September 01, 2003
Kranky Klaus
Thursday 27 November 7:30pm
Cameron Jamie in conversation with Alex Farquharson plus premiere London screening of Kranky Klaus with soundtrack by The Melvins.
Jamie's practice encompasses films, drawings and apartment wrestling
performances. He has a band, Gobbler, with Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley. He
collects suicide notes and amateur videos. His vampire alter-ego is said to
haunt the LA suburbs where he grew up. He recently opened a cavernous installation at de Vleeshal in Middleburg and his work has generated critical acclaim across Europe. Curator, critic and West Coast aficionado Alex Farquharson talks with Jamie about his fascination with pathological manifestations from the valleys of LA to the mountains of Old Europe.
The event begins with a premiere screening of Kranky Klaus.
Tickets £7.00 (£5.00 concessions) available in advance from The Horse Hospital on 020 7833 3644 or email popculture@thehorsehospital.com.
Underground: Russell Sq.
CAMERON JAMIE
Kranky Klaus / BB / Spook House
Three films by Cameron Jamie with live soundtrack music from The Melvins.
UK Tour November 2003
In his powerful new films, underground US filmmaker Cameron Jamie explores the spook houses of Detroit in the days running up to Halloween and unearths unseasonally violent behaviour by a legendary beast called the Krampus at Christmas time in Austria. Jamie’s vertiginous takes on vernacular rituals are heightened by the sounds of highly influential band The Melvins.
Filmed in the white working-class suburbs of Detroit, Spook House reveals a community revelling in the macabre. Front lawns are transformed into cemeteries, kitchens become mausoleums and dismembered ‘bodies’ are prepared for cannibal feasts. Jamie’s camera tracks the celebrants as the nights become longer and darker.
In the snowbound villages of central Austria on 6 December, villagers congregate in homes to await a visit by a benign St Nicholas bearing seasonal gifts. They are also waiting for the Krampus, strange mythical beasts with shaggy coats and serious attitude. As St Nicholas rewards the good, so the Krampus punish the bad. Kranky Klaus tracks a herd of Krampus as they work their way through the village mauling and menacing to the very limits of acceptable intimidation.
Jamie’s acclaimed film of LA teenage wrestlers, BB, completes the trilogy. Kids jump from the tops of garages and slam into each other with chairs and ladders. Jamie’s raw black and white footage fuses with The Melvins’ pounding soundtrack to make what Jamie calls “a purgatory state of being”. The primal and pre-modern confront the ‘civilised’ world in works of ominous intensity.
In the first UK tour of their collaboration, The Melvins perform the soundtrack music live with large-scale projections of Jamie’s films in music venues across England, culminating at The Forum in London on 28 November 2003.
posted by James on September 1, 2003 04:46 PM