for the diva at the wheel, which only adds another level of
discomfort for us to sort through. A genuinely unpleasant experience,
and all the better for it.
A few videos from "media cannibals" Animal Charm will be shown. My
favorite is "Lightfoot Fever," which mixes together footage from what
looks like a scopitone (early music video form) for a cover of
"Fever" and a nature film for children starring the lovable fawn
Lightfoot. The nature images attack the scopitone via flying boxes,
and the song itself is re-edited for a stuttering effect that
reminded me of Martin Arnold's deconstruction of Andy Hardy films.
Bjorn Melhus stars in his own video "Das Zauberglas" ("The Magic
Glass," 1991) as a man shaving his hair off and also a woman he
communicates with via a television screen. Their dialogue is lifted
from the German-dubbed version of the 1950 James Stewart Western
vehicle "Broken Arrow." The mirror in the original has now become the
television screen as the increasingly mediated sense of identity gets
lost forever in the static.
Also on the bill:
Pierre Yves Clouin's "The Little Big," which transforms shoulder
blades into butt cheeks.
Jacqueline Goss' meditation on genetic engineering, "The 100th
Undone" — silent so our own stomach growls and rumblings won't
go unnoticed.
Miranda July's "Getting Stronger Every Day," starring
Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein (!) and the idea of film as
mythical hovercraft.
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