Category: Uncategorized

(at the Brooklyn Museum): Jonas Mekas

(and I was only saying the day before to G. that he would have been an ideal blogger)

I am going to take a walk to the Botanic Garden today (despite the drizzle) and also maybe check out the new videos at the Brooklyn Museum, so I am not going to be girl reporter today and give everyone the scoop on the second Movie Nite. Consider this a dare. Gary? Drew? Brandon? Anyone?

And how about some reports on the L.A. events? Konrad? Stan? Anyone?

Pony up!

Sharon Mesmer, Dainipponjin

Rock Star Sharon Mesmer brought her comedic superpowers to full throttle on this Japanese fantasy. Sharon made a many breasted giant monster sing with the voice of Robert Plant. Dainipponjin made my nipples cringe and bent my reality into new kawaii shapes: Peppermint Jihad!

David Larsen, Immortalistic

I like anything with Michael York in it, so this is easy. Sigh! Michael York + David LRSN’s smoothtalking neoclassical brilliance layered atop prescient New Age fascist imagery (including killer stadium crowds, braless in pastel tunics) = a formula for sheer awe.

Linh Dinh, A Smooth Life

Continuous thwacking sounds, cloying images of romance, marriage (mainly between a dumpy white guy and a vivacious-looking Vietnamese woman), crocodiles, and women dancing gracefully in white gowns, topped with Linh’s convincingly creepy narration of perverted (? I don’t mean a value judgment here, but I think that is how they were supposed to sound) masturbation fantasies. Smooth, indeed.

Brandon Downing, The Psychic, The Spaceship, Fu Xin De Re, Interlude, and Inside My Story

Profundity nestles inside the banal: Brandon is its rescuer. Many signature Brandon moves here: high tech images (of an immense bladerunner-y space station) up against lowest possible tech images (a b-movie penis-shaped robot (?) and a woman in a silver robot-y bodice lie together on the sand and are covered by it); the New Age is indicted by a wonderfully paranoid critique of “mind control” and a woman in a ritual trance sings (in subtitles) “I need a shower” (here the banal penetrates the profound).

Intermission

Nicole Peyrafitte, A Voyage to the Moon

An ensemble cast of Nicole, Pierre Joris, and a guitarist brought sound to Méliès’ groundbreaking film. Text sources included Kennedy on the Moon Landing, Méliès’ daughter’s original narration script to the film, Brakhage on Méliès, and the jazz standard Fly Me To The Moon. Nicole’s singing was transportative! And I agreed with Drew’s insight about the original film, whispered to me as it played (the moonmen were being smashed into powder): “colonialist.”

Nada Gordon, Articua

(can I do a capsule review of my own movie? why not?) Eight tracks of choral Nada singing a perfectly illogical poem over images of Mexican transvestite carnaval revelers, a hysterical woman in an elaborate floral hat, and Van Johnson as a slightly sinister Pied Piper of Hamelin whirling about in the forest in slow motion in a magnificent checked cape. A charming early effort.

Abigail Child (with Nada Gordon), If I Can Sing a Song about Ligatures

Sepia nudes of 19th century New Orleans prostitutes with fruitlike bodies and often scratched-out faces, transitioning to 70s chicks with dicks, ending in a brief motion sequence of fabulous insouciance, all to Marty Erlich’s kinda wistful kinda hypnotic music and studded with words and phrases (“mooning,” “laciness,” “Is this a triangle within liquescence?”) from a recent poem series by Nada Gordon (that’s me).

Konrad Steiner, Devil Egged

Acrobats, skeletons, and costumed crowds in lush, crazed, visual explosion, in perfect sync to an astounding (and sort of nostalgic) extended (FAST) Zappa guitar solo. Superimpositions, myriad effects, and intricately rapid edits contribute to the overall feeling of a 60s drug trip. Whoa: beautiful.

Julian Brolaski (with Paul Foster Johnson), Another Man’s Poison

Who knew that Julian could do a perfect vocal impression of Bette Davis? To knock off one’s socks? The original version of the film was said to have “a wooden script”: This torqued and linguistically inventive version (lots of crazy words substitutions), and its stunning spot-on delivery, is a benshi masterpiece.

Bruce Andrews (with Brandon Downing), Sip Girl

Two master collagists in collaboration. Dewy gossip girls in scenes of pantyflashing and parties, their pretty boyfriends looking peeved and petulant. Brandon intercut scenes of a two-headed dragon with the privileged Manhattan youths, and Bruce narrated what I can hardly believe was improvisation, (although wow, it was!) with his signature percussive blasts and wry critique.

I’d give three thumbs up if I had them for this first Movie Nite and now must get working on rehearsing my performance for tonite’s show! As I type this, Gary is rehearsing his Darby O’Gill benshi in the living room, and I can tell you (having had numerous sneak previews) that it is EXTREMELY funny. Please come see us!

