Dead of the Living Night at Space 1026 is a mash note for horror movies with a surprise psychedelic candy-coated center.
Neon sign on the black box created for Dead of the Living Night
Jonathan Cammisa and Jonah Birns, two former Philly artists now living in New York, collaborated on the installation of mock movie posters, dummy ghouls sprawled in front of a tv that plays clips from ghoul movies and a big black box with a video inside.
Dead of the Living Night, entryway to the video inner sanctum
The piece de resistance is the black box that mimics, in its entryway, a video rental store with crap carpet on the floor and boxes of movies to rent on the walls. Past the entryway is the inner sanctum with a shaggy oversized stuffed animal on the floor (or at least the rump of the animal–I didn’t see a head but body is definitely there.) The animal faces a projection on the wall on which of a short video trip that takes you through the clouds and into a cosmic and psychedelic rumpus-romp with music that’s probably appropriated footage from Hollywood’s finest moments imagining the beauty of deep space.
Neverending Story-like shaggy dog you can sit on to watch the video projection of clouds and psychedelic moving lights
It took the Space 1026ers who turned on the equipment for me a few minutes to get it all running but it was definitely worth the wait. The two referred to the shaggy beast and video in the psychedelia chamber as something out of The Neverending Story the 1984 fantasy movie — which doesn’t really fit with the horror movie theme of Dead of the Living Night. But actually that movie could be considered the second children’s horror movie, the first being the Wizard of Oz, of course.
This installation debuted at Live with Animals in Brooklyn.
8 Comments
Loved this show. The Falkor piece was great.
The video in this piece is truly a wow. I didn’t sit on the beast and I wonder if that changed the experience. It was pretty nice standing up.
As for Falkor, I watched Neverending Story on video with my kids and we all loved it, although I think the concept of “the nothing” which is gobbling up the world terrifying. existential stuff.
This sounds amazing! I love the idea of mock horror posters. So many creative ideas that would seem to work as an actual movie. Hopefully it can come to Boston, or maybe there is something similar to it.
Ok, sorry…I was not into this show. I am beginning to think the theme of using the “NeverEnding Story”..never ending. Also I saw a piece similar to this at Fluxspace, “Adventures in the Land of Smoke and Mirrors”…room installation with video recreating a part of a movie. Using these themes can be a cop out in the sense that you are able to connect to a person looking at the piece immediately by them simply remembering the movie…and the nostalgia part just pushes you right to vulnerable place where you feel like you HAVE to connect with the work. I am not against this tactic, but enough is enough, be creative and think of something different. The best part of this show, which makes it worth seeing is the recreation of the video store..this was sweet..some nice touches with the LED lights lining the floor. Funny, one person was so into it at the show, they were freaking out, “You just don’t see video stores anymore!”..Hello, have you ever been to the TLA video store? Well, maybe not..I still go there.
Interestingly I didn’t think about The NeverEnding Story when seeing the piece and when I asked a question about how the “the psychedelic video” was made, the Space 1026ers referred to it as “The NeverEnding Story” piece and said they didn’t really know about the origin of the video. After they said “The NeverEnding Story” I couldn’t NOT see the connection of the stuffed animal to that movie and I guess that I was a little disappointed.
Like you Berth, I prefer a little ambiguity in what I’m looking at. So the stuffed animal at that point locked it down for me to one particular reference. However, let’s talk about the video. I have not seen the movie in a very long time and I don’t remember if the cloud and cosmos sequence is actually from the movie. If so, that’s really really close appropriation and I’m disappointed.
If it’s clips from various movies I like it better as something disjunctive with the appropriated beast, something that takes me to an unexpected zone.
Anyway, while I agree that appropriating the trope of a favorite movie lets the movie do the conceptual heavy lifting I am not opposed to the practice. It’s just is it done well or not.
Awesome points, Roberta. I totally recognized Falkor right away despite the missing head, which was mostly out of frame in the flying shots from the actual movie AND maybe that was their point. I definitely have to go ring their bell and check out the video, again. Right now all I remember is galaxies and flashing lights…..
I had no problem with the Falkor reference. Esp sice I considered the piece a ‘ride’…like the ones outside of supermarkets. I think the conceptual heavy lifting was done viewing the show as a whole, with the Falkor ride as the candy coated center.
It’s a shame I don’t take psychedelics any more… only psych drugs.
I wish I could see the show… it sounds great.