It’s an honour almost beyond words to have been invited last fall by Mojeanne Behzadi and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal to create a new film work for a dome space.
For years, I’ve lived in awe of the psychedelic dome cinema experiments that Stan VanDerBeek and his communities built in the woods of the Northeast, just south of Montreal.
Picking up a significant mantle from Stan’s dome work, which always involved found footage collage, cut-ups, and performance against empire, I wonder what the artist, who attempted to make expanded cinema to trigger cultures of peace — constructed with image fragments or pieces — I wonder what pictures would fill flicker in hid forest domes if he was to return today.
When I returned to California the day the Eaton and Malibu fires broke out in January, destroying many friends homes, I started to work immediately with two of the artists I most admire in this world. Han Chen donned his last uniform as a U.S. Army Sargeant Han to inhabit his character in an adaptation of a 2500 year old play of queer mystical resistance to authoritarianism as musician and artist Christos Tejada joined me in that dance, coordinated with a new track of his creation. Life, sometimes! -- Jamie
Fight all fascism.
Move, make, speak.
Commissioning curator: @themidnightcat@macmontreal
Music: @christostattoo
Performers: @hansnuff@christostattoo@ms.topia
Post-production: @primcentre mirendao
Projection: @sat_montreal
Documentation: @mikepatten.ca@labelleprovenance
Coordination: @gennjuice
PRAYER MACHINE
When I first walked into Stan van der Beek’s expanded cinema dome installation Video-Drome a few years ago, still a grad student, I immediately felt the spark of something I knew would change how I made films.
Stan created experiments of flickering, looping images in domes in the woods of the northern mountains close to Montreal in the 1960s with materials that were on hand. He was curious about how watching these images together could create cultures of peace.
This winter, commissioned by @themidnightcat for Montreal’s contemporary art museum, I entered into a process of creation, going back through the last 20 years of my own filmmaking, pulling excerpts from 8mm films since 2005 and bits and pieces from dozens of movies that live in my subconscious. I made a film in 48 channels.
With two of my most valued collaborators, we built ritual and music into the project and tonight, in a massive dome in the heart of Montreal, we perform the ritual.
My beloved friend Han Chen will will don his own sargeant’s uniform given to him as a soldier in the United States Army, as we connect the legacy of Stan van der Beek’s Video-Drome with current prayers and demands to end the wars that ensnare our world.
Mage that has inspired me for years, Christos Tejada has crafted a piece of music that I have hallucinated to for weeks and weeks as we built this kaleidoscopic film and woven together an adaptation of Euripides’ famous invectives to Autocrats everywhere.
These are the days that humble me.
I am beside myself with gratitude for this life.
Join us tonight in the video drome.
Curation: @themidnightcat for
Presenter: @macmontreal at @sat_montreal
Montage: @primcentre
Composition: @christostattoo
Movement: @hansnuff@christostattoo
Project management: @gennjuice
Im a juicy boy for
KIM CHI x SUNDAE SCHOOL
@sundae.school@kimchi_chic
Creative Director: Corinne Ang
Assistant Creative Director: Hee Eun Chung
Producer: Ellie Rha
Hero: Kim Chi
Talent: Han Chen, Joshua Choi, Cory Nakamura, Matthew Nguyen
Production Company: Runner Films
Executive Producer: Shayan Farooq
Director: Ellie Rha
DP: Alexey Kosorukov
AD: Bianca Vitale
1st AC: Garrett Gaston
Gaffer: Chase DuBose
Key Grip: Jake Reardon
Photographer: Hee Eun Chung
Photo Assist: Mei Kobayashi
Art Director: Taylor Venegas
Stylist: Elizabeth Wang
Styling Assist: Peaches Valdellon-Vergara, Alexa Ramirez
Bespoke Hanbok Designer: Cheonshik VanDamme
SFX MUA: M.O.
Set PA: Johanna Facada
Truck PA: Emilio Cordova
POST PRODUCTION
Creative Post: Ellie Rha
Sound Design: Jay Herrera
Colorist: Ryan Berger
Stills creative post producer: Ali Zilahy
Graphic Designer/Illustrator: Corinne Ang
Junior Graphic Designer: Danielle Mariz Berger
I sometimes think about how you must have looked
When your mother found you
Did the cats eat your face?
Peeling skin off from
Out the hole you made
I didn’t text back
When they were looking for you and the keys I borrowed
But I had already moved away for months now
Stashed away in a bedroom corner
In a home, a place, and it’s somewhere
So far from what you must have felt
A moment you stretched into entirety
Agony
Then the cats ate your face
Wearing @gogoamy and taking selfies in my room and I heard it is a full moon outside tonight and I will dig myself into the ground and forget the sky ever existed
gogoamy.com