"Visual Mischief" at The Front Gallery

Elléphant

presents

Visual Mischief

A program of video and film from the near and far-out.

The Front, an artist-run gallery space in New Orleans, hosts "VISUAL MISCHIEF," a program of experimental videos and short films by artists from the U.S. and Europe. The works are eclectic and diverse, from conceptual visual exercises to digitally mediated performance narratives.

Highlights include Erika Yeomans’ video on the 70’s Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, Kahlil Joseph’s music video for Shabazz Palace, and Nicolas Jenkins’ short on Genesis P-Orridge and Psychic TV.

May 8th: Reception at 6 pm. Screening at 8 pm, Program I May 11th: Reception at 7 pm. Screening at 8 pm, Program II

The Front

4100 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans


PROGRAM I

May 8th Reception 6 pm | Screening 8 pm – Running Time 60 Minutes - Loop

AMBER BOARDMAN (NEW YORK), Animations from the Inside Series

ERIKA YEOMANS (NEW YORK), Bunny Boy, Hardhead Flair

NICOLAS JENKINS (NEW YORK), New York Story

KAHLIL JOSEPH (LOS ANGELES), Belhaven Meridian

JEREMIAH CLANCY (NEW YORK), Feelings & Opinions

DANIEL STEDMAN & ARON EPSTEIN (NEW YORK), The Moth & the Firefly

VIRGINIE YASSEF & JULIEN PRÉVIEUX (PARIS), L’Arbre

ANDREA STANISLAV (MINNEAPOLIS), Blow Away

WILLIAM LAMSON (NEW YORK), Actions, Intervention & Fall

JENNET THOMAS (LONDON), Double Dummy, The Truth and The Pleasure


PROGRAM II

May 11th, Reception 7 pm Screening 8 pm Running Time 70 minutes

ERIKA YEOMANS – 3 EXPERIMENTAL NARRATIVES

Paging Dr. Freud (2007, multi-frame video, 18 minutes)

In Search of Bas Jan’s Miraculous (1997, Mixed Media, B&W/Color, 39 minutes)

A conceptual documentary about the real-life misadventures of the 1970's Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, the video is part faux documentary, part Hollywood technicolor biopic (with stolen bits of films from classics such as Lust for Life and The Sound of Music, among many others). The
project was featured on NPR's This American Life.

Chubby Buddy ("The Last Castrato") (2003, Super 8, color, 13 minutes)

Originally conceived as a live sound project as part of a sound series at AC Project Room in New York, April 2001. It was later re-imagined as a short “super 8 home movie.” A narrative is based on the memories of Frances Howard, a man who gave up a career and marriage in order to act upon some peculiar impulses.

The Shrinking Lover

I recently rented Talk to Her (2002) by Pedro Almodovar. Near the end of the movie is this incredible silent movie, The Shrinking Lover, that parallels the primary plot line about a male nurse and his patient, a beautiful dancer in a coma. Not that I didn't like the rest of the movie, but the not-so-repressed Freudian in me wanted more of the silent movie, just like I wanted the Dali dream sequence in Spellbound to continue a bit longer.

I have edited out the set up to the silent movie -- where the female scientist creates this elixir her lover impulsively drinks. He begins shrinking daily and decides to run away, sparing her from watching him diminish into nonexistence. He leaves his love and spends his remaining days with (but of course) his mother. The segment I have uploaded starts where the scientist has retrieved her tiny tiny lover by secreting him away in her purse. (A purse. Now what could that be a metaphor for?) She checks into a hotel and they spend the night together.

What is Almodovar's unconscious agenda:

• Rape?
  
• Passivity in women?
  
• Tiny men?
  
• Returning to the womb?
• All of the above?

The Scoop on Poop

Words evolve. And as they are used, there is greater need for clarification and further discrimination between this and that, between wheat and chaff. Listed alphabetically, not in order of preference or frequency, the following phrases have been in circulation for some time and define virtually the same activity:

• 

  Clear the traffic jam on the Hershey Highway
• Download some brownware
• Drop anchor, a bomb, a deuce, or a load
• Drop the kids off at the pool
• Grunt a growler
• Launch a torpedo
• Lay some cable, bricks, or logs
• Make a deposit at the porcelain bank
• Make a stinky
• Pinch a loaf
• Salute the throne
• Take a dump or a load off your mind
• Test the plumping
• Sjvsdtta en barkbet (Sweden)
• Squeeze one out, a coily, or the cheese

The list above is hardly comprehensive. The substitutions for the verb are myriad, the direct objects countless, making combinations and variations exponential. Perhaps the size of the direct object (e.g., log, torpedo) may be indicative of the quantity of the bowel movement. For brevity’s sake, I shall forego a qualitative analysis at this time.

