FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy Video Projections from Caribbean Pirates*
Thur Nov 20-Sat Nov 22 | 8:30 pm
Jack H. Skirball Series
$20 [students $16]

World theatrical premiere

This multi-screen installation offers Los Angeles audiences their first view of videos from Caribbean Pirates, a collaborative work by Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy that playfully explores the pirate figure in American popular culture. As originally shown in 2005 at Munich's Haus der Kunst, the manic, typically bawdy work collaged video projections with large-scale sculptures, props, and film sets-including a full-scale pirate frigate and a 1970s-era houseboat. Different incarnations of this scabrous examination of the pirate as a symbol of invasion, plunder and depravity have since been presented at several other major European venues (such as Moderna Museet, Stockholm; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Arhus; and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent) to vast critical and popular acclaim. The site-specific installation of Caribbean Pirates at REDCAT marks the first time that the video projections have ever been shown independent of the larger installation.

*(Caribbean Pirates, 2001-2005: Performance, video, installation, color photographs, including Frigate, Houseboat, Underwater World, Houseboat Party, Pirate Party).

In person: Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy 

"McCarthy's art is crazed, inventive, obscene and often very funny. It is also stomach-churning, and his video performances are a disturbing gore-fest of chocolate sauce, syrupy drool, exhibitionism, onanism, self-harm and extreme violence, played out in weird costumes and with rumbustious, clownish fervor." - The Guardian

Paul McCarthy (born 1945) is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists of today. Using the language and imagery of the all-pervasive American consumer culture he grew up with, his work distorts and mutates the familiar into the disturbing and carnivalesque. His early work was heavily influenced by Viennese Actionism, seeking to break the limitations of painting by using the body as a paintbrush or even canvas; later, he incorporated bodily fluids or food into his works, and explored film, video, performance and multi-media installation.

Having first studied art at the University of Utah, McCarthy obtained a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and then received a MFA from USC where he has studied film, video and art. Upon graduation, in the early 1970s, he first became known for his visceral performances and film works. In 1982, he was invited to teach video, installation, and art history at UCLA. During the 1990s he extended his practice into stand alone sculptural figures, installations and large sculptures, animatronic and/or inflatable. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2003); Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York (2002); Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich (2001); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2000); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2000). He currently lives and works in Altadena, CA.

Throughout his career, Paul McCarthy has produced publications, at times inviting other artists to collaborate or contribute, and has curated exhibitions. Since 2000, he has collaborated closely with his son, CalArts graduate and artist Damon McCarthy (b. 1973) on a number of complex performative video installations, such as Piccadilly Circus and Bunker Basement (both 2003), F-Fort Party (2005) and Caribbean Pirates (2001-2005). The latter project (featured at REDCAT) was inspired by Damon McCarthy's suggestion to use the Disney ride Pirates of the Carribbean as a visual impetus. According to the two artists, the pirate theme is treated as a metaphor for US invasion and occupation of foreign lands. 

"This gargantuan project occupied the artist and his son, Damon McCarthy, and a huge crew of actors, builders, mechanics and film personnel over several years. The performance action that took place on the set included blood-gushing animatronic limb amputations, prosthetic nose-severings, belly-bursting tropical diseases and gang-bangs. Not to mention the catering-size cans of Hershey's Chocolate Sauce drooled and spattered absolutely everywhere. It's only chocolate, you might say (like the marzipan turds in Pasolini's Salo), and the action may be so knockabout as to be unbelievable, but this is still a theatre of cruelty, in the Hollywood Jacobean mode." - Adrian Searle, The Guardian 

"Maybe for McCarthy the world is made up of myths alone--myths which continually allow us to come up with new conceptions of ourselves, to celebrate images, to give legitimacy to greatness, dreams, happiness, and the darkness that surrounds us.

Hollywood & Disney--both are the epitome of myth generators: they use them and create them. McCarthy's show does not conceal the fascination that such myths hold--just the opposite--he indulges them. But then comes the horrible reversal--the myth is destroyed by its own means: the curved, rakish pirate hat becomes the penis hat, the smiling eye grows into something phallic...Illuminated by its own light and glitter, Hollywood is meant to shine and be sullied at the same time; the skills and constructs of the dream factory are put on display and then pulled apart. What the viewer sees is the other side, where the darkest depths come to life and to light. The pink pig still grins blissfully even though it is kept alive artificially, by human effort alone. Perversions and grotesqueries appear everywhere--the fascination and the humor are just as audible and tangible as the malice.

