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Luminous Darkness
Curated
by Daniel McKernan
After
the success of Homoccult & Other Esoterotica, which was
co-curated with Richie Rennt and premiered at MIX NYC 2007 and went on to
travel the world, this lineup of shorts is a second coming of satanic queers
and psychedelic wild boys. This is
a new set of magickal, sexually transgressive videos focusing on erotic ritual
& performance. Here are more
artists, spell-casters, wraiths and strays joining as part of the pact of
Generation Hex, presenting videos dealing with sex, violence, the occult,
magick, and other mystic esoterica. The title, Luminous Darkness, is from the first
Cyclobe album (used with permission from Ossian Brown & Stephen Thrower).
For extreme tastes.
Thursday
November 19
10PM
The MIX Factory:
125 W. 21st Street (between 6th & 7th)
TICKETS: http://mixnyc.org/schedule-luminous-darkness.html
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Luigi & Luca are Stuck
Luigi & Luca, 2008, USA, video, b/w, sound, 3:22 min
Some say that
love is about developing, that it is a dynamic condition that ties two people
together, but when we try to conserve the shape, misunderstanding the original
feeling, love turns into something else, the knot becomes a trap, attraction
becomes rejection. We are facing the disaster without even understanding
why. Love doesn't set us free but keeps us stuck in a dramatic spiral,
where at the end all that you get is to kill who you love. We feel like a
last century mormon couple living isolated from reality, with no way to
escape. There's no redemption: we
are stuck. Shot in San Francisco. Music by Seth Garrison.
Nugase! Panik Mahjong
Lukas Beyeler, 2003, Switzerland, DV-video PAL,
color, sound, 4:14 min, New York Premiere
Beyeler’s work
frequently takes the conceit of ‘entertainment’ and the found ‘structures’ of
gaming and applies strategies of mirroring/ twinning/ pairing to subvert the
normative, in the process creating heterotopic spaces for displaced desire.
Referencing Japanese Manga, Anime, and Nugase (video games in which winning
players are rewarded with short flashes of erotic imagery) Beyeler re-writes
the rules by ‘gaming the system.’
In Nugase! Panik Mahjong
frequent Beyeler collaborators Massimo & Pierce, a couple in real life,
play against each other and are rewarded with images of their own shared
love. Music made by Massimo &
Pierce of Black Sun Productions (also known as the Anarcocks).
Transmission
Dominic Johnson, 2009, UK, video,
color, no sound, 4:30 min, World Premiere
In Dominic Johnson's performance, TRANSMISSION, a body tests its
thresholds, in rhythms that rise and fall like music, or crisis. His
aesthetic is one of melancholy excess, heady longing, and camp spectacle. The
video presents edits excerpts from the work, which began as a response to the
lost works of Freddie Herko, who danced himself to death in 1964, out of a
fifth-storey window. Johnson has presented solo performances at festivals
in the UK, France, Slovenia, Croatia and Austria, and in clubs in London and
Rome. He collaborated with Ron Athey on Incorruptible Flesh (Perpetual Wound) in 2006-07. He is a
lecturer in the School of English and Drama, at Queen Mary University of
London, and has edited two books, on Franko B and Manuel Vason. (Photograph
by Serge Hoeltschi.)
douwannafunk?
Murphy
Maxwell, 2009, USA, video, color, sound, 4:15 min, World Premiere
Video to music
marrying ritual magic with mundane terms by using simple puppetry & masks,
dance and hardcore sex with psychedelic overtones. Try it on a friend.
I Got No Stings
Gio Black
Peter, 2009, USA, video, color, sound, 5 min, World Premiere....
There was
madness, heartache, headaches, drunk rap, rapes, dumb teenage stripper babes,
freshly showered & shave from NY, London, Berlin, Paris , Italy, Tokyo
& beyond. "I GOT NO
STRINGS" is a kollection of videos documenting Gio Black Peter's travels
from here to there in 2007-2009 with the Black Peter Group.