One morning, during a recent discussion with my wife, and explored and expounded upon over cocktails with friends later that same day, I posited the need for an ordinal term or phrase that signified the number of shits taken in a day – because after all, people are counting.

1. Dump – the first shit of the day. The shit you take when you first wake up; or, the shit that wakes you up.
2. Deuce – the second shit of the day, usually taken after coffee.
3. Tribble – the third shit of the day, usually taken immediately after arriving at work. Most enjoyed while on the clock, while reading a newspaper paper, Sports Illustrated, or emails on your Blackberry.
4. Squatro – the fourth shit of the day. Taken just before lunch in order to make room for the combo deal at Quinzos, a carnitas burrito with cheese and guacamole at Chipotle, or the all-you-can-eat at the Indian buffet.
5. Quince – the fifth shit of the day. Taken late in the afternoon, before you take the metro home, ride your bike, or begin your two-hour commute through Malfunction Junction, hoping there’s no overturned 18-wheeler again. May be taken at home if you had a salad or a Smoothie for lunch.

Sure, the numbers could go higher, to infinity as I hear numbers (real ones at least) are alleged to do. But if you are taking more than five shits a day, make that if you “drop more than a quince” a day, you need to seek medical help immediately.

For a gastroenterologist in your area, click here.

Sip-N-Sale This Sunday at Pal's

Please axe me about

"We weren't just participating... We were the best!"

Antebellum fucko fever

I've been researching Yellow Fever a bit this summer, and have come across many an example of the New Orleans fucko continuum. The following item from the Picayune detailing the summer funk of 1837 seems to have particular resonance today. From 172 years later, I feel ya:

The levee is dull, dreary and lifeless at this time. No business doing, and the few ships in port are losing money for want of cargoes. Steamboats arrive but seldom, and bring neither news, money or goods. Every person feels like sleeping or running away for the next three weeks and a half - but most of those now in the city are bound to stay, to fulfill engagements, live or die. We make out to bury our dead, drink juleps, or brandy toddies, talk to each other and read letters and the news of the day...

Gv me the wd 4 Unconscious Forecasting

July
3, early, I
say to Janine – summer
here gives you that Life goes on, Long
after

the thrill
of living is
gone feeling. Later that
night (news to me) on NPR,
Fresh Air

has John
Mellencamp on
the program. Themes are put
out there – Race, Mortality, Girls –
if Girls

counts as
a theme. But it
all leads up to a dis-
cussion of that exact line, of
course, right?

the line
was from a time
when the Lower Chakras
(my term) did the writing –
thanks be.

Urban Dictionary Definition of UNDAY

Hey Undayers-

It's been so long since I signed onto The Unday that I forgot how to get here. So I simply googled Unday and found that Urban Dictionary had a listing. When I clicked on it here's what I found:


1. unday
unday means balls or eggs in urdu/hindi. unday can be referred to both; chicken eggs, and human male eggs(balls).


1. look his unday(balls) are showing. Tere unday nazar aa rahey hain.
2. look the chicken is laying eggs(unday).

2. unday
The period of time that occurs during the events of Saturday Night and Monday (or sometimes even Tuesday) Morning that nobody has recollection of after the comedown/hangover of a big weekender. After unday, you will feel like you have lost a day that you could have legitimately used for sleeping or recovering for work/uni the next day but can't because that day seems to have dissolved into nothingness and you probably knocked yourself out for over 24 hours.
A: *wakes up* Man I feel like shit... what time is it? we've got to go meet up with Sasha
B: That was yesterday. It's Monday today. And we're late for Uni again.
A: Shit whatever happened to sunday?
B: It's not sunday, It's Unday.

Sunrise on Friday, dPercussion on Saturday, Rave Saturday evening, Afterparty on Sunday, then it's Bank Holiday Unday.

It's a similiar but different definition of ours. Instead of Unday being the day to accomplish your shit that you didn't accomplish while partying, this definition makes an extra partying day into an Unday and BLAMES the Unday for not having that day to recover/sleep off your hangover!

Also, let us not forget the primary definition. Chicken or human male egg (balls)!

I F Y o u A RE H o t R e a d J O Y C E

( please ask me about )

SHADE DERIVE

b/w

Sunday Morning Bumper Bocce (Coming Down)