“Xander Marro (American b. 1975) has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too many years to count on her long bony fingers. She draws pictures (usually narrative), makes movies (usually not narrative), produces plays with elaborate sets and costumes (usually narrative, but confusing), and then makes stuff like quilts and dioramas (probably narrative?). Her work is often about spiritual relationships to the material stuff of this world. Co-founder of the Dirt Palace in 2000 AD (feminist cupcake-encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket River, which is to say in Providence, RI, USA). Her studio (and heart) is there still.” –X.M.

“Marro is an artist, community activist, performer and filmmaker ‘steeped in the underground’ of Providence, RI. As co-founder of the Dirt Palace, a feminist art collective, Marro is equally diverse in her artistic practices. Her work ranges from printmaking to puppetry to performance to film animation and installation and is loosely gathered under a distinctive sensibility that has been described as ‘a blend of girly Victorian dreaming, Monty Python cartoons, Russian onion domes, beehive hairdos, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Barbarella, and Dr. Seuss’ (Greg Cook, Boston Pheonix).

Marro’s work is generally low-tech and handmade and embedded with a community of collective art-making. Typically using arcane pieces of visual culture to create strange and fantastic worlds, this almost Luddite approach presents an alternative to today’s fast-paced media-driven environments.” –Dina Deitsch, DECORDOVA SCULPTURE PARK AND MUSEUM

Filmmaker in person!

Programme: The Journey (2002, 8 min, 16mm-to-video) Soundtrack: Xander Marro Have you ever been visited by a fairy godmother? Stayed awake for days and nights cleaning (perhaps moving) forgetting to eat and talk and arranging then rearranging all of your worldly possessions into piles and then other piles until you were in the midst of a psychedelic semi-conscious perhaps semi-psychotic dream state and then taken to a netherworld by a beautiful peacock? If yes, this one’s for you!

- Spell Casting Mishaps Volume 1 (2011, 1 min, video) Soundtrack: Amil Byleckie Explanation of how I became a sandwich.

- Flying Cats Of The Stars (2012, 5 min, video) Soundtrack: Suckdog We will never die.

- Quilt Movie (2014, 4 min, 16mm-to-video) Soundtrack: Jeremy Harris Document of the making of 5 quilts.

- The Pattern Of Ritual (2005, 8 min, 16mm, with live soundtrack) Soundtrack: Xander Marro. 10 dances for the invocation of the new season. Starring: the Seagulls (unfortunately sacrificed for the prophetic powers held within their wings), the Pyramid, the re-occurring wooden peacock, the seemingly charming cobra, the forest made of fishes, and the matchstick game.

- L’Eye (2001, 2 min, 16mm) Soundtrack: Carley Ptak. If at first you don’t succeed, scry, scry again.

- Born To Never Throw Anything Away (2009, 4 min, 16mm) Soundtrack: Xander Marro (drum track) Natalja Kent (Guitar track at end), Amil Byleckie (Synth track at beginning). Portrait of a house that once housed a family of 18, then a mother and son, then a man and his collections.

- The Chemical Bath (L’Eye V.2) (2001, 6 min, hand-processed 16mm) Soundtrack: Xander Marro & Mat Brinkman (warping The Shirelles & Suicidal Tendencies). Starring: silver molecules (tri-x reversal), Italian shoe magazines, 1st developer, 2nd developer, bleach, stop bath, fix, green/cyan.

- Isemond (2006, 17.5 min, 16mm) Made in collaboration with Mat Brinkman. Soundtrack: Xander Marro & Mat Brinkman. Puppet fairytale. Isemond the tailor makes a bonnet for a kindly goose. Their unlikely alliance becomes a force in the battle against a hungry real-estate developer.

- The Further Adventures Of Lady Long Arms In The Land Of Love (2004, 11 min, 16mm) Soundtrack: Xander Marro & Mat Brinkman. Starring: The Re-Occuring Wooden Peacocks, Lady Long Arms, The Dancing Hearts of Infinity, The Seagulls, The Disappearing Owl, Sir Trang Feng, Bug Bear (as the Polar Bear), The Snowstorm, The Ice Cream Hut at the summit of the highest mountain in the universe.

- 0106 (2006, 12 min, 16mm) Made in collaboration with Mat Brinkman. Soundtrack: Xander Marro. Story of how I might live my life until I die told one frame at a time for approximately 17,664 frames. DIY living quarters, puppeteer frontiers, too many cats, silkscreen explosions, portable cooking stoves, zine libraries, drum kits. Melting brain.