Part of Summer 2002
These films approach the nameless, unrepresentable horror of being. For identity carries its own annihilation in its fragile structure. It collapses in spasms, spectacles, crowds, twisted selfishness, the sexuality of hatred, damaged genes and living death. Images can open wounds and they can create them. For the small and unsophisticated ones among us are curious and permeable. And childhood traumas can last a lifetime.
Crippling is a reality and a metaphor. The innocent fun of the circus turns sinister and savage. Peter Sotos speaks frankly about the lure of children. And Paul Sharits invites us to experience the convulsive beauty of epilepsy. Drugged oblivion violently ruptures. The banality of life pierces the heroin haze. It’s about settling for something less.
Featuring work by Mark Hejnar, Paul Sharits, Karma Clark-Davis and Konstantin Bojanov. Their images, rhythms and music dislocate the senses. A dissembling synaesthetic implosion or the crucible of abjection? The affect is repulsion. Eruptions of meaningless spasms and hatred elicit the dissembling horror that narcotics cannot eliminate. To resist horror is to forgo cathartic release for it is an integral component of human being.
“Horror. Horror has a face. And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.” (Colonel Kurt, Apocalypse Now)