I’m posting this not only because I think Ryan Trecartin (who has lived in LA for a few years now) is great but also because all of his videos explore language in a way that should be of interest to poets and writers. Truly weird stuff, beautifully edited if always on the edge of total collapse.
Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and scholar (he was a professor of mine at the CUNY Graduate Center) wrote a great article about Trecartin for Artforum called Situation Hacker, a must read:
“Imagine slasher films without blood; porn without nudity; the Sistine Chapel without God; the New York Stock Exchange without capital. Pretend that Hieronymus Bosch’s intermeshed figures could text. Ryan Trecartin’s videos depict a vertiginous world I’m barely stable enough to describe. Watching them, I face the identity-flux of Internet existence: surfing-as-dwelling. Images evaporate, bleed, spill, metamorphose, and explode. Through frenetic pacing, rapid cuts, and destabilizing overlaps between representational planes (3-D turns into 2-D and then into 5-D), Trecartin violently repositions our chakras. Digitally virtuoso, his work excites me but also causes stomach cramps. I’m somatizing. But I’m also trying to concentrate.”
When: Tuesday, Mar. 25, 2014
Time: 7:30 pm
Where: Bing Theater at LACMA
Address: 5905 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90036
Film Independent at LACMA in March
Includes an introduction by director Ryan Trecartin
First presented in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, Ryan Trecartin’s four new movies explore his continued interest in language and the construction of identity. Incorporating repurposed footage from 1999—while the artist was in high school—as well as a wealth of new material shot on a 360-degree sound stage, the works present structural innovations in the nature of film, scriptwriting, and collaboration. Through a visual language of seeming chaos, he propels a conversation about life today and the profound and still uncertain ways in which humans will be affected by the digital era. Ryan Trecartin will be in attendance to introduce this Film Independent at LACMA screening.
For more information and tickets, visit filmindependent.org/lacma.