DIXON PLACE and the FLARF COLLECTIVE
Present MOVIE NITE

MAY 1 & 2, 2009 8PM

A Mini-Festival of Live Interactives, Musical Attacks, Neo-Benshi, Experimental Video and other damages to the World’s Cinematic Legacy

A Benefit for Dixon Place

Advance Tickets: $12/show ($15 at the door) Both nights: $20

Advance Tickets Available (and highly recommended) at http://www.dixonplace.org

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

*Friday, May 1st*

Sharon Mesmer, Dainipponjin
David Larsen, Logan’s Run
Edwin Torres, Five 1/2

*Intermission*

Nicole Peyrafitte, A Voyage to the Moon
Julian Brolaski (with Paul Foster Johnson), Another Man’s Poison
Bruce Andrews (with Brandon Downing), Sip Girl

*Video by Konrad Steiner, Linh Dinh, Nada Gordon and Brandon Downing

*Saturday, May 2nd*

David Larsen, Troy
Nada Gordon, Navrang
Tisa Bryant, Untitled
Gary Sullivan, Darby O’Gill and the Little People

*Intermission*

Eileen Myles, Satyricon
Bruce Andrews (with Brandon Downing), Gossip Bruce
Drew Gardner and Risa Puno, Untitled

*Video by Konrad Steiner, Linh Dinh, and Brandon Downing

On my lunch break, I saw a not-very-well-groomed man walking four well-groomed Standard Poodles: two black, one white, and one brown. He paused and made each one sit, saying their names individually and then praising them: “good sit!” I noticed that one of them stood up immediately after sitting, and I thought, I kind of identify with that poodle.

On the train home I saw two people in the train car very visibly covering their noses and mouths.

And agggh, I just sneezed! Scary!

I nearly finished a very delicate, beautiful, mysterious little movie last night. It’s not ironic at all, I don’t think, or maybe only just barely. I have “range.”

I need a delicate, beautiful, mysterious title for it that is a little ironic in that it will need to very gently mock poetic art movie titles while also being a sort of paragon of such titles.

Something, maybe with the word “charm” or “scrawl” or “lorn” combined with some very rare word, maybe something from the renaissance, and it should be a phrase… two words would be OK, or three, or some kind of tentative fragment… and it should sound genuinely beautiful while also blushingly aware of its own pretensions…

I’m open to suggestions. All of the images are from b/w Bollywood films: lots of dance, Hanuman and genies flying in the sky, a lantern reflected in water, kohl-rimmed eyes, a woman eating grapes… that sort of thing. Music: a slow and plaintive Japanese folk song. Any ideas?

Do you feel your education as an avant-gardist is complete? Of course not. There is always something new to discover…

I know it will seem like a lot of trouble to follow these steps, but believe me, it will be well worth your while to find out about one of the most revolutionary artists (poet, playwright, filmmaker, photographer) of postwar Japan, Terayama Shuji, and I think I want to take advantage of the joys of hypertext instead of paraphrasing everything:

1) Go read the Wikipedia entry on Terayama Shuji.

2) Next, watch The Emperor Tomato Ketchup on the Ubuweb site. You might want to look at his other films, too, but that one is the masterpiece. I alluded to it in a post last month.

When I lived in Japan with the translator Masaya Saito, we worked together on translating several of Terayama’s tanka. Masaya, like Terayama, came from the bleak frozen north of Japan, as did the great butoh dancer Hijikata Tatsumi. Masaya was well-equipped to understand the resentful but intrigued outsider perspective on modernity and the urban that Terayama brought to his work. I type a few here for your reading pleasure:

Having been slaughtered
a cow comes
back within me
…beginning – what?
I wonder

In the darkness
a pickle growls…
Sing, someone,
a lullaby
as loud as possible

An onion I’ve planted
in the woman lodger’s
buttock, and so
long is my
rainy season

A fetus
preserved in alcohol
growing cloudy…
in my head
hydrangea blossoms

On a dark night
spilling pollen
on the stairs
I wait for mother
to change her clothes

The sky
like a huge jar
my father bears
to fill…
with what?

In exchange for
my sky
I gained a a tiny hope
that sweats easily
like a frog

A moment when
evening gas
becomes flame,
my saliva thicker
than communists’

A mouse
whose freedom
is about ten meters long –
its beastlike eyes
I feel intimate with

On a day
when my vowels grow
muddy… I go
to the precipice
to corrupt myself

Here’s a photo that Masaya took of me, maybe in 1995 or 1996? If I remember correctly, there was an exhibition called “Terayama’s World” at a department store gallery somewhere in Tokyo, hence the cardboard cutouts. Can you detect a kind of Japanese Warhol Factory vibe?

Gary told me a story many years ago about Jack Smith, who got a grant of several thousands of dollars to finish his movie, Normal Love. Well, he took the money down to the Bowery and spent it all on a giant crystal chandelier for his funky loft. Isn’t that an exquisite art gesture?

So what did I do today with the money I made at the Whitney? I got my nose pierced with the BIGGEST DIAMOND STUD they had at New York Adorned.

In honor, I guess, of Jack Smith.

Bitten by a swan in the Jardin de Bagatelle…

— Post From My iPhone

What, besides TRAVEL and FOOD, really ISN’T better in fantasy? I’m curious.