New York Live Arts

Through Saturday 3/9

Holistic Strata

HAPTIC

Technology is a dark prison. The living machine determines our dystopian fate. The human is subservient to the digital apparatus. Our haptic interfaces have trapped us into an eternal feedback loop of repetitive stress injuries that trace from our networked extensions—these devices that force our hands and blinder our eyes—deep into the synaptic connections of our reptilian brain. Man can barely move, but being no more than a mechanical puppet, man must sputter, pop, collapse, break, and stop as dictated by electronic noise and an array of subtractive color mixing only a computer could classify as aesthetically pleasing.

HOLISTIC STRATA

Technology links us to the universe, brings us closer to God, and the great Monad. We are simple beings, dull really. But, through the evolution of silicon, we will attain a quality of life beyond all myths of our own humble creation. Data will come alive through our embodied commands—“my God, it’s full of stars”—and yes, we will soar into the heavens, swimming atop waves of crystallized light to our new form of being. We will become one through the use of our knowledge, we will disappear into the flow, still alive in our bodies and completely conscious. We will play, we will laugh, and we will achieve a most incredible, awesome beauty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmXGSevgfX8&feature=youtu.be

This review appears as part of the BAC After School Critical Response program.

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Video still from "Grapefruit" by Cecelia Dougherty.

A loosely defined subset of the independent film zeitgeist of the early 1990s, New Queer Cinema saw a number of openly gay artists break out with films that vented anger over homophobic policies of the Reagan and Thatcher governments and the grim realities of the AIDS epidemic with aesthetically and politically radical images of gay life. This primer of new queer classics includes more than two dozen LGBT-themed features and short films, including important early works by directors Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, and Gregg Araki, and experimental filmmakers Peggy Ahwesh, Luther Price, and Isaac Julien.

SCHEDULE

Tue, Oct 9
6:50pm: The Watermelon Woman
9:15pm: Born in Flames

Thu, Oct 11—National Coming Out Day
6:50pm: The Hours and Times + Grapefruit
9:15pm: All Over Me

Fri, Oct 12
4:30, 9:30pm: Paris Is Burning
6:50pm: Poison + Sodom

Sat, Oct 13
6:50pm: Totally Fucked Up
9:15pm: No Skin Off My Ass + The Yo-Yo Gang

Sun, Oct 14
2, 6:50pm: My Own Private Idaho
4:30, 9:15pm: Edward II

Mon, Oct 15
4:30, 9:30pm: Looking for Langston + Tongues Untied
6:50pm: Act Up shorts—Long Trip, Fast Drop + Doctors, Liars and Women + East River Park

Tue, Oct 16
6:50pm: Jollies + Martina’s Playhouse + Sadie Benning shorts
9:30pm: The Delta + Sleepy Haven