I Promise You Heaven
JodyJock,
2009, USA, video, color, sound, 2:33 min, World Premiere....
A video work
by the founder of the cult queer online zine, Prayers for Children. The video is an extension of
a photographic series of self portraits where the artist acts as a guide for
young men in a moment of transition. The subjects are generally being
killed or killing themselves, but the staged, campy display reinforces death as
a metaphor.
FUCK ME
Grant
Singer, 2009, USA, video, color, sound, 3 min, World Premiere....
Merging logic,
absurdity, and satire, this work recontextualizes the “sex tape.”
Meet Murder My Angel
Black Sun
Productions, 2004, Switzerland, video, color, sound, 8:17 min, NY Premiere
A short film
by Massimo & Pierce, Carlotta Steinemann and Lukas Beyeler. With Massimo
& Pierce, Ennio Nobili and Iris La Liner. A disturbing tale of sound & vision, surrounding the
loss of Innocence: about crossing over the Threshold, about Desire and Despair.
There is no way back from an Angel. Filmed at the legendary StrafBar and
featuring Massimo & Pierce in their Ghost Boys personas. A love song for
the Children of the Black Sun, a Testament and a Manifesto: THE KEY TO JOY IS
DISOBEDIENCE.
Bestiary
Lee
Adams, 2007/8, UK/USA, video, colorm sound, 4:21 min, North American Premiere
Bestiary was recorded during a live performance
at the Cock in NYC in November 2007. The performance featured a giant white
rabbit (a nocturnal creature, signifying the moon who dies every morning and is
resurrected every evening) involved in a Hermetic act of self-sacrifice,
referencing Yukio Mishima’s famous Seppuku (ritual disembowelment). The video footage, shot by Slava
Mogutin, has been warped and twisted to create a grotesque, psychedelic,
kaleidoscopic vision, a bestiary of monstrous imaginings dredged from the
depths of the collective unconscious using a process inspired by British
occultist, artist and father of Chaos Magic Austin Osman Spare. The soundtrack “It’s in My Blood” by
COIL is used with the kind permission of Peter Christopherson.
The Inability to Be Looked at and the
Horror of Nothing to See
Zackary Drucker, 2009, USA, video, color,
sound, 18 min, New York Premiere
Based on a live
performance that took place at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles. The
piece takes form as a group meditation: viewers are directed, by a disembodied
voice, through a series of breathing exercises, new-age visions, and dysphoric
confessions, all the while being instructed to pluck out the hair from the
androgynous, stripped body of the artist, which is positioned in the center of
the room. (Images courtesy of Steve Turner Contemporary.)
TRT ~62 minutes
The last
program of queer shorts I curated was called "Homoccult & Other
Esoterotica" and featured queer experimental short films based around
the theme of occult by artists such as SUPERM (Slava Mogutin & Brian
Kenny), Todd Verow, Roberto Ratti, Terence Koh, Peter
Christopherson/The Threshold Houseboys Choir, Daniel McKernan & Richie
Rennt, Black Sun Productions (Massimo & Pierce), Lee
Adams, Morrison Edley/Edward O'Dowd, Micki Pellerano, Ron
Athey, Breyer P-Orridge, Dionysos Andronis and Aldo Lee.
This program
has so far been screened at:
New York City,
NY - MIX NYC Experimental Queer Film Fest
San Francisco,
CA - Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Los Angeles,
CA - OutFest
London, UK
- Visions of Excess - Spill Festival
London, UK - The Horse Hospital
Naples, Italy - MADRe Museum - Napoli Treato Festival
Mexico City,
Mexico - MIX Mexico
Here are a few
links...
Reviewed on
Flavorpill:
http://flavorpill.com/sanfrancisco/events/2008/5/17/homoccult-and-other-esoterica
Recent screenings in London:
http://www.thehorsehospital.com/archives/000600.html
http://www.spillfestival.com/index.php?plid=21