Friday, February 22, 2008

Friday Video - Ultimate Reality (2007)


"A mandala projected from the third eye of suburban back yards, cracked drive ways, and dusty VCR's. The wizards of Baltimore and Wham City deal powerful magic, we'll need it soon, the dawn of this post-postmodern age is upon us." - J. Roche

TRUE LIES and CONAN psychedelic subversive conceptual Mash-Up


I picked this up by chance a couple of weeks ago; having read about it, seen this YouTube excerpt, and not expecting it to be widely available, it was immensely gratifying to just pick this up off the shelf as I walked by in Tower (to hell with purchasing a sensible amount of things at a time - this is special).

Ultimate Reality is a video collaboration between Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche, who previously created this video for Deacon's song 'Crystal Cat'. As far as I know, Dan Deacon's current US tour, if it's still going, is entirely this production rather than any of his other work. Before his gig in Dublin last year he brought his Ultimate Reality show to Sligo (think: Oregon, or maybe Seattle), to a modern arts centre there.


Ultimate Reality comes in three movements (each about 10+ minutes long) and an epilepsy warning:

"These films may cause seizures, if you suffer from seizures or epilepsy, please show this DVD to your doctor before watching"

(Not to make fun of epilepsy, but I'd love to sit down with my advanced-in-age GP and watch this video! And I'm not sure if there's such a thing as aural seizures, but this production is as likely as anything to cause them if they exist)

I guess there's a delicious irony in the creation of a project entitled 'Ultimate Reality' using the distorted images of that monosyllabic and monolithic icon of American culture, Arnold Schwarznegger. Plus it's pretty fucking cool. Especially the bit in this excerpt where he stares at his clenched fist, like he's wondering what to do with it...



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