Special Event – Page 9 – Spectacle Theater

EXPEDITION: AN EVENING OF EXOTICISM & ARMCHAIR TRAVEL

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

For the Edification and Pleasure of the Audience: In Order to Please the Eye and Excite the Imagination!

A very worthy adjunct to our regular EPHEMERA series, we present an evening of exoticism and armchair travel, imagery and sound, with artist, writer, and inveterate exot Evan Crankshaw, also known as Flash Strap of the FLASH STRAP blog. Come and embark on a journey—conveyed by means of synaesthetic virtual-voyage—to the heart of timeless darkness and beyond; embrace the numinous monolith of the exotic immensity.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FACEBOOK EVENT

EXPEDITION’s program will consist of Three Parts:

I: MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO: A PRIMEVAL BOLERO (CONCERNING THE ORIGINS OF MAN AND THE SAVAGE EARLY DAYS OF THE EARTH)

A trio of educational video tapes of stop-motion dinosaurs subjected to extensive re-edits and fitted with a new soundtrack of exotica, library music, and cosmic synthesizers.

II: “EXPEDITION”

EXPEDITION is a 104-page collage book that loosely follows an archetypal expedition narrative, simultaneously reveling in exotic fantasy and offering both a critique and surrealist/ethnographic culture-history of Western exoticism. Each page has dozens of collaged components, genuine artifacts of authentic exoticist 20th century culture, drawn from a vast collected archive; each of these parts and their sources are detailed in the book’s dense index, along with their original context and some historical info. The book will be presented by the artist as a slide show—using an analogue slide projector—with a soundtrack of exotica music and field recordings.

III: VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET (PORTS OF PARADISE)

A re-cut of a 1965 Hollywood re-cut (“Voyage To The Prehistoric Planet” with Basil Rathbone) of a 1962 Soviet science fiction film “Planet of Storms,” using some footage from an additional 1968 B-picture re-cut, “Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women.”

The film is re-edited (in chronological order, but greatly shortened and with redesigned sound) to reveal the classic nature of the expedition narrative at its core, with a preference for the sensory over the sensical. The result is a woozy narrative more in line with dream-state story-telling, surrealist strategies, or the psychedelic logic of midnight movies.

POCKET HOLIDAY: AN A/V PERFORMANCE BY ZONK VISION

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

CLICK HERE FOR THE FACEBOOK EVENT

POCKET HOLIDAY is a 1 hour audio visual performance presented by Danny Wild with Australian collective Zonk Vision. Using the pocket as a symbolic motif, Pocket Holiday explores the flux between intimacy and distance in relation to place. This playful event incorporates performance, film screening and live music into a hyperreal world of humor and color.

Shorts by Greg Holden, Jason Galea, Danny Wild, Ben Jones, Kat Martin, Grace Blake, Kate Geck, Luke Penders, Kiah Reading, Sarah Bryne, Rachel Archibald, Sarah Nathan-Truesdale, Oscar Capezio, Timothy D, Elliot Schultz, Riley Post, Caitlin Franzmann, Raw Nature Films and more.

/THE_CEIBAS_CYCLE: CYCLES AND VOIDS WITH EVAN MEANEY

Posted on August 24, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

CYCLES AND VOIDS, a short lecture on the computational value of zero as it applies to art-making and communication, is followed by a screening of Evan Meaney’s recent work /THE_CEIBAS_CYCLE.

“While our bodies decay, while our data erodes, while our attempts to stem this tide ultimately fail, no-matter how redundant or healthy; we will find ourselves together again. All together. Beneath the shade of the trees. Finally ready to address that horizon.”

The Mayans believed the ceibas trees to be points of connection, setting up protocols to connect this world to the next. This series contains variations on that theme, perhaps even instructions; finding the echoing liminality of the tree in each new, failing, interface and allowing for a personal recognition by archival proxy.

Evan Meaney is an assistant professor of new media and gaming at the University of South Carolina. His work concerns ghosts, glitches, and the computationally undead. He has been an artist in residence at the Wexner Center for the Arts, a founding member of GLI.TC/H, and a contributor to the Atlantic.

