Your Eyes Are Dead screening followed by Wolfen
Hackney Picture House
Sunday May 5th 2013 3pm
270 Mare Street London E8 1HE
Selected by curator Cedar Lewisohn as part of Street Art Film Festival
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| Your Eyes are Dead installation at Joey Ramone gallery as part of International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013 |
Your Eyes are Dead is an immersive media installation/video utilizing sampled and cut up moving image and performance by Alexis Milne. The project examines the roots of autonomous subcultural uprising and in particular the origins of Hip Hop and Milne's own relationship with it. The opening performance sequence of Your Eyes are Dead entitled The Westway pays homage to the first graffiti piece in London, painted in 1981 by New York graffiti artist Futura 2000 (who was on tour with The Clash at the time). The Westway introduces The Cult of Rammellzee, featuring Tex Royale, Luke Mozez, Skoobstep, and JZee- Ho a group heavily influenced by the iconic New York rapper and graffiti philosopher Rammellzee (known for his futuristic translation of graffiti culture into performance and electronica) who features heavily throughout Your Eyes are Dead.
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| Still from The Westway Director of Photography Tom Johnson |
The video also focuses on Robert Moses, the architect of the Cross Bronx Expressway which was in part responsible for isolating areas of the South Bronx (widely acknowledged as one of the centres of Hip Hop's development in New York) and contributed to the policy of neglect and planned shrinkage that led to the areas subsequent dilapidation. This urban dilapidation became the dystopian backdrop in many defining cult films of this era, framing New York and the South Bronx in particular, as a bombed out urban war zone.
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| Your Eyes are Dead installation at The Order of Things exhibition at Charlie Smith London 2013 |
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| Your Eyes are Dead installation at The Order of Things exhibition at Charlie Smith London 2013 |
This dilapidation is reconfigured within Your Eyes are Dead through video collage, sampling video footage from cult films such as Wolfen, Stations of the Elevated and Wildstyle. Utilizing qoutes from Jean Baudrillard's Kool Killer essay, Milne illustrates how subway graffiti was a violent onslaught that offered a momentary resistance, operating as a highly visible internal dialogue, transmiting from abandoned zones within the city. Your Eyes are Dead highlights the rubble strewn void of The South Bronx, left in the wake of the Cross Bronx Expressway, where graffiti, rap and b-boying subcultures took root and thrived. In the closing sequence Terminus, Milne refrences his own experience of Hip Hop as he returns to Slough, recreating a B-Boy battle he had in 1985 in front of a recently built futuristic bus terminal.
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| Still from Terminus Director of Photography Tom Johnson |