The content of McCarthy's large-scale performances, created with his son Damon, are in the lineage of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Pasolini's Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, yet the action is abstract; barely comprehensible....What ends up being shown is a strange mixture of B-movie gore, absurdity, inanity, excess, trash--huge bellies stuck onto bodies, actors wearing silly, round noses; mayonnaise, ketchup and other sauces just as important as the (naked) bodies." - Emma Nielson, Pulse Berlin

REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon-6 pm and two hours prior to curtain.

The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series is curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud

Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/fv/pirates.php ($)
_________________________________________________________
UPCOMING FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS REDCAT FALL 2008

Mon Nov 17: An Evening with Kenneth Anger: Dangerous Cinema SOLD OUT!
Mon Nov 24: Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder: Film Projection Performances
Mon Dec 1: Martin Arnold: Something Hidden
Mon Dec 8: Joan Jonas: Reading Culture through Dante and Aby Warburg

REDCAT: A collaboration between Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, David Thorne, and Andrea Geyer

9 Scripts from a Nation at War is a multi-channel video installation that responds to the conditions and questions that have arisen during the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It examines the ways in which war determines and "scripts" certain roles such as "citizen," "veteran," "detainee" and "correspondent" and the capacity of individuals to fulfill or resist these. Drawing on the artists' extensive research, the work presents material sourced from people involved in or responding to the war. A central theme is the investigation of how written and spoken language affects identity in times of conflict, as the language specific to institutions, professions and positions in society extend and limit the ways we situate ourselves in relation to others. 9 Scripts is presented as a constellation of videos that stage the speaking of scripts by actors and non-actors alike, some re-speaking their own words, others learning the words of others. These stagings allow inquiry into the recording, reporting, learning and understanding of the present moment and reflect upon how we account for ourselves within it. In doing so, 9 Scripts shows how language and speech are fundamental in defining structures of power. First shown at Documenta 12 in Kassel, 9 Scripts from a Nation at War is presented in a new configuration specifically for the Gallery at REDCAT.

Public reading: Sat, Jan 10, 1-6 pm

Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954-003064 is a five-hour public reading of 18 tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Based on the transcripts available on the U.S. Department of Defense web site in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, these 110 pages are a small fraction of the material generated by 558 tribunals. The sheer volume of transcripts has effectively obscured them from public view, and the readings make audible a record of these quasi-legal proceedings that had been closed to public scrutiny.

See: http://redcat.org/gallery/0809/9scripts.php

FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy Video Projections from Caribbean Pirates*
Thur Nov 20-Sat Nov 22 | 8:30 pm
Jack H. Skirball Series
$20 [students $16]

World theatrical premiere

This multi-screen installation offers Los Angeles audiences their first view of videos from Caribbean Pirates, a collaborative work by Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy that playfully explores the pirate figure in American popular culture. As originally shown in 2005 at Munich's Haus der Kunst, the manic, typically bawdy work collaged video projections with large-scale sculptures, props, and film sets-including a full-scale pirate frigate and a 1970s-era houseboat. Different incarnations of this scabrous examination of the pirate as a symbol of invasion, plunder and depravity have since been presented at several other major European venues (such as Moderna Museet, Stockholm; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Arhus; and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent) to vast critical and popular acclaim. The site-specific installation of Caribbean Pirates at REDCAT marks the first time that the video projections have ever been shown independent of the larger installation.

*(Caribbean Pirates, 2001-2005: Performance, video, installation, color photographs, including Frigate, Houseboat, Underwater World, Houseboat Party, Pirate Party).

In person: Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy 

"McCarthy's art is crazed, inventive, obscene and often very funny. It is also stomach-churning, and his video performances are a disturbing gore-fest of chocolate sauce, syrupy drool, exhibitionism, onanism, self-harm and extreme violence, played out in weird costumes and with rumbustious, clownish fervor." - The Guardian

Paul McCarthy (born 1945) is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists of today. Using the language and imagery of the all-pervasive American consumer culture he grew up with, his work distorts and mutates the familiar into the disturbing and carnivalesque. His early work was heavily influenced by Viennese Actionism, seeking to break the limitations of painting by using the body as a paintbrush or even canvas; later, he incorporated bodily fluids or food into his works, and explored film, video, performance and multi-media installation.

