Ryan Trecartin, at left, answers questions onstage after his screening (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Ryan Trecartin, at left, answers questions onstage after his screening (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Ryan Trecartin is the voice of a generation … of monkeys who WhaTevEr. His films make me want to kill myself, like in a good way, because she is just.so.current. Last Wednesday night at BAM, four of Ryan’s screen reality imaginationariums were shown by Migrating Forms, a festival for videos that have souls because art. It was two hours of human time on the most basic level, and all I ate was popcorn, and then Ryan gave answers to questions no android could even ask.

You might want to know about the materialization of multimodal animations, but I don’t believe in magic. In the first movie, “Junior War,” the humans were in high school and they wanted him to stop filming, but he kept filming, and it was destruction in the way that destruction is totally SEXY. Mailboxes are like TV sets because they’re artifacts of the time of living. I was really involved.

Ryan Trecartin, still from "Comma Boat" (courtesy the artist, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Regen Projects, Los Angeles)

Ryan Trecartin, still from “Comma Boat” (courtesy the artist, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Regen Projects, Los Angeles)

In the second, “Comma Boat,” s/he directed a movie by words and eating their attention. It was like laughter, but with laughing and the kind of toilet that makes you sick. My favorite character was the self-identified Ocean, and Ryan’s acting was really perpetual to the point of next level. Gender is a construct we construct from the era of maybe.

Center Jenny” was all like matching outfits marker basic BITCH!! Privileged as fuck.  _________. Dinosaurs evolved into chickens to make me hot — get me a parking space for charity!! They learned about competition, which was like a pink sorority but with ladders and earmuffs. School was super special because education reality. At some point I didn’t know what world we were in, but time was still happening. This is so over.

Ryan Trecartin, still from "Item Falls" (Courtesy Ryan Trecartin, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Regen Projects, Los Angeles) (click to enlarge)

Ryan Trecartin, still from “Item Falls” (Courtesy Ryan Trecartin, Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, and Regen Projects, Los Angeles) (click to enlarge)

In “Item Falls” they discovered the third dimension, and we went there and had a party. The Solo Cups were really significant, like screen savers but d i s s o l v i n g. You had to audition, and not everyone could get in. I felt bad for her like how you feel bad for chairs. Animations with stunt chickens — digital remix but a little bOriNg. No one had names yet, but mine is Jillian, bitch.

When Ryan appeared it was like music hands people love you — how do you do it?!? Improvisation with form leads to movies and editing. We’re not the same humans, because we’re different humans — our spirits are animations. Collaborative regenerations of the post-human era should be limited to under two hours.

Ryan Trecartin: 4 New Movies” screened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn) on December 11 at 7:30 pm. Migrating Forms continues at BAM through December 17.

Jillian Steinhauer is a former senior editor of Hyperallergic. She writes largely about the intersection of art and politics but has also been known to write at length about cats. She won the 2014 Best...

4 replies on “Channeling Ryan Trecartin in Brooklyn”

  1. “Collaborative regenerations of the post-human era should be limited to under two hours.”
    OH GAHD-yes. True.

    Well contrived, Jill: and so much easier to take than actually WATching one of those _things.

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