I’m posting this not only because I think Ryan Trecartin (who has lived in LA for a few years now) is great but also because all of his videos explore language in a way that should be of interest to poets and writers. Truly weird stuff, beautifully edited if always on the edge of total collapse.

Wayne Koestenbaum, poet and scholar (he was a professor of mine at the CUNY Graduate Center) wrote a great article about Trecartin for Artforum called Situation Hacker, a must read:

“Imagine slasher films without blood; porn without nudity; the Sistine Chapel without God; the New York Stock Exchange without capital. Pretend that Hieronymus Bosch’s intermeshed figures could text. Ryan Trecartin’s videos depict a vertiginous world I’m barely stable enough to describe. Watching them, I face the identity-flux of Internet existence: surfing-as-dwelling. Images evaporate, bleed, spill, metamorphose, and explode. Through frenetic pacing, rapid cuts, and destabilizing overlaps between representational planes (3-D turns into 2-D and then into 5-D), Trecartin violently repositions our chakras. Digitally virtuoso, his work excites me but also causes stomach cramps. I’m somatizing. But I’m also trying to concentrate.”

When: Tuesday, Mar. 25, 2014
Time: 7:30 pm
Where: Bing Theater at LACMA
Address: 5905 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90036

(get tickets)

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