FILMS
Fantasy.jpeg
You’ve probably heard of a JPEG before. But few know that it’s an abbreviation of “Joint Photographic Experts Group” — a governing body that has the power to determine what remains visible and what is discarded when images are compressed.
A hybrid of fact and fiction, “Fantasy.jpeg” brings together a real-life network of filmmakers, comprising of almost every woman and gender-nonconforming filmmaker with whom the director is personally acquainted. The group employs camera gear as armor and embarks on a mission to infiltrate a JPEG conference and liberate image-making from its historic biases — reclaiming the power of fantasy and representation.
A Tour of the Self Cleaning House
The Self Cleaning House is a patented invention by Francis Gabe of Newberg, Oregon, USA. The house has been widely celebrated and recognized as an accomplishment for women’s role in science and as a clever method to liberate women from housework. It was even partially reconstructed in the Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas.
When Lucky Benson visited the prototype that Francis Gabe was still occupying in 2007, they discovered that the actual realization of the invention idea was a minor disaster. It was cluttered and hazardous, which made it difficult to believe that the home had ever been a working invention.
In this video, 3D-rendered environments were constructed to create the fantasy version of the Self Cleaning House as a fully functional home, based on the ideas laid out in its patent. There is an odd disparity between the importance of The Self Cleaning House as a concept, versus its condition in reality.
Written & Directed by Lucky Benson
Music: Doron Sadja
Voiceover: Kellie Fitzgerald
Buttery Coldness
An experimental biopic on Poul Thorsen (1884-1962), a Danish business magnate who used the profits from his margarine factory to study hypnosis. He then wrote what were essentially instruction manuals for how to manipulate of women and enforce gender roles through hypnosis, seances, and parapsychology.
Thorsen’s books are unexplored precursors to pickup artist manuals like The Game or Speed Seduction, recent best-sellers that distribute detailed recipes for men to manipulate women with, often appropriating hypnotherapy techniques. Buttery Coldness explores these methods of sexual oppression and exposes its techniques.
The film Buttery Coldness employs Scandinavian men as textual mediums; resurrecting Thorsen’s words through live-translation. For all public screenings, this film is accompanied by a workshop on contemporary pick-up artist techniques taught by a female instructor.
Good Vibes Only
A video poem in response to the proliferation of the term “good vibes only” and an investigation into the etymology of the word “vibes.” It turns out we would all cease to exist if, indeed, "good vibes only" came true. This film was accompanied by a live performance at Assembly Room in New York City and The Sibylline Screen in Los Angeles.
Love Letter from
A Daughter of the Gods
(excerpted clip)
In 1907, Annette Kellerman, founder of synchronized swimming, was arrested on a beach in Boston for not wearing the skirt attachment of her full-length bathing suit. In 1968, Charlotte Moorman, avant garde cellist, was arrested for performing Naim Jun Paik's Opera Sextronique at the Filmmakers Cinematheque in NYC because she was topless. Both of these incidents contributed to legal changes in dresscodes for American women.
In 1916, Annette Kellerman starred in A Daughter of the Gods, the first Hollywood film with a million-dollar budget and to have a nude character, played by Annette. Despite the film's critical success and wide distribution, no copies remain. It’s suspected that prints of the film were tossed into the New York Bay after the film’s studio was acquired and old inventory was cleared out.
This piece imagines that Charlotte Moorman rescues the lost film from the depths of the bay. We find that while underwater, the film transformed into a love letter to its own star. In tribute to Charlotte’s and Annette’s indecent exposure charges, the work is often scored live by a topless cellist.
The Filmballad of Mamadada
A feature film co-directed by Lucky Benson and Cassandra Guan
"Benson and Guan orchestrate a playful and chaotic experiment that posits a return to a grand collective narrative via the post-queer populism of YouTube and crowdsourcing" — ARTFORUM
"The Filmballad of Mamadada is something as rare as a work that renews the scandalous ideals of the avantgarde without the slightest trace of retro nostalgia." — CPH:DOX
The Filmballad of Mamadada tells the story of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, unsung member of the New York Dada movement. A poet, artist, model, and public provocateur, the Baroness defied the social and artistic codes of her time. As with many of her female contemporaries, the Baroness's cultural legacy has been obscured, and in some instances appropriated into the oeuvres of better known male peers. Accounts of her personal life are scarce and often conjectural.
According to recent scholarship, the Baroness was born Else Hildegard Plötz in 1874. At age 18, she ran away from her middle-class Prussian home and survived as a vaudeville performer in Berlin. After a series of bohemian lovers and three failed marriages, she found herself penniless in New York City, a widow with the impressive title of Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven. The Baroness was notorious for wearing outlandish costumes and cross-dressing in public, and her overtly sexual poetry caused such scandal that she was blacklisted from the most avant-garde publications. She pioneered an assemblage aesthetic, making sculptures and clothing from everyday objects. Many believe she gave Marcel Duchamp the porcelain urinal that later became Fountain. An important figurehead for the fledgling Dada movement in America, the Baroness was a close friend of avant-garde luminaries such as Djuna Barnes, Berenice Abbot, William Carlos Williams, and Ezra Pound.
The Baroness died under mysterious circumstances in 1927. In 2012, Lily Benson and Cassandra Guan recruited a group of over fifty artists and filmmakers to produce a collective biopic about her life. Participants were invited to interpret specific biographical fragments and create filmic adaptations on their own terms. The results varied wildly in style and content: from a re-contextualized Jane Fonda interview, to an animation depicting the effects of syphilis, to a reconstruction of a lost 16mm film by Duchamp and Man Ray. Benson and Guan then assembled the vignettes into a feature-length film. Unfolding like an exquisite corpse, the final narrative reveals a gloriously conflicted historical portrait. A myriad of contemporary feminist voices confront the viewer with more questions than answers.
The film was created out of contributions from Leslie Allison, Animals, Raoul Anchondo, Mauricio Arango, Doug Ashford, Harold Batista, Gregory Benson, Lily Benson, Caitlin Berrigan, Clara Carter, Lea Cetera, Joanne K. Cheung, Abigail Child, Abigail Collins, Katy Cool, Cecilia Corrigan, Alex DeCarli, EASTER, Chitra Ganesh, Alex Golden, Cassandra Guan, Jorun Jonasson, Prudence Katze, Simone Krug, Joyce Lainé, William Lehman, Alexandra Lerman, Ming Lin, Thomas Love, Rob Lowe, Kirby Mages, Markues, Mores McWreath, Erin Jane Nelson, Anne Marte Overaa, Michala Paludan, Leah Pires, Sunita Prasad, Joanna Quigley, Will Rahilly, Amy Reid, Isaac Richard, Doron Sadja, Saki Sato, Frances Scholz, Dash Shaw, Sydney Shen, Beau Sievers, Shelly Silver, Ursula Sommer, Jim Strong, Aaron Vinton, and James N. Kienitz Wilkins
More at mamadada.info