In this week’s Super Ego nightlife etc. column, as part of our Video Mutants issue, I handheld display my growing obsession with young artist Ryan Trecartin, who somehow squares club culture and diverts the neon identity parade into a tributary of parodied obnoxion (with Internet hyperquotes). By which I mean, “Damn! I think I just got dissed in a nextdoor dimension, but I like it that way.”
I-BE AREA (Double Jamie, Ramada Omar, and Sally Man Pause)
Ryan – who’s represented by the bigtime Elizabeth Dee Gallery in NYC – has a total Pro Tools grasp on irreality and its obverse reality, what’s beneath people performing, and his video work combines Mardi Gras parade giddiness (he spent time living in New Orleans), Web 2.0 blank paradise, and head-trip introspection with way incredible about me’s. Electronic ghosts, phased identities, realtime spots and trailers .. the online is performed in trashy afterlife/live/death here, and it wears a sparkling wig. Plus, Ryan does fabulous things with windows. JK/JK
I like to think there’s a deep current of nightlife reference running through feature-length works like A Family Finds Entertainment and I-BE AREA. Although who the hell knows? Ryan’s worked with at least one local beloved club presence, Patrik Sandberg — of ‘90s-flashback pirate radio show “Cobain in a Coma” and “drugged out goth shoegaze dream pop party” Spaced, at the Knockout — who plays space-waif gift-giver Craig Ricky in I-BE AREA and tells me that Ryan’s “holding a mirror up to a generation that lives a significant part of their lives online, in a way that makes fun of but also adores it. Not only that, I can’t stop quoting him.”
OK Agreed. And more than guilty above. So, yeah, I freaked and zoned and freaked again when Ryan agreed to answer some art critic avatar agenda questions over one whole e-mail about his digital video mental.
SF Bay Guardian: In I-BE AREA, the Wood Shop is like the most nightmarish gay dance club I’ve never been to. I dream about it a lot. How did you put together the Wood Shop scenes?
I-BE AREA (WoodShopBoys Ramada Omar and Jamies Band)
Ryan Trecartin: It was a three shoot workout, in a space called The Woodshop Drama Room one of three rooms that make up Jamie’s Area which is a conceptual part-Cyber-hybrid Platform that obeys and functions with in both laws of Physics and virtual-non-linear reality and potential in Web 2.0/ultra-wiki communication malfunction liberation flow, add-on, and debate presentation. The main structure is the character Jamie her self- a total control damage freak with independent log-ins, muse extension people, and live-links. The Wood Shop is a situation stage where pho-male-cyber-gays login to over posted anti-productive decisive message board dead-end faggoting activities. Jamie has a composer status in this scene during another timeslot using her saw and wood dictating with wireless momentum control and influence over her haters at work, while mirroring in Dark Jam Band form, on cell-phone with Ramada Omar in Class Room separated by a closed Window (3 time slots being viewed). The Wood Shop Fags search-out wanting a free channel edge and perform a permanent Window opening on Ramada Omar Freeing it to an independent Multi-tasking shape shifting reality pool. The actual shoot was really fun. It had a script but was the most abstract shoot of the whole movie-lots of improvisations and an everyone talked at the same time, making a don’t be quiet on the set situation. Like planed home video- script-destruction theme over goal. My favorite part is when Solomon (black hair pig-tale mall goth wig) has a brick ready for the Break Down, in cell phone placement and says nothing about someone calling him on his phone an “Said”, over and over like it’s a presidential victory speech with supporters and reason promoting a total nowhere emotion expansion with self eating content, saying… what?—don’t use hotmale log out to log In father fucker.