Having first studied art at the University of Utah, McCarthy obtained a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and then received a MFA from USC where he has studied film, video and art. Upon graduation, in the early 1970s, he first became known for his visceral performances and film works. In 1982, he was invited to teach video, installation, and art history at UCLA. During the 1990s he extended his practice into stand alone sculptural figures, installations and large sculptures, animatronic and/or inflatable. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2003); Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York (2002); Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich (2001); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2000); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2000). He currently lives and works in Altadena, CA.

Throughout his career, Paul McCarthy has produced publications, at times inviting other artists to collaborate or contribute, and has curated exhibitions. Since 2000, he has collaborated closely with his son, CalArts graduate and artist Damon McCarthy (b. 1973) on a number of complex performative video installations, such as Piccadilly Circus and Bunker Basement (both 2003), F-Fort Party (2005) and Caribbean Pirates (2001-2005). The latter project (featured at REDCAT) was inspired by Damon McCarthy's suggestion to use the Disney ride Pirates of the Carribbean as a visual impetus. According to the two artists, the pirate theme is treated as a metaphor for US invasion and occupation of foreign lands. 

"This gargantuan project occupied the artist and his son, Damon McCarthy, and a huge crew of actors, builders, mechanics and film personnel over several years. The performance action that took place on the set included blood-gushing animatronic limb amputations, prosthetic nose-severings, belly-bursting tropical diseases and gang-bangs. Not to mention the catering-size cans of Hershey's Chocolate Sauce drooled and spattered absolutely everywhere. It's only chocolate, you might say (like the marzipan turds in Pasolini's Salo), and the action may be so knockabout as to be unbelievable, but this is still a theatre of cruelty, in the Hollywood Jacobean mode." - Adrian Searle, The Guardian 

"Maybe for McCarthy the world is made up of myths alone--myths which continually allow us to come up with new conceptions of ourselves, to celebrate images, to give legitimacy to greatness, dreams, happiness, and the darkness that surrounds us.

Hollywood & Disney--both are the epitome of myth generators: they use them and create them. McCarthy's show does not conceal the fascination that such myths hold--just the opposite--he indulges them. But then comes the horrible reversal--the myth is destroyed by its own means: the curved, rakish pirate hat becomes the penis hat, the smiling eye grows into something phallic...Illuminated by its own light and glitter, Hollywood is meant to shine and be sullied at the same time; the skills and constructs of the dream factory are put on display and then pulled apart. What the viewer sees is the other side, where the darkest depths come to life and to light. The pink pig still grins blissfully even though it is kept alive artificially, by human effort alone. Perversions and grotesqueries appear everywhere--the fascination and the humor are just as audible and tangible as the malice.

The content of McCarthy's large-scale performances, created with his son Damon, are in the lineage of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Pasolini's Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, yet the action is abstract; barely comprehensible....What ends up being shown is a strange mixture of B-movie gore, absurdity, inanity, excess, trash--huge bellies stuck onto bodies, actors wearing silly, round noses; mayonnaise, ketchup and other sauces just as important as the (naked) bodies." - Emma Nielson, Pulse Berlin

REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon-6 pm and two hours prior to curtain.

The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series is curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud

Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/fv/pirates.php ($)
_________________________________________________________
UPCOMING FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS REDCAT FALL 2008

Mon Nov 17: An Evening with Kenneth Anger: Dangerous Cinema SOLD OUT!
Mon Nov 24: Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder: Film Projection Performances
Mon Dec 1: Martin Arnold: Something Hidden
Mon Dec 8: Joan Jonas: Reading Culture through Dante and Aby Warburg

REDCAT: A collaboration between Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, David Thorne, and Andrea Geyer

9 Scripts from a Nation at War is a multi-channel video installation that responds to the conditions and questions that have arisen during the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It examines the ways in which war determines and "scripts" certain roles such as "citizen," "veteran," "detainee" and "correspondent" and the capacity of individuals to fulfill or resist these. Drawing on the artists' extensive research, the work presents material sourced from people involved in or responding to the war. A central theme is the investigation of how written and spoken language affects identity in times of conflict, as the language specific to institutions, professions and positions in society extend and limit the ways we situate ourselves in relation to others. 9 Scripts is presented as a constellation of videos that stage the speaking of scripts by actors and non-actors alike, some re-speaking their own words, others learning the words of others. These stagings allow inquiry into the recording, reporting, learning and understanding of the present moment and reflect upon how we account for ourselves within it. In doing so, 9 Scripts shows how language and speech are fundamental in defining structures of power. First shown at Documenta 12 in Kassel, 9 Scripts from a Nation at War is presented in a new configuration specifically for the Gallery at REDCAT.

