A series of (mostly) 16mm films, co-presented with UnionDocs
7:30 pmUnion Docs, 322 Union Ave, Brooklyn, NY
$9 suggested donation
Using a fabricated Old English word as its guiding principle, this ongoing series of (mostly) 16mm films is conceptually organized around the possible meanings that its title elicits – physical voyages, psychedelic journeys, and a phenomenological experience of the world.
Begun in 2005 in a somewhat vain attempt to hold cinema up as a mirror to the live and fully embodied reception of the crazy noise music scene in Providence, Rhode Island, the TRYPPS films quickly expanded their formal and critical language to include the various poles of action painting, avant-garde cinema, portraiture, stand-up comedy, global capitalism, and trance-dance a lá Jean Rouch. While the form of these works varies radically from one to the next, when taken as a whole they can be seen to enunciate a broader project of “psychedelic ethnography” – a practice whose aim is a knowledge of the Self/self, a movement towards understanding in which the trip is both the means and the end. —BEN RUSSELL
Films to be screened:
Black and White Trypps Number One (2005), 6:30 min, 16mm
Black and White Trypps Number Two (2006), 9 min, 16mm
Black and White Trypps Number Three (2006), 9 min, 16mm
Black and White Trypps Number Four (2006), 9 min, 16mm
Trypps #5 (Dubai) (2008), 3 min, 16mm
Trypps #6 (Malobi) (2009), 12 min, 16mm
Trypps #7 (Badlands) (2010), 10 min, Super 16mm
RIVER RITES (2011), 11:30 min, 16mm
Begun in 2005 in a somewhat vain attempt to hold cinema up as a mirror to the live and fully embodied reception of the crazy noise music scene in Providence, Rhode Island, the TRYPPS films quickly expanded their formal and critical language to include the various poles of action painting, avant-garde cinema, portraiture, stand-up comedy, global capitalism, and trance-dance a lá Jean Rouch. While the form of these works varies radically from one to the next, when taken as a whole they can be seen to enunciate a broader project of “psychedelic ethnography” – a practice whose aim is a knowledge of the Self/self, a movement towards understanding in which the trip is both the means and the end. —BEN RUSSELL
Films to be screened:
Black and White Trypps Number One (2005), 6:30 min, 16mm
Black and White Trypps Number Two (2006), 9 min, 16mm
Black and White Trypps Number Three (2006), 9 min, 16mm
Black and White Trypps Number Four (2006), 9 min, 16mm
Trypps #5 (Dubai) (2008), 3 min, 16mm
Trypps #6 (Malobi) (2009), 12 min, 16mm
Trypps #7 (Badlands) (2010), 10 min, Super 16mm
RIVER RITES (2011), 11:30 min, 16mm
Participants
- Ben Russell is a media artist and curator whose films, installations, and performances engage with the history and semiotics of the moving image. He has had solo screenings and exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Wexner Center for the Arts, threewalls and the Museum of Modern Art. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2010 FIPRESCI award recipient, he began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, was co-director of the artist-run space BEN RUSSELL in Chicago, IL and performs in a double-drum trio called BEAST.
- UnionDocs is a center for documentary art that brings together a diverse community of experimental media-makers, dedicated journalists, critical thinkers, and local partners on a search for urgent expressions of the human experience, practical perspectives on the world today, and compelling visions for the future.