Part of Winter 2002
A co-presentation with the Media City Festival, Windsor (February 13 – 16 www.netcore.ca/~hot/) and with the support of the Consult Général of France, the AFAA, and the Dep’t of Int’l Affairs of the City of Grenoble.
Mody Bleach is a live film and sound performance orchestrated by five artists from Grenoble, France, who collaborate under the name MTK. Beginning with John Huston’s classic Moby Dick, MTK’s ‘Expanded Cinema Performance’ re-mixes the film through hand processing marvels and new music sensations to create new cinematic horizons. “Not a sequel but an after-effect – four filmmakers and a musician – turn Huston’s phony Hollywood classic into a monster with ten arms shaking ten 16mm projectors and a Powerbook.”
“Confronted by the narration, our filmic style (laboratory research, chemical manipulations, colour processing, games of contrast and live multi-projection) will be used to revisit this mid-ocean meeting behind closed doors. Across a decalcified emulsion angrily spitting in all directions, the escaping Pequod seems to embody the delirious spirit of its captain. There are moments and circumstances – in this strange and shady business we call cinema – in which each of us confusedly divines that a monstrous joke is being made at our expense. So the images rise and set, assuring a hold on the triumphant wave, and the whole crew swears occasionally to relieve the general tension. It is no small feat to contain the voracity of the film, chewing on its own entrails, swallowing over and over through a single mouth to come out again from the other end in an impetuous stream. Meanwhile in the confusion of this swarming struggle amidst foam, the surrounding sea with its long rays of sunlight appears but a vast cheese crawling with maggots.” (MTK)
