WARP DRIVES

Please join EAI for Warp Drives, a special summer screening of videos driven by science fiction's far-out forms of matter and energy. In videos that range from dark stories of doomsday and destruction to speculative meditations on technological evolution and alienation, artists Peggy Ahwesh, Joan Jonas, George Kuchar,Tony Oursler, and Ryan Trecartin confront us with visions of individuals disconnected from the present or inhabiting alien psychological states. The artists transport us to parallel universes eerily similar to our own, but governed by radically different conceptions of reality.

Rendered with his signature hand-painted sets and wildly constructed props, Tony Oursler's Spinout (1983, 16:02 min) is a tale of a world spinning out of control to nowhere. Starring a cast of inanimate objects, Oursler's expressionistic theater embraces space travel, astrology, the universe, catastrophe and madness. In Heaven's Gate (2000-01, 3:53 min), Peggy Ahwesh re-presents text from the website of the infamous UFO cult of the same name to build a minimalist portrait of the end-of-the-world paranoia that runs through the American social body. George Kuchar's The Tower of the Astro-Cyclops (1994, 17:37 min), is a playful look at the UFO phenomenon—a video portrait of Jacques Vallée, an author, computer scientist, and amateur astronomer who has devoted much of his life to researching UFOs and extraterrestrial encounters.Inspired by the science fiction story Universe by Robert Heinlein, Joan Jonas' rarely-screened video Double Lunar Dogs (1984, 24:04 min) is an Orwellian vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a drifting spaceship whose timeless travellers have forgotten the purpose of their mission. To recapture memory, and create a continuum between their unknown origin and uncertain destination, the characters in this disjunctive, philosophical narrative play metaphorical games with words and archetypal objects. In What's The Love Making Babies For (2003, 20 min), one of Ryan Trecartin's earliest videos, the artist speculates in vivid animation about reproduction, sexuality, and contemporary moralities. Evoking lo-fi, promotional, cult-worship videos, Trecartin and his fantastically costumed collaborators manufacture an alien yet familiar reality, hyper-saturated with media.

For more information about the artists and works included in this screening, please visit: www.eai.org