Public reading: Sat, Jan 10, 1-6 pm

Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954-003064 is a five-hour public reading of 18 tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Based on the transcripts available on the U.S. Department of Defense web site in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, these 110 pages are a small fraction of the material generated by 558 tribunals. The sheer volume of transcripts has effectively obscured them from public view, and the readings make audible a record of these quasi-legal proceedings that had been closed to public scrutiny.

See: http://redcat.org/gallery/0809/9scripts.php

FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy Video Projections from Caribbean Pirates*
Thur Nov 20-Sat Nov 22 | 8:30 pm
Jack H. Skirball Series
$20 [students $16]

World theatrical premiere

This multi-screen installation offers Los Angeles audiences their first view of videos from Caribbean Pirates, a collaborative work by Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy that playfully explores the pirate figure in American popular culture. As originally shown in 2005 at Munich's Haus der Kunst, the manic, typically bawdy work collaged video projections with large-scale sculptures, props, and film sets-including a full-scale pirate frigate and a 1970s-era houseboat. Different incarnations of this scabrous examination of the pirate as a symbol of invasion, plunder and depravity have since been presented at several other major European venues (such as Moderna Museet, Stockholm; ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Arhus; and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent) to vast critical and popular acclaim. The site-specific installation of Caribbean Pirates at REDCAT marks the first time that the video projections have ever been shown independent of the larger installation.

*(Caribbean Pirates, 2001-2005: Performance, video, installation, color photographs, including Frigate, Houseboat, Underwater World, Houseboat Party, Pirate Party).

In person: Paul McCarthy, Damon McCarthy 

"McCarthy's art is crazed, inventive, obscene and often very funny. It is also stomach-churning, and his video performances are a disturbing gore-fest of chocolate sauce, syrupy drool, exhibitionism, onanism, self-harm and extreme violence, played out in weird costumes and with rumbustious, clownish fervor." - The Guardian

Paul McCarthy (born 1945) is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking artists of today. Using the language and imagery of the all-pervasive American consumer culture he grew up with, his work distorts and mutates the familiar into the disturbing and carnivalesque. His early work was heavily influenced by Viennese Actionism, seeking to break the limitations of painting by using the body as a paintbrush or even canvas; later, he incorporated bodily fluids or food into his works, and explored film, video, performance and multi-media installation.

Having first studied art at the University of Utah, McCarthy obtained a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and then received a MFA from USC where he has studied film, video and art. Upon graduation, in the early 1970s, he first became known for his visceral performances and film works. In 1982, he was invited to teach video, installation, and art history at UCLA. During the 1990s he extended his practice into stand alone sculptural figures, installations and large sculptures, animatronic and/or inflatable. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2003); Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York (2002); Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich (2001); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2000); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2000). He currently lives and works in Altadena, CA.

Throughout his career, Paul McCarthy has produced publications, at times inviting other artists to collaborate or contribute, and has curated exhibitions. Since 2000, he has collaborated closely with his son, CalArts graduate and artist Damon McCarthy (b. 1973) on a number of complex performative video installations, such as Piccadilly Circus and Bunker Basement (both 2003), F-Fort Party (2005) and Caribbean Pirates (2001-2005). The latter project (featured at REDCAT) was inspired by Damon McCarthy's suggestion to use the Disney ride Pirates of the Carribbean as a visual impetus. According to the two artists, the pirate theme is treated as a metaphor for US invasion and occupation of foreign lands. 

