the Post-Apocalyptic Movie Theater

Tonight I’ll be installing the Post-Apocalyptic Movie Theater in the back room at Gooski’s in Polish Hill.

Pretty simple stuff – a desktop projector, a computer, a Fender amp, a power strip. Gooski’s back room has a short ceiling and a stage with a fairly reflective silver back wall. This allows me to turn the room into a fishbowl of light and moving image.

I’ll be ‘screening’ locally made video from my library of work. I used to run screenings at the Brillobox and before that, the Shadow Lounge, under the name Viewer Discretion. Many of the screening artists gave me copies of their work. The stack of discs I’ll have on hand includes artists like Matt Day, Christopher Smalley, Ben Hernstrom (Ambulantic), Justin Crimone, Will Zavala, Matt Wellins, the Film Frenzy DVD (a 48-hour filmmaking challenge done in Braddock in 2007), and more.

The Post-Apocalyptic Movie Theater made its debut in Braddock in April of 2009. During Braddock Light, I created a screening by projecting to a blank brick wall from the trunk of a car. Open to the environment and its influences, by screening on interruptive or intrusive surfaces or environments, the Post-Apocalyptic Movie Theater references Plato’s Cave, graffitti, and the notion that we can install & experience art anywhere.

The Post-Apocalyptic Movie Theater also points to the processes of perception in the viewer’s mind. Each of us has shaped the screening surface of our mental recepters with our beliefs, experiences, biases, tastes, preferences. Like the changing screen of each installation, the subjectivity of each audience member’s experience shapes what any art experience looks like inside the viewer’s head.

Of course, someone walking into Gooski’s probably won’t get that. Have a beer, blow your mind a little. FLIGHT, the film of mine I’m screening at the end of the 2-hour slot, is a head trip.

This work is part of the larger Polish Hill Arts Festival, featuring poetry reading by the best of the New Yinzer at Lili Cafe starting at 2 pm. Hope to see yinz out there today!