programs

Let's Play Fascination Dreams of Power and Impotence in an Economy of Boundless Looking
Pen forum and focus group on voyeurism, fetish and strategic seduction in advertising. Advertisements, Peep shows, and work in photography, film and video. Curated and moderated by Marian St. Laurent and MM Serra for Roberta Beck Memorial Cinema at Participant Inc. Tuesday, March 8, 2005 95 Rivington Street, New York, NY Found Film (blow up with woman mask make-up) on a loop as people come in- Sex Objects- Objects are PeopleJoseph CornellPrint Ads- Sexualized Objects- 4 minute slide show 42nd STREET PEEPSHOWS: -This is An Exciting Movie: Atomic Blonds – 16mm- Diane Mason 5th Avenue Tease- 16mm – stop projector- Ivory Carress Calgon- Guide to Romance by Don Kleyton- 16mmJust For You Girls! by MMSerra 16mm Bordens Icecream British Airways Howard Johnson Rendevous (tiger woods commercial) Hamms BeerClear & simple shampoo Impostor fragrancesI Rode A Pony Named Flame by Peggy Ahwesh- VHSAlberto Mousse Downs are Feminine by Lewis Klahr PRINT ADS- People Are Objects Camay Wheeels 2 by Stan Vanderbeek Special K Eric Kroll- doll in a box.. Susan on wheels… girl as birdfeeder Verve What's On by Martha Colburn Frito Lay (Cigar ad?)- Penny Arcade Burlesque (History of Blue Movie clip) Lucky Star Barbara Nitke R. Kern from Purple Fashion & Soft Marlene McCartys
Dance of the Dark Soul AVANT-GARDE(N) in conjuction with Howl Festival
Butoh performances with Celeste Hastings & Catherine Hourihan plus 'Dance of Darkness' (Artaud / Butoh) Films curated by Bradley Eros & MM Serra featuring Sankai Juku Einsturzende Neubauten / Sogo Ishii Erotic Psyche's Pyrotechnics Kurt Kren / Gunther Brus / Otto Muehl Mara Mattuschka Henry Hills E. Elias Merhige's Begotten (excerpt) at Le Petit Versailles garden 346 East Houston between Ave B & C SUNDAY, August 28, 8 pm 212-529-6615 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From Invisible Cinema: Dance of the dark soul As part of the Howl Festival, I attended the Dance of the Dark Soul at Le Petit Versailles garden on Houston St. This program brought together Butoh performance with film & video curated by Bradley Eros of The Roberta Beck Memorial Cinema, and M.M. Serra, executive director of The Film-Makers' Cooperative. As I crossed Houston Ave, and walked down the steps of the garden, the first image I saw was Butoh dancer, Celeste Hastings. Her skin was painted with a chalky substance that exuded a deathly appearance, and her dance embodied resistance within movement and a closeness to the earth. (This was somewhat beyond my realm of experience, but I know when I am in the presence of something profound.) At the end of her performance, Celeste moved up the steps past me, and when she turned around, she radiated such happiness. Dead again? Or rather, dying again. As described by Butoh's creator, Tatsumi Hijikata, it is a process of connecting with one's ancestors and absorbing their deaths within one's own life to become more fully alive. Butoh is somewhere between life and death. But that is just the beginning. The film portion of the AVANT-GARDE(N) mirrored the layered depths of the dance. Examples of Viennese Aktionist cinema by Kurt Kren, Gunther Brus, Otto Muehl were especially intriguing. (Theater of the body, confrontation of taboo, cinema as subversive art, and people covered with paint and food!) The program also included E. Elias Mershige's Begotten, so beautiful and horrific, like a dying rose with dripping black blood, evoking Carl Theodore Dryer's surrealist cinema-poem, Vampyre, and the eternal, Nosferateau. I was beginning to see the darkness. The real epiphany began with Pyrotechnics by Erotic Psyche, a film layered in imagery of the ancient rite. The symbolic use of hieroglyphics, circles, fiery elements of nature, and Dada performance, addressed the irrational,while transmitting a primordial message. This film also incorporated negatives into the print, which created a ghostly, terrifying glimpse of the soul. The Erotic Psyche and Mediamystics collaborations have created several avant-garde masterpieces that explore variations of these themes. The early permutations of these films especially, have scared the shit out of me! I have often queried Bradley Eros about why he creates such things, why embrace the darkness? I never really understood until after the show was over. While looking through the book, Butoh: Dance of the Dark Soul, I found a two page photo spread (p. 78) that showed a high priest adorned in a black robe, face smeared with white paint, eyes rimmed in black, and the most beautiful gold light igniting around him. In Pyrotechnics, there is an almost identical image. The writer, Yukio Mishima, describes this idea as "taming nature through magic." When I fell asleep on August 28, I had experienced a beautiful & mysterious dance form. I had felt an epiphany about avant-garde cinema, and the exploration of the body and spirit through a landscape of darkness and light. I even felt a connection to nature and death within my own life. Not bad for a free night on the Lower East Side! But I still had to sleep with the light on . . . August 29, 2005 http://www.invisiblecinema.typepad.com/ http://invisiblecinema.typepad.com/invisible_cinema/2005/08/dance_of_the_da.html http://invisiblecinema.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/dancer1_4.jpg
A Tribute to Tom Chomont Tom Chomont at Le Petit Versailles
	OCTOBER 8 SATURDAY 6PM Avant Garde(n) presents A Tribute to Tom Chomont hosted by Jim Hubbard & MM Serra A show of new work by avant-garde film and videomaker extraordinaire Tom Chomont
"wizard of light" (2005) "Mother's Day" (2002) composed of 6 short pieces: "Bathed in Light" "Going for a Ride" "The Mother Garden” "Time Taken" "Mother's Flowers" "A Visit" "History Lesson" (2001)"Ring of Fire" (2001) also "Fluctuations" (2005) a film portrait of Tom by Samay Jain A key figure of the New York underground and pioneering queer experimental filmmaker, longtime AIDS survivor and wily raconteur. From 1962 through 1989, Tom Chomont made over forty films. All but two of his films are silent and all are short, ranging from less than 1 minute to 16 minutes. Perhaps the subtitle of Chomont's film Phases of the Moon best characterizes his film work: The Parapsychology of Everyday Life. His films, often portraits of friends, are a lyric evocation of the ordinary world, but at the same time they bear witness to an unabashedly spiritual and sexual parallel universe. His incomparable technique of offsetting color positive and high contrast black and white negative creates a subtly beautiful and richly evocative, otherworldly aura. Since 1990, he has worked exclusively in video. The videos are hard-edged and raw. While many center around explicit S&M imagery, they go beyond the performative aspects of sadomasochistic practice and become an entrée to a transcendent and philosophical otherworld. Tom Chomont has been making 16mm films since the early 60s. Because the films don't fit neatly into established categories (they're not exactly "diary films," though much of the basic imagery is diaristic; they're not precisely "trance films," though trance film is obviously part of Chomont's background), and because [he] has been more fully involved in exploring himself than in advancing his career, his brief, unassuming, amazingly dense films are frequently overlooked. --Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema

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