PLANET REVENGE LIVE SCORE

Posted on July 9, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

SATURDAY, JULY 19 – 7:30 PM & 10:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

On July 19th, Spectacle invites you for a ONE NIGHT ONLY collaboration: Planet Revenge! But rather than the lunging sci-fi epic suggested by the title, please join us instead for a languorous and lush tribute to everybody’s favorite orb, scored by Benjamin Felton’s Blood Revenge. Felton plays long form songs on electric guitar, inspired by equal parts finger-picked guitar playing, Indian classical music, the outdoors, and synthesizers; through loops and improvisation, an attempt is made at briefly changing how the performer and the audience experience a space and interact with each other.

Felton’s music can be considered as a blissed-out soundtrack for your commute to work, or as a sonic landscape of your favorite vacation spot – in this case, Mother Earth! Against a cornea-copia of cascading waterfalls, frozen ice, trickles of dew jogging down-leaf and swooping canvases of lakes, rivers, gullies and countrysides, Felton will use his guitar-power to interpret an already-established story told exclusively through visual images and field sounds, echoing unforgettable onscreen textures off of Spectacle’s four walls in a feast of sight and sound. Planet Revenge: so breathtaking, it’ll turn you into an environmentalist.

A Monday Evening with The Saturday Giant

Posted on July 8, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

MONDAY, JULY 14 – 8:00PM & 10:00PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY!

On Monday, July 14th, Spectacle welcomes Phil Cogley (aka: The Saturday Giant) for an evening stop off on his latest tour.

The Saturday Giant is a one-man art-rock band from Columbus, Ohio, established in 2010. Since then, The Saturday Giant has produced three releases, played dozens of shows across the U.S., collaborated with technology conferences and performing arts groups, and become one of the most respected acts in his hometown—all while crafting an innovative and compelling live show in which he sculpts layers of guitars, drums, bass lines, beat boxing, keyboards and vocals into towering walls of sound, without the aid of prerecorded samples. Even while maintaining his rigorous touring schedule, The Saturday Giant is preparing his full-length debut for 2014.

Cogley will be performing to a selection of short films from the early age of cinema including Thomas Edison’s FRANKENSTEIN (1910), DW Griffith’s THE LONEDALE OPERATOR (1911) – later remade as THE GIRL & HER TRUST – and finally the haunting, melancholic, and beautiful THE LAND BEYOND THE SUNSET (1912).

INFINITY MARACAS: 75 DOLLAR BILL SCORES “MUSICA ETNICA VIVA”

Posted on June 18, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

SUNDAY, JULY 20 – 7:30 – 10:00 PM

ONE NIGHT ONLY! BRING YOUR OWN BOWL FOR HOMEMADE GAZPACHO!
**75 Dollar Bill will be joined by Sue Garner and Andrew Lafkas on bull fiddle!**

75 Dollar Bill, which is percussionist Rick Brown and electric guitarist Che Chen, will perform with MUSICA ETNICA VIVA, an “expanded film work” composed by Chen. M.E.V. is “an amateur nature film which also attempts to posit connections between the development of capitalist, industrialized societies and the loss of both cultural and biological diversity. The film finds much of it’s philosophical basis in Jacques Attali’s Noise, a book in which he wrote that the mass production of music ‘is a powerful factor in consumer integration, interclass leveling, cultural homogenization…and the disappearance of distinct cultures.’ The sound and image [will] function as two distinct structures that are super-imposed.”

M.E.V. will be projected on Super-8 and digital video. 75 Dollar Bill will play throughout the evening, and audience members are encouraged to join or leave the room at their leisure. 75 Dollar Bill will be providing home-made gazpacho! Please bring a bowl if you want some.

About 75 Dollar Bill:

Rick Brown was born in San Francisco, CA and is a clerical worker at a law school in NYC. Che Chen was born in New Haven, CT and works for a cancer diagnostics company in Stonybrook, NY. They met via myspace and started playing together as 75 Dollar Bill approximately eight years later. Brown plays percussion and homemade horns and Chen plays electric guitar. Music from two self-released cassettes may be found here: http://75dollarbill.bandcamp.com/

ANNA BILLER (VIVA & SHORTS)

Posted on June 17, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

For over twenty years, Anna Biller has been casting herself in candy-colored films, borrowing from various genres and translating the aesthetic into her world view. As not only the writer, director and star, but also the costume designer and set decorator, she concocts scenarios that seem cut right out of Hollywood films then recreated at a ten year old girls’ slumber party.

