Monday April 22, 2013
NICK ZEDD PRESENTS
SPIRIT UNDERGROUND
a feature from Mexico City
by Dr.Fanatik and Lorenzo Lagrava
admission $6 – Introduced by Nick Zedd
© Image courtesy of Dr. Fanatik and Lorenzo LaGrava
Nick Zedd joins us to introduce to New York the 2011 feature Spirit Underground by Mexican artists Dr. Fanatik and Lorenzo Lagrava, a work he discovered in his new home of Mexico City. Zedd, a leading figure of the New York underground film movement The Cinema of Transgression moved to Mexico two years ago and continues to seek out others who are making works no one else could make.
Zedd says of Dr. Fanatik:
When I moved to Mexico, I was curious to see what kind of personal filmmaking existed there. Having experienced in New York the effects of a dominant culture and the way it systematically erases authentic voices of dissent and individual self expression through class war and propaganda, I hoped to discover unfamiliar films that might be defined as underground in Mexico City (an environment less affected by the malignant effects of the Simulation that now engulfs much of Western society.)
Mexico seems to exist in another dimension, contained in a time-warp operating in a parallel universe to the one I spent most of my life being mutated by in New York. It’s a slacker culture less defined by the pressures of predatory capitalism, with a reverence for death and a mythos exalting it. Simultaneously there is an odd resistance to change among otherwise educated people, an aversion to things that are different which I find baffling. The same compulsion to conform is evident in most human behavior, conditioned by economic factors and accepted norms in every place that I’ve lived. A key to escaping the science of mind control can be found in experiencing the visions contained in this peculiar substrata of films.
Dr. Fanatik is a musical performer and painter in Mexico City who has been releasing CDs and doing live shows for several decades. I was impressed by his use of colors and images with a sexual texture that flows in an unrestricted way. His work is unlike a lot of Mexicans in that it isn’t overly conceptual or ironic and seems infused with a lustful appreciation of young women and drug rituals, along with the more familiar death images that show up a lot in Mexican art.
PROGRAM
Spirit Underground
digital video, 2011, 65 minutes
by Dr. Fanatik & Lorenzo Lagrave
Spirit Underground breaks the myth that there is a parallelism between mega cities such as Mexico and New York. While in New York underground movements are generated by the tedium and abundance, in Mexico it is by backwardness and lack. The pictures mixed with the texts in the movie become timeless, themed by the extravagant music of the authors of his musical “metamorphosis”. The score is like a prelude for an audience that attends the museum halls, hungry for sensations that heal the everyday foolishness prevailing in most cities flooded by a comfortably cheap commercialism.
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Dr. FANATIK is an artist working with music, film, video, and photography. Since the 70s he has been a very active figure in the Mexican underground scene producißng 7 albums and more than 50 feature films and experimental videos. As a musician, he has played alongside José Manuel Aguilera, Steven Brown, Saul Hernandez, Alejandro Sanchez, Sabo Romo, Alejandro Marcovich, and many others. His work, which extends to radio and television broadcasts, has been object of numerous solo and group exhibitions.
NICK ZEDD is a film-maker, painter, writer, actor, political satirist, and a leading figure of the Lower East Side cinematic revolution, the Cinema of Transgression – a term he coined in a manifesto proclaiming “a new generation of filmmakers daring to rip off the stifling straight jackets of film theory in a direct attack on every value system known to man.” Zedd’s provocative, humorous, yet often intensely beautiful films have transcended their cult origins to influence mainstream culture from music videos to John Waters and Quentin Tarantino. Zedd’s works have been shown world-wide – often with great resistance — and are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
© All images are courtesy of Dr. Fanatik and Lorenzo LaGrava
