Live performance with 16mm projections, external lenses and manipulations
text by Leslie Marmon Silko and sound by Circle X
Mistaken identities converge and separate again in the harsh burn of optical truths. Images revolt and stand on their heads. The story of photography told as a Western.
"...and occasionally, invisibility." Leslie Marmon Silko, from Almanac of the Dead
"M'elevasti! Lift me up!"--Ezra Pound
Hand-developed meditations on being and movement, as inspired by Gysin's Dreammachine, Sufi mysticism, and early cinema. A knowledge of the fragility of existence mirrors the tenuousness of the material. The film itself becomes the site to experience impermanence, and to revel in the unfixed image.
"...The taking and making of images is seen as a passionate pursuit: religious,magical,mysterious."--Kathy Geritz, Pacific Film Archives
In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life. --Karl Marx
A fantastic voyage through the cycles of decay and regeneration in the body and the world. Sublime psychotropic sound and a dark sensibility conjures up molecular memory, the structure of living culture, and the electronic architecture of Apocatopia, where beauty and terror merge. Unique chemical treatments rupture the film' surface emphasize the seething materiality and horror of existence during the AIDS era.
"A fermented vision, both sensual & disturbing, raw & lysergic.."--Owen O'Toole,S'pool
"A pulsating slide across cinematic surfaces and poetic performance gestures."--Craig Baldwin, Other Cinema
Riddles in the LAByrinth. A ritual shadowplay in 7 movements with intertitles, from a live performance at The Gas Station, East Village NYC circa late 80's. Thanks Jack Vengrow for the welding light, and thanks to the FDNY for dousing the burning chair (oops). Creating an intense aura in the blue light of the electronic cave, two creatures in conflict, creation, communication, and the urge to liberate.
Fire, water, sex, resurrection. A classic work of anthropomorphic alchemy. The mummy signals from the threshold of the living and the dead. Secrets seep up through the skin, and tattooed oracles reveal the body is a sign divine. This film is an inscription of the mysteries in action. (Originally performed live version as expanded cinema/ performance, double screen with 4 projectors: 2 Super-8 and overlaid 2 slide projectors w/dissolve. 30 min.)
"...Their imagery evokes the erotic on a mythic, cosmic-conciousness level, encompassing tribal and sacred elements."--Tom Chomont, The Independent Eye