Program Notes for Dirges and Sturgeons
curated and introduced by Astria Suparak
for Anthology Film Archives

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Dirges and Sturgeons

YACHT: Young Artists Challenge High Technology (for a Total eclipse of the heart). Sometimes, danger and small warm things. A lo-hi limbo, a purging of the doubles. It is an occasion for instant nostalgia and time-shaped puzzles.


Animal Charm
SLOW GIN SOUL STALLION. 1996. 2:30 minutes.
The unusual combination of a sound like a singing saw accompanies sweet images of frolicking lambs in the meadow, galloping horses, and a strange boy, is eerily beautiful and pure. "Horses gallop and a dandelion blows apart in a pervy flow somehow reminiscent of a feminine hygiene commercial." -Jon Raymond, Plazm
LIGHTFOOT FEVER. 1996, 1:30 minutes.
Fuelled by lavish doses of disjointed hyper-editing, super talented Jim Bailey dances with wild animals in this hot and exciting performance of "Fever."

Lawrence Elbert
WHITNEY: MAMA'S LITTLE BABY. 2000, 8:30 minutes.
The diva as a paranoid crackhead venting tender(izing) love on her backseat baby.

Pierre Yves Clouin
THE LITTLE BIG. 1999, 3:38 minutes.
"Every crease and surface of the human body has erotic potential in the work of Pierre Yves Clouin. With only details of unidentifiable flesh to ponder, sexual tension vibrates between the screen and the audience's collective imagination. The answer to the question 'Is that his...or his...?' is kept out of reach, drawing the viewer into a mind-body-camera menage-à-trois with no climax..." - Cinematexas International Short Film + Video Festival

Jacqueline Goss
THE 100TH UNDONE. 2001, silent, 9 minutes
"A love letter to the individual in the age of biotechnical reproduction - i.e., transcription of the Human Genome - with a personalized pre-history for future human clones." -New York Video Festival

Miranda July
GETTING STRONGER EVERY DAY. 2001, 6:30 minutes.
"There are two movies I saw on TV about boys who were taken from their families and then returned to them years later. One boy was on a fun spaceship for years and the other boy was kidnapped and molested. These boys were never the same again and they just couldn't re-integrate into the family. I saw these movies when I was little. I've often described them to people, always paired together. They are sort of the comedy and tragedy version of the same story and it is a mundanely spiritual story. GETTING STRONGER EVERY DAY includes these boys' tales, but they are like mystical objects placed on the living reality of the man storyteller. In other parts of the movie actual mystical objects hover in peoples lives without a myth or story attached. I like to think about how these dimensions interact simply and can be enacted: real life / story / worldly / spirit / video / flat drawing." -MJ

Bjørn Melhus
DAS ZAUBERGLAS (The Magic Glass). 1991, 6 minutes.
A short meeting of a shaving man and his female reflection in the magic glass/the TV monitor. A tale about coming and going and the desire of an incomprehensible virtual image. Based on the German version of the 1950's Western romance, "Broken Arrow".

Seth Price
INDUSTRIAL SYNTH. 2001, 15 minutes.
"Modernity, the period roughly spanning the mid 19th century to the present, has produced a vast body of linked and interrelated 'mass' or 'popular' culture, which is, in effect, an archive. This phenomenon is closely tied to the rise of time-based media, from film and the gramophone, through the LP and CD, TV and radio, HiFi, animation, video, and the World Wide Web.

"Most recent of these, the web represents a different order of information technology. Its interactivity distinguishes it from traditional media's 'total flow,' which may run 24 hours a day, but can only be switched on or off. Moreover, the web is composed of disparate media previously available only in controlled broadcasts, or locked into discrete consumer objects such as videotapes and records. At least theoretically, then, the historical archive of pop culture becomes accessible, and, just as importantly, mutable: this is an opportunity not simply for preservation, but for recirculation and recombination along new lines.

"An archive like this allows for an experience of history that is quite personal. Artifacts such as pop songs, typeface designs, logos, and advertisements, are, like illuminated manuscripts or Victorian corsets, headstones marking a bygone era; the difference is that an item of the 'just-past' may have originated in the lived experience of the viewer, and produces the shock of the uncanny: it remains the same as it was, and yet completely different. This shock is a recognition that the change has occurred in the viewing subject. These items are the detritus of a society predicated on perpetual turnover and obsolescence, and a personal experience of history is an intimation of one's own mortality." -SP


*Pre-show may include Seth Price's Game Heaven (Video Game Soundtracks 1982-1987). 2002, CD, time variable.
"Although unavailable through commercial channels, early video-game soundtracks nonetheless circulate on the internet, exchanged by fans who have hacked the songs from cartridges, discs, or free-standing arcade machines. The peculiar status of the music-obsolete, overlooked by the market, and imbued with nostalgia for a second cohort-coupled with the fan sites flaunting of legal ‘content’ control, makes it emblematic of hacker culture’s ideal of art liberated from commerce. This album’s release enacts the common corporate strategy of rooting out an obscure cultural artifact resuscitated through someone else’s labor of love, and exposing it to a broad audience." -SP

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