VIVA
Dir. Anna Biller, 2007
USA, 120 min.
Digital projection.

TUESDAY, JULY 1 – 10:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9 – 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, JULY 25 – 7:30 PM
MONDAY, JULY 28 – 10:00 PM

Anna Biller’s take on 60s/70s sexploitation is so spot on – the film’s texture, clothing and natural nude bodies aren’t things you find laying around in the 2000s. Here she plays Barbi, a naive housewife abandoned by her husband, venturing out into the modern world of the 70s only to find one perversion after another. Biller’s abilities are in top form – the set decoration is so intricately thought through, you’ll be able to feel the shag carpet between your toes.

SHORTS PROGRAM

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23 – 8:00 PM
ONE NIGHT ONLY! All titles on 16mm

THREE EXAMPLES OF MYSELF AS QUEEN
16mm, 1994, 26 min.

A DIY fairytale musical! With elaborate sets and costumes, Three Examples of Myself as Queen finds Anna Biller playing out three scenarios of female domination – as head of an Arabian Nights harem, queen bee and disco dancer.

THE HYPNOTIST
16mm, 2001, 45 min.

A twist on the “you get a huge inheritance, but here’s the catch” story, The Hypnotist (the only film to not star Biller) sets three mean-hearted siblings at each other’s throats as they are forced to live together to collect their father’s money. A humorous spin on Technicolor melodramas, it sends up the genre while also displaying full love for its tropes.

A VISIT FROM THE INCUBUS
16mm, 2001, 27 min.

In this horror western musical hybrid, Biller plays Lucy, a woman who is victim to nightly assaults from an incubus. She seeks to boost her confidence by taking a job in a saloon singing and dancing for a bunch of rowdy cowboys, only to find her demonic tormentor also has a stage act! All of this should sound weird enough to have you sufficiently intrigued.

PETER GREENAWAY: THE FALLS

Posted on June 17, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

THE FALLS
Dir. Peter Greenaway, 1980
UK, 195 min.

SUNDAY, JULY 13 – 8 PM
MONDAY, JULY 21 – 8 PM

A sprawling science fiction microbudget epic, Peter Greenaway’s The Falls is one of the more successful experimental features in accessibility and one that lasts 3 plus hours to boot. Known as Peter Greenaway’s favorite film of his own work, The Falls goes through a catalog of 92 individuals whose last name starts with the word “Fall” that were victimized by an event known as the VUE or the Violent Unknown Event. It’s told in a deadpan mock documentary style with numerous narrators, has a strange narrative current that somehow ties these characters together, can be seen as a mutated sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and boasts a playful score from Michael Nyman to wrap it all together.

Manic and mechanical, The Falls keeps you in focus with its absurdities and allows you to to solve the encyclopedic mystery with comic redundancies and run-ons. Indulgent in the best way possible, It’s truly mad in execution and in thought.

VISUAL MUSIC: AN iotaSALON COLLECTION 1960-2014

Posted on June 17, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

VISUAL MUSIC: AN iotaSALON COLLECTION 1960-2014

SATURDAY, JULY 12 – 8:00 PM – ONE NIGHT ONLY
16mm Titles Shown from Film!

“All of a sudden it hit me—if there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why can’t there be figures of motion?” -Len Lye

The iotaCenter is the premiere source for the presentation, preservation, and research of visual music, a language of abstract experimental film pioneered by figures like Mary Ellen Bute and Len Lye and continued through to the present day.

In conjunction with the New York City premiere of newly restored works by Robert Darroll, Spectacle is pleased to also partner with the iotaCenter on a retrospective of works ranging from the 1960s to present day: an evening of visual music, color rhythm, colour music, rhythmic light, lumia, digital harmony, liquid light, absolute film, visual harmony, abstract animation, abstract expressionist cinema, and kinetica.

Special thanks to Huckleberry Lain.

SCRATCH PAD
Hy Hirsh, 1960. 8 min.
16mm print!

HEAVY LIGHT
Adam K. Beckett, 1973. 7 min.
16mm print!

