FALSE COGNATES

 

FALSE COGNATES (2022) FALSE COGNATES is an exercise in bad translation. Hot little piece on view for one night only at the Festival of Cinema Arts presented by Mono No Aware.

All ages, free, December 2, 2022.

"OPTIPUS : THE MUSHROOM ARCHIVE / 16mm multi-projection performance with live sound & poetry * Bradley Eros, Lary 7, Scott Kiernan, Richard Sylvarnes, Rachael Guma, Gabriel Guma, Masami Tomihisa, Lele Dai, Ava Witonsky, Linh Vu, Benji Santos, & Lily Sarosi.

THE MUSHROOM ARCHIVE is a collaborative expanded cinema composition featuring live music, poetry, and performance. We aspire to weave together a spectrum of elements of the mycelium underground and its visual fruiting bodies, including death, decay, regeneration, remembrance, transformation, and the biomorphic ecology of the body and mind. In this, we hope to evoke the connective and regenerative potential of mycelium." During the second movement, ABSTRACTION, three viewmasters were dispersed throughout the crowd— a visual poisoning of the audience. Unrehearsed, the prank took on the appearance of passing notes throughout a school auditorium, with strangers interrupting the viewing experience of the person next to them, some instructing each other how to use the device at hand, holding a laugh in the nose as warning. Not to be mistaken for the similarly perverse glance at one’s phone in the dark of a theater, this personal peep show would not be visible without the light thrown onto the massive white wall of the room by the performers lined up behind their machines. Putlocker might blister your movie experience with ads for cgi elf porn, but FALSE COGNATES disrupts through real life people, people who we didn’t necessarily leave the house with, and brings us back into the “cinema” as a place of social contact. Pre-existing viewmaster reels were repurposed with handmade slides. Images were edited digitally, printed onto transparency, then pieced together with tape. Reel 1: POISON

Images taken from Wiki Commons, var. sources. All poisonous fungi. Reel 2: POISSON

Home photos taken of ______'s crotch. Reel 3: POISSSON

Reels 1 and 2 split across the left and right view ports. A look through with both eyes open creates the illusion of superimposition.