Flesh and blood souls breathe forth the colors of doubt, guilt and a hope for "peace of mind" in a world without moral directions... This video is about strength and weakness, done with human forms assembled and lovingly digitized.
This title comprises The Poet's Battle (2016), NightSchool (2015), Ascension (2013), Lost Blues (2014), and A Rented Space (2015) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.
'Misery' doesn't like 'company' -- but 'company' does love a 'party', so come join in on a catastrophic celebration, and do 'hang on' tight -- because it's a steep ride down into the depths of a soul in meltdown mode!
Identically dressed, and with sibling-like resemblance, performance artists Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen shift between spoken word and athletic dance choreography in a collection of 29 scenes. Set in various locations--including a gymnasium, an abandoned hospital, and a trailer park circus--Martin and Olsen slip between a ventriloquist and his dummy, a seducer and his surrogate, a doctor and his patient, and synchronized dance partners. The film examines a complex social psychology--questioning the colonization of the human body for various political, medical and religious agendas.
Identically dressed, and with sibling-like resemblance, performance artists Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen shift between spoken word and athletic dance choreography in a collection of 29 scenes. Set in various locations--including a gymnasium, an abandoned hospital, and a trailer park circus--Martin and Olsen slip between a ventriloquist and his dummy, a seducer and his surrogate, a doctor and his patient, and synchronized dance partners. The film examines a complex social psychology--questioning the colonization of the human body for various political, medical and religious agendas.
Identically dressed, and with sibling-like resemblance, performance artists Trevor Martin and Kym Olsen shift between spoken word and athletic dance choreography in a collection of 29 scenes. Set in various locations--including a gymnasium, an abandoned hospital, and a trailer park circus--Martin and Olsen slip between a ventriloquist and his dummy, a seducer and his surrogate, a doctor and his patient, and synchronized dance partners. The film examines a complex social psychology--questioning the colonization of the human body for various political, medical and religious agendas.
Land locked souls seek the key to a spiritual doorway that transcends earthly existence.
You, along with them will unlock and enter the "HOUSE OF THE HOLY GHOST", and when inside; be eternally blessed and forever haunted!
Stephen Varble began Journey to the Sun as a series of performances with projected slides in 1978. After becoming notorious for unauthorized costume performances on Soho streets in the mid 1970s, Varble receded from his public persona at this time. Deriving from his identification with his idol, the reclusive actress Greta Garbo, and informed by the spiritual practice of Subud, Varble began writing an allegorical epic about a musician, the Grey Crowned Warbler, who undergoes tribulation and metamorphosis on a journey to transcendence.
Rosie Cutler, a middle school lunch lady, and TJ Fortune, a outcast student, have an unusual relationship. Mystically-minded and gender ambiguous, TJ recoils into an abandoned warehouse where he builds a massive sculptural shrine from discarded objects and trash. Through a dream Rosie makes intimate contact with a trans-worldly being who she hopes will bridge the gap between real and imagined to reveal truths about our world.
The performance artist Stephen Varble spent the last five years of his life working on an epic, unfinished performance-turned-video titled Journey to the Sun (1978-1983). Only partially complete and under constant revision, this complex work combined Varble’s history of making costumes for performances with his fantastic stories involving metamorphosis and martyrdom. In 1982, Varble decided to make a “prelude” to Journey to the Sun, combining existing footage with new video taken in Riverside Park in New York City.
Poet Leticia Plotkin's final poem, intended to praise the ancient deities who control one's fate, turns instead into a bitter damnation scribbled in venom.
This turbulent and colorful drama about the proud and the profane was made with an international group of students at the school where I've been teaching for many decades: the San Francisco Art Institute. Join this attractive assortment of talented youth as they bring to life a complex tale of alien insemination and CEO conflict in a character congested setting of magic, mystery and mangled literacy! Experience the thrills that only a $600 budget could bring to the screen with such dedicated desperation. Exalt in the excessive excellence of exhausted funds as they funnel i
Take a trip into and out of the body to ponder Time’s endless depths where Earth spirits roam and inner Demons lurk, and find secrets that hide behind the "self". Its here for you to see.