FURIES
Sara Petty, 1977. 3 min.
16mm print!

CALCULATED MOVEMENT
Larry Cuba, 1985. 7 min.
16mm print!

BLOOMY GIRLS
Takagi Masakatsu, 2005. 5 min.

JOSHUA HIS TREE
Michael Robinson, 2006. 6 min.

SON OF PUDDLE JUMPER
Chris Casady, 2009. 2 min.

APRES LE FEU
Jacques Perconte, 2010. 7 min.

THE DEEP DARK
Laura Heit, 2011. 7 min.

FIELDS
Dr. Strangeloop, 2012. 7 min.

ANTIQUITIES FOR THE QUEEN OF ANGELS
Huckleberry Lain, 2013. 10 min.

OCEAN
Stephanie Maxwell, 2014. 12 min.

About the iotaCenter

The iotaCenter is a non-profit arts organization, founded in 1994, devoted to the preservation and promotion of experimental animation and abstract visual music. Through our online discussion group and The Visual Music Village social network, we foster a worldwide community of artists, scholars and fans of this art form. iota has received numerous grants for its programs in film preservation and archiving and maintains a video study center for students, scholars and curators doing research in the genre.

CRITICAL PARANOIA: CONSPIRATORIAL MEMES, ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES, AND DISINFORMATION

Posted on June 17, 2014December 24, 2019 by spectacletheater

CRITICAL PARANOIA: CONSPIRATORIAL MEMES, ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES, AND DISINFORMATION
Curated by Ernest J. Ramon
USA, 80 min, 2014

THURSDAY, JULY 10 – 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JULY 16 – 7:30 PM

A sampling of some of the strangest and most thought provoking conspiracy videos to found on youtube including:

Listed for viewing in TV Guide Magazine Conspiracy of Silence, exposes a network of religious leaders and politicians involved in child sex orgies at the White House. It was to be aired on the Discovery Channel on May 3 1994 but was mysteriously pulled just prior to being aired. The rights to the documentary have been purchased by unknown persons who have ordered all copies destroyed.
Merck Vaccine Chief Brings HIV/AIDS to America, This censored interview conducted for public television was cut due to its huge liability–the admission that Merck drug company vaccines have systematically been injecting cancer viruses in people worldwide.
This segment of In Lies We Trust: The CIA, Hollywood & Bioterrorism features one of the world’s leading vaccine experts who explains why Merck’s vaccines have spread AIDS, leukemia, and other horrific plagues worldwide.
The Mena Connection, Eyewitness testimony paints an incredibly detailed and paradigm shifting view into the secret world of high-level politicians, the CIA, Iran Contra, cocaine, and the funding of a secret government. Hollywood Insider
Freemasonic and Occult Movies & Symbolism. Be assured the Illuminati and the Necronomicon are very real. Other topics include multi-dimensional beings feeding off humans, parallel universes, ghosts, sex magick, and Brad Pitt.
Hell’s Bell’s The Dangers of Rock ‘N’ Roll 1989 journey into the dark side of rock music and its negative effect on society (from a Christian perspective).
The Assassination of Jimi Hendrix, In the last twenty four hours only two things are certain it was no accident, and it was not a suicide.
The Borg Agenda, in its entirety is a marathon reaching over 14 hours in length, an intense exploration into critical issues of modernity. Is the Star Trek franchise and perhaps the whole of pop science fiction insidious propaganda aimed at coaxing all humanity into a steely robotic cage?
Is Jeff Ganon Really Johnny Gosch? connect the dots missing children milk cartons politicians black op tax funded pedophile sex rings.
Project Blue Beam, Fake alien invasion rapture jesus hologram physiological warfare ufos.
Kubrick’s Odyssey Secrets Hidden In The Film of Stanley Kubrick Part One Kubrick and Apollo. First in a series of documentaries revealing the secret knowledge embedded in the works of the greatest filmmaker of all time. In Part One, Jay Weidner, presents compelling evidence of Stanley Kubrick directing the Apollo moon landings. Was 2001: A Space Odyssey not only a retelling of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s novel, but also a research and development project that assisted Kubrick in the creation of the Apollo moon footage?
Operation Trojan Horse, One persons story of waking up to reality.