RE/Mixed Media Festival Saturday Oct. 22nd 7pm

2011-10-14T18:43:00.000-04:00

2008-02-23T08:47:00.020-04:00

From beneath the surface of the earth the sound of digging grows louder. Piercing through the darkness a light appears: a video time capsule is unearthed, a roving transmission from a collective dreamtime.

WashMachine Video Current is the epic experimental documentary of a ten-year collaboration between performance artists, circuit benders, culture jammers, and a mad scientist. Blending science fiction and visual ethnography to capture currents of expression from wartime America.

The camera scours the land responding to the scene unfolding before the lens with bursts of imagery and expanses of meditation. A cross-country journey captured from hundreds of hours of interviews and video journals in which pedestrians share their American dreams while artists filter the cultural consciousness through open collaboration and chance operations.

This vibrant sub-culture of artists improvises jam sessions, performances, and sculptures inspired by the detritus of the world around them. Boldly dissecting the way nationalist images can be re-purposed by activists and dissenters. In an impromptu event at the foot of the White House two men dressed in medical scrubs and armed with a washboard and a can of paint scrub the American flag clean and paint it white as a flag of surrender, re-imagining the great American symbol in an act of artistic civil disobedience.

The mad-scientist, Doctor Max, is working on a machine capable of projecting the true visual representation of human consciousness-his brainwave convertor. Meanwhile, a rogue hacker constructs an antenna to intercept the doctor’s signal. As the fateful day of the machine’s unveiling approaches, the film’s many threads fall into place, the harmony and dissonance of the American consciousness play against one another in a grand spectacle as the countdown to the demonstration draws closer to its transcendental revelation.

At the on set of post-production both audio and video were processed in a series of generation loss experiments. Copies of copies disintegrate into stop-motion collage treated with paint then re-photographed revealing a dichotomy of images and ideas reflecting upon the entropy of communication when filtered through the vast network of our modern media diet. A cyclone of free form fragments which the viewer can organize and combine with their own thoughts and cultural emotions.

Providing an outlet for unheard voices and perspectives unbound by the corporate governmental interest shaping the national debate. WashMachine Video Current eschews the passivity of conventional cinema and encourages participation, reflection, and awareness. Reality merges with Fiction. Unity is found in opposites. Our time capsule is now transmitting….

Directed by : Jimi Pantalon

2001-2011

73min