“QUANTUM LEAPS” at Kitchen ++

Date/Time: 21/03/2006 12:00 am

“QUANTUM LEAPS”
A 60-minute screening of videos.
March 21, 7pm
@ The Kitchen, 512 W.19th St.
New York, NY
http://www.thekitchen.org/
Free admission.
– Videos by: Daniel Barrow, Philippe Blanchard, Dearraindrop, Emily Vey Duke and
Cooper Battersby, Jim Finn, Caroline Koebel, J. Macdonell, Jim Munroe, Liz
Rosenfeld, Seth Price, Andy Puls.
– Posters and Magazines by: Celebrate People’s History, Lady Scientist, LTTR
– Curated by: Astria Suparak
Quantum leap, a physics term deriving from the mid 1900s indicating significant and
swift advances (originally via a sudden shift in energy within an atom), became the
title of an early 1990s American television series featuring a time travelling,
body-swapping, do-gooder scientist. In 2006 this inspirational screening of new
video follows suit, cataloguing heroes, compressing history, and hallucinating
futures.
We are in a hyperdated time populated by minor celebrity comebacks and movie
remakes, soundtracked by mash-ups and remixes, and backdropped by vintage/old
school/retro simulacra. Artists now are as inspired by history they weren’t quite
conscious for as by their lived experiences: Victorian decorative flourishes overlay
throbbing psychedelia, made-for-TV teen angst appends a WWII soldier’s flamboyantly
chiffoned trespasses, today’s genderqueer bodies substitute for ‘70s lesbian
lovemaking, and similarities are elucidated between the ancient Hindu art of
spiritual discipline and the modern arts of online gaming and virtual murder.
Here it is possible to amalgamate eras, to break out of social and gender
constraints, and to cobble together a fantasy lineage. Many of the artists bypass
ineffectual adoration for social edification, by documenting communities,
reincarnating overlooked experimental films, sharing Communist souvenir collections,
assembling biographies of personal heroes, and dispatching personal visions of
history through the storytelling tradition. Hippy ambivalence is explored: some
reject the aesthetics and embrace counterculture politics, for others it’s the
reverse.
Why wear your heart on your sleeve when you can implant aspirations into flesh, grow
philosophies on your face, and graft identity onto your skin?
qutopian palimpsests blast
piercing the ironic haze
space-time origami
quantum tsunami
collapse, the end of all days
– Eric Shinn
With cameos by: Annie Sprinkle, Ché Guevara, Liberace’s teen lover, ‘big-eyed’ style
ghost painter Margaret Keane, the Berlin Wall, Quentin Crisp, yoga, Kathie Lee
Gifford’s sweatshop labour, Harry and Jack Smith, the Battle of Seattle, Wayne
Gretzky, Ho Chi Minh, Sun Ra, cosmonaut stamps, mob ties and Vegas retirements,
Nelson Mandela, many more.