This title comprises Moon Lit Vows (2017), Boy in the Mirror (2015), Celestial Horizons (2019), Book of the Angel (2017) and Floating on the Currents of Consciousness (2019) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.
The third installment in the Action Series. Two characters engage Ann Hamilton's Headlands kitchen-space and create temporal resonances. To survive they must break the fast (a midnight snack) and service the meal.
This title is also available on HalfLifers: The Complete History.
Revelers at a masquerade ball enter an UnderWorld of guilt, vice, pain, chaos and redemption.
-- Mike Kuchar
Mike Builds a Shelter is a performance comedy with apocalyptic overtones, a narrative extension of Smith's installation Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter/Snack Bar. In this darkly humorous morality play, Smith contrasts Mike's rural adventures in a pastoral landscape with his home fallout shelter. Throughout, the dual narratives are intercut with episodes of Mike's Show on cable, in which Mike's banal domestic activities are eagerly if passively received by living-room TV viewers.
A young man of the "Modern Age" ponders sits alone to ponder "prehistoric life" and discovers that he has fine-tuned those primitive instincts in the Times he now lives. This is "food for thought", heated, stirred and serve
Bouncing balloons, cloth puppets and loud mouthed 'wall-bangers' enliven a grown up nursery.
—Mike Kuchar
In the solar system 18 SCORPII, located some 45.3 light years from Earth at the northern edge of the Scorpius constellation, two planets have evolved cultures of profound mutual symbiotic reliance. The ecstatic dance-like interaction between the almost inert Kalataka and the exhausted but entranced Tarzanians, is extraordinarily beautiful, building to the climactic effusion of Kalataka sporge.
Produced in Tempe, Arizona this cosmic symbiosis is rendered with the help of masks, costumes, and campy visual effects.
In the solar system 18 SCORPII, located some 45.3 light years from Earth at the northern edge of the Scorpius constellation, two planets have evolved cultures of profound mutual symbiotic reliance. The ecstatic dance-like interaction between the almost inert Kalataka and the exhausted but entranced Tarzanians, is extraordinarily beautiful, building to the climactic effusion of Kalataka sporge.
Produced in Tempe, Arizona this cosmic symbiosis is rendered with the help of masks, costumes, and campy visual effects.
‘ODDS AND ENDS’ is a dazzling patchwork of moods, lost and found, for the eye to savor.
Take a joyride through comfortable suburbia—a landscape molded by seductive television and corporate America (and keep in mind: disaster is another logo for your consumption...). This is the age of the "culture jammed" consumer preened with Friends hair, Survivor courage, and CNN awareness. A generation emptying their wallets for the most important corporate product of all: lifestyle. The psychological road trip across a slightly battered America travels at One Mile per Minute.
Introduces the audience to the rockin' talkin' pony, who provides musical accompaniment for a series of Texas country-dance lessons.
This title is also available on Ben Coonley: Trick Pony Trilogy.
In these "plays" for the camera, the lushness of an afternoon tryst with it’s perfumed colors is displayed center stage. You’ll experience too, the oppressive moods that permeate the lonely streets of a city at night and witness the antics of it’s desperate, guilt-ridden inhabitants.
A short, hilarious cooking mantra, featuring Sister Dimension, The "Lady" Bunny, RuPaul, David Dalrymple, Lahoma Van Zandt and Maria Ayala. "Where's the pickle? That's the surprise!"
This title is only available on Tom Rubnitz Videoworks: Sexy, Wiggy, Desserty.
In this early Tom Rubnitz, Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken collaboration, "Frieda" performs her rap song with a bevy of dolls as back-up singers and dancers. Features rock-bottom production values and song lyrics by Barbara Lipp and Tom Koken.