"This gargantuan project occupied the artist and his son, Damon McCarthy, and a huge crew of actors, builders, mechanics and film personnel over several years. The performance action that took place on the set included blood-gushing animatronic limb amputations, prosthetic nose-severings, belly-bursting tropical diseases and gang-bangs. Not to mention the catering-size cans of Hershey's Chocolate Sauce drooled and spattered absolutely everywhere. It's only chocolate, you might say (like the marzipan turds in Pasolini's Salo), and the action may be so knockabout as to be unbelievable, but this is still a theatre of cruelty, in the Hollywood Jacobean mode." - Adrian Searle, The Guardian 

"Maybe for McCarthy the world is made up of myths alone--myths which continually allow us to come up with new conceptions of ourselves, to celebrate images, to give legitimacy to greatness, dreams, happiness, and the darkness that surrounds us.

Hollywood & Disney--both are the epitome of myth generators: they use them and create them. McCarthy's show does not conceal the fascination that such myths hold--just the opposite--he indulges them. But then comes the horrible reversal--the myth is destroyed by its own means: the curved, rakish pirate hat becomes the penis hat, the smiling eye grows into something phallic...Illuminated by its own light and glitter, Hollywood is meant to shine and be sullied at the same time; the skills and constructs of the dream factory are put on display and then pulled apart. What the viewer sees is the other side, where the darkest depths come to life and to light. The pink pig still grins blissfully even though it is kept alive artificially, by human effort alone. Perversions and grotesqueries appear everywhere--the fascination and the humor are just as audible and tangible as the malice.

The content of McCarthy's large-scale performances, created with his son Damon, are in the lineage of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Pasolini's Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, yet the action is abstract; barely comprehensible....What ends up being shown is a strange mixture of B-movie gore, absurdity, inanity, excess, trash--huge bellies stuck onto bodies, actors wearing silly, round noses; mayonnaise, ketchup and other sauces just as important as the (naked) bodies." - Emma Nielson, Pulse Berlin

REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon-6 pm and two hours prior to curtain.

The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series is curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud

Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/fv/pirates.php ($)
_________________________________________________________
UPCOMING FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS REDCAT FALL 2008

Mon Nov 17: An Evening with Kenneth Anger: Dangerous Cinema SOLD OUT!
Mon Nov 24: Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder: Film Projection Performances
Mon Dec 1: Martin Arnold: Something Hidden
Mon Dec 8: Joan Jonas: Reading Culture through Dante and Aby Warburg

FILM AT REDCAT PRESENTS
Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder
Film Projection Performances
Monday Nov 24 | 8:30 pm
Jack H. Skirball Series
$9 [students $7/CalArts $4]

New York artists Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder present their sublime and mesmerizing double 16mm projection performance, Untitled, recently featured at Anthology Film Archives in New York. The duo’s work exploits the physical qualities of the medium in creating profoundly moving aesthetic and philosophical experiences. “The planular drift of the projected frame alters its course, bending here, defracting there—keystoning its way through the darkness of a cinematic abyss,” as the artists have put it.

In person: Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder

In their collaborative film performances, Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder employ simple mechanical means to hypnotically elaborate ends. 16mm loops, spray bottles, colored gels, unfocused lenses and hand-shadows combine, through rehearsed recipes, into slowly mutating light-sculptures: morphing color-fields, angel-white auras, fusing penumbrae, pulsing vertical lines. Built upon occulted rhythms of film projection, their work retains a personal, human scale, even as the viewer succumbs to its transportive powers. Their performances melt the projector’s machine materialism into ethereal experiences.
– Ed Halter, Live Cinema: A Contemporary Reader

Production Notes

Untitled (2008), 16mm film performance; technical specifications: double 16mm film projection, electric humidifiers; glass, mixed media; original score by Olivia Block. A minimalist monochromatic film frame is projected through a glass pane fogged via a humidification system.

The images we consume cinematically are formed so subtly from light's interaction with film, its recorded dialogue with silver halides suspended in gelatin emulsion. The resulting images that infect the screen produce unimaginable effects on self and psyche. Vibrations of varying hues create a dialogue with subconscious languages and longings of which many of us remain blissfully unaware.

The hand absorbs the light. Obscures, darkens. An opaque appearance in the field of light materializes the light. Discloses its light-ness. For light itself is not enough to show this. For light to show this it must be obscured, covered-over, withheld. It must be stopped, stopped-up, stopped-down in order to achieve the point of clearest resolution.

Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder have exhibited their solo and collaborative performances and installations at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), P.S.1 MoMA (NY), The Kitchen (NY), Diapason Gallery (NY), Redcat (LA), Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery (Houston), Ballroom Marfa (Marfa), Robischon Gallery (Denver), ICA (London), Barbican Art Gallery (London), Peter Kilchmann Gallery (Zurich), Viennale (Vienna), KW (Berlin), Hartware Medien Kunst Verein (Dortmund), TENT. (Rotterdam), Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Museu do Chiado (Portugal), RIXC (Latvia), Image Forum (Tokyo). Their work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), Museum of Contemporary Cinema Foundation (Paris), as well as numerous private collections. Gibson and Recoder are based in New York City.

Viewing Gibson and Recoder's film performances and installations is deeply immersive and the memory of their pieces always seems to remain purposefully abstract. Their collaboration is as much grounded in a manipulation of light, as it is in the cinematic, or indeed fine art practice as a whole. Through expert manipulation, light becomes their primary medium.

Projectors, glass, mist. Emanating. LIGHT. The performance begins, transient delicate shapes form and shift, delicate and subtle relationships emerge, nuance, repetition, form, movement, light, circles swirling, intense sound, light, consuming and immersive, changing, interacting, living, touching, engulfing, fluid. Allowing oneself to become consumed within the viewing process gives an opportunity to enjoy the unfamiliar and familiar. Pulsing, vibrating images are reminiscent of being, of space. I experienced a deep want; to be engulfed within the space of the piece. Before the realization that was my present state. How delicate the absence. A million paintings in light flicker before my eyes, each one a delicate yet physically manipulated reflection of existence. The rhythm and forms intensify yet somehow maintain ethereal translucence. One could not have planned for such an intense sensory invasion. A film seemingly of no subject, communicating with such impacted intensity.

The light dots continue to linger within self and psyche. Now somehow accepted as permanent residents. In unexpected moments many new films, experiences present themselves, from the initial flickers of the performance. The subsequent, residual repeats seem to bear no less emotional intensity. A connection, expanded. Joining, light on light form on form, intermingled textures, blur, the experience of lights and dots, consuming me without permission, constantly pounding. The material exposition somehow produces flickering translucent beauty. Eyes tire and relax, visual experiences differ, double visions, altered spatial realities begin and cease to exist. Interesting dialogues in light and shade; as riveting as any great speaker, or mind in conversation; not weighed by language. I enjoy the sublime extended ethereality.

In the darkened theatre I saw a beautiful film performance, the content of which is constantly changing and deepening, revealing itself as an acutely aware reflection upon relationships. As interestingly considered creative interplay. Which encourages us as audience to step out of Plato's cave and engage fully and with more awareness, to reflect within our own ideas upon the multiplicity of possibility for cinematic experience. – Yvonne Maxwell

REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org or in person at the REDCAT Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking with validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon–6 pm and two hours prior to curtain.

The Jack H. Skirball Screening Series is curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud

Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/fv/filmprojection.php ($)


UPCOMING FILM/VIDEO PROGRAMS AT REDCAT
FALL/WINTER 2008

Thur Nov 20–Sat Nov 22: Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy Caribbean Pirates
Mon Dec 1: Martin Arnold: Something Hidden
Mon Dec 8: Joan Jonas: Reading Culture through Dante and Aby Warburg

REDCAT: A collaboration between Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, David Thorne, and Andrea Geyer

9 Scripts from a Nation at War is a multi-channel video installation that responds to the conditions and questions that have arisen during the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It examines the ways in which war determines and "scripts" certain roles such as "citizen," "veteran," "detainee" and "correspondent" and the capacity of individuals to fulfill or resist these. Drawing on the artists' extensive research, the work presents material sourced from people involved in or responding to the war. A central theme is the investigation of how written and spoken language affects identity in times of conflict, as the language specific to institutions, professions and positions in society extend and limit the ways we situate ourselves in relation to others. 9 Scripts is presented as a constellation of videos that stage the speaking of scripts by actors and non-actors alike, some re-speaking their own words, others learning the words of others. These stagings allow inquiry into the recording, reporting, learning and understanding of the present moment and reflect upon how we account for ourselves within it. In doing so, 9 Scripts shows how language and speech are fundamental in defining structures of power. First shown at Documenta 12 in Kassel, 9 Scripts from a Nation at War is presented in a new configuration specifically for the Gallery at REDCAT.

