selected video + performance projects
Death Records
2008, performance, color video with sound, 6:45 min. After the September 11th attacks, Texas-based Clear Channel Communications, Inc., the largest owner of American Radio stations, issued a “suggested ban” on 166 songs that metaphorically referred to the tragic events. Curiously enough, Clear Channel also listed songs of peace and healing, and every song recorded by the band Rage Against the Machine, known for their leftist politics and lyrics of social injustice. A question of public sensitivity was quickly spun into an opportunity to censor voices of political dissent and peace. Death Records is a performative remix of 21 “banned” songs, chosen for a variety of metaphorical reference. |
Pornoscope
2008, color video with sound, 7:00 min. Pornoscope throws the golden age of porn into the digital blender: the well-endowed John Holmes and his large-breasted partner morph into pulsating, trance inducing geometric patterns that reference 1970s fabrics, interiors, and colors. Frames contain multiple combinations of body parts, and the star-like shapes are alien, anal, and/or sexually/biologically indeterminate. The layered and repetitive soundtrack further echoes the hypnotic qualities of the Pornoscope, and is humorously remixed from the porn's original audio track (in collaboration with David Flood). Pornoscope is a play upon the affective structures of pornography, catharsis, and of the visceral power of vision. Sources: Short untitled porn found online starring John Holmes |
Project B*mbi
2007, color video with sound, 4:30 min. Project B*mbi contains three classic film scenes from animation, pornography, and epic drama. The editing choice of opaquely layering and physically braiding these texts affords the surprising opportunity to simultaneously watch these films. The chosen scenes are the most memorable, climactic, and even traumatic. By layering the texts, the narratives and characters not only commingle, but each narrative provides a critical lens in which to view and recontextualize the other two films. Sources: Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978), Bambi (David Hand, 1942), Debbie Does Dallas (Jim Clark, 1978) |
Break-Up
2007, black and white video with sound, 7:30 min. Break-Up is constructed from two layered parallel scenes from the science fiction classic, It Came From Outer Space, based on a Ray Bradbury story. The scenes depict the male protagonist’s futile search for his fiancé as he chases her femme fatale alien clone, aka "the bad copy." Popularly known as datamosh, this project manifests digital artifacts due to poor compression, pushing the material aspects of the imperfect digital copy. This causes the film image to constantly break-up and quickly recompose. When characters move, their cinematic image dissolve into pixels, depicting a literal deconstruction of identification and agency in Classical Hollywood Cinema in the digital age. Source: It Came From Outer Space (Jack Arnold, 1953) |
“Gone" In 60 Seconds
2009, color video with sound, 1:00 min. An absurdist remix of the epically problematic film, Gone With the Wind, this redux compresses the original 222 minute film down to a hyper-speedy 60 seconds. The re-edited version plays against an altered, sped-up stock MIDI track of the film’s signature song, Tara’s Theme. The project is a commentary on digital compression, the status of cinema in digital times, historical romanticization and erasure, contemporary remix fan culture, and of course, diminishing attention spans. Source: Gone With The Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) |
Blow-It-Up
2007, 3-channel color video with sound, 6:00 min. loop Numerous fans post or recreate mash-ups of their favorite movie scenes on YouTube. Similar to a DJ, I scrubbed and scratched the YouTube online video player while viewing a posting of The Yardbirds concert scene from Blowup, with Jeff Beck's epic guitar smash. Recording my online VJ performance, I deconstructed the text via video scratching, and collected shattered sequences of glitchy, repetitive movements and their associated electronic sounds. Each sequence was then looped to the point of excess to push the concept of what a loop is, or can be. Elements were then remixed and reconstructed into three video versions that loop and play simultaneously for new image and musical permutations. Source: Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) |