Public reading: Sat, Jan 10, 1-6 pm

Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954-003064 is a five-hour public reading of 18 tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Based on the transcripts available on the U.S. Department of Defense web site in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, these 110 pages are a small fraction of the material generated by 558 tribunals. The sheer volume of transcripts has effectively obscured them from public view, and the readings make audible a record of these quasi-legal proceedings that had been closed to public scrutiny.

See: http://redcat.org/gallery/0809/9scripts.php

REDCAT: Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Martin Arnold has been known internationally for his scintillating explorations of the hidden and repressed side of Hollywood cinema--what he regards as "a cinema of exclusion, reduction and denial." The main portion of the program features a "trilogy of compulsive repetition," as described by Dirk Schaefer--witty and obsessive reworkings of classic films and found footage. Through dizzying replay and interruption of the image, pièce touchée (1989, 16 min., 16mm, b/w) turns an innocuous scene into the fragment of a terrifying horror film. passage à l'acte (1993, 12 min., 16mm, b/w) distorts the all-American family of To Kill a Mockingbird into a surrealist nightmare. Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (1998, 15 min., 16mm, b/w) humorously suggests the sexual repression that lies at the core of the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney vehicles. Rounding out the program are excerpts from Deanimated (2002), an installation that digitally deconstructs a classic horror movie.

In person: Martin Arnold

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/fv/arnold.php ($)

REDCAT: A collaboration between Sharon Hayes, Ashley Hunt, Katya Sander, David Thorne, and Andrea Geyer

9 Scripts from a Nation at War is a multi-channel video installation that responds to the conditions and questions that have arisen during the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It examines the ways in which war determines and "scripts" certain roles such as "citizen," "veteran," "detainee" and "correspondent" and the capacity of individuals to fulfill or resist these. Drawing on the artists' extensive research, the work presents material sourced from people involved in or responding to the war. A central theme is the investigation of how written and spoken language affects identity in times of conflict, as the language specific to institutions, professions and positions in society extend and limit the ways we situate ourselves in relation to others. 9 Scripts is presented as a constellation of videos that stage the speaking of scripts by actors and non-actors alike, some re-speaking their own words, others learning the words of others. These stagings allow inquiry into the recording, reporting, learning and understanding of the present moment and reflect upon how we account for ourselves within it. In doing so, 9 Scripts shows how language and speech are fundamental in defining structures of power. First shown at Documenta 12 in Kassel, 9 Scripts from a Nation at War is presented in a new configuration specifically for the Gallery at REDCAT.

Public reading: Sat, Jan 10, 1-6 pm

Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954-003064 is a five-hour public reading of 18 tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay. Based on the transcripts available on the U.S. Department of Defense web site in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, these 110 pages are a small fraction of the material generated by 558 tribunals. The sheer volume of transcripts has effectively obscured them from public view, and the readings make audible a record of these quasi-legal proceedings that had been closed to public scrutiny.

See: http://redcat.org/gallery/0809/9scripts.php

REDCAT: A co-production of Pick Up Performance Co(S.) and The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at CalArts

Los Angeles dance and theater audiences have the extraordinary opportunity to discover an American masterpiece as David Gordon’s Trying Times returns to stages for the first time since 1982, when it was originally commissioned by New York’s Dance Theater Workshop.

Gordon has been an offbeat, original and persistently unpredictable choreographer, director and writer for more than 40 years, from his early work as one of the founding artists of the seminal Judson Dance Theater to an eclectic spectrum of commissions for DTW, American Ballet Theater, WNET’s Dance in America and the Mark Taper, among many others. The landmark Trying Times is his purposefully “anti-signature” piece, linking a range of movement, visual devices and dialogue to weave a course between droll off-handedness and precisely calibrated design.

Mischievously set to the complete score of Igor Stravinsky’s Apollo, the ballet that became one of George Balanchine’s signature works, Trying Times unfolds as a sly recasting of postmodernism, asking questions of both Gordon’s own pioneering use of “talking dance” and downtown art’s dogged refusal of classical forms.

The performances at REDCAT feature five of Gordon’s PUPC(S) members including Karen Graham, original cast member Valda Setterfield -- Gordon’s longtime muse -- and eight CalArts dance students. Trying Times performances at REDCAT are immediately followed by a two-week run at DTW in New York.

See: http://redcat.org/season/0809/dan/times.php ($)