Tessa Hughes-Freeland & Ela Troyano: Elegy for Jean Genet [1]
Microscope is very pleased to present an evening of works by Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Ela Troyano including the first performance in over twenty years of their collaborative work “Elegy for Jean Genet” (1994-1997) a live expanded cinema performance dedicated to the writings of the French playwright, poet and filmmaker, and based upon a musical composition by John Zorn.
The work – which debuted in the Knitting Factory in Manhattan in 1994 and later appeared at the 10th Anniversary of the MIX Festival (1996) and toured Europe with Zorn’s Tzadik record label in 1997 – involves multiple projections of Super 8mm film, 16mm film, and 35mm slides, combining original imagery with found imagery, including of 1970s gay, S&M porn, auto-erotic pleasure, and pop culture. The visual score is improvised to the four tracks of Zorn’s “Elegy” composition: “Blue”, “Yellow”, “Pink” and “Black” and footage manipulated by the artists through the use of colored gels, mirrors and other materials.
“Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Ela Troyano’s Elegy for Jean Genet (1994-1997) takes the expanded cinema proposed by The Exploding Plastic Inevitable to new potentialities, written in collaboration with the master of musical bricolage, John Zorn, it is one of the best examples of the multi-media experience.” – Jack Sargeant, Cinema Contra Cinema, 1999
Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Ela Troyano have been collaborating on live multiple projection cinema and produced countless performances, most notably for musician John Zorn. Their collaboration with Zorn, “Playboy Voodoo” was performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the exhibition “No Wave Cinema”. For Roulette TV, Hughes-Freeland and Troyano in 2002 presented an Expanded Cinema Performance with Zorn’s “Godard”.
The film “Playboy Voodoo” (1991), also a collaboration between Hughes-Freeland & Troyano with soundtrack by John Zorn, will precede the performance. Q&A with the artists follows.
General admission $10Members or students w/ ID $8
Full program & artist bios at www.microscopegallery.com [3]. Please note our new temporary entrance, which is the first door before the construction if approaching from Wyckoff.
Category:
- Screenings [4]
Dates:
Venue:
Microscope Gallery [5]
Microscope Gallery was founded in 2010 by artists and curators Elle Burchill and Andrea Monti and is located in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn, NY. The gallery specializes in the works of moving image, sound, digital and performance artists - from the emerging to pioneers of their art forms - through exhibitions and weekly events. Microscope addresses the unnecessary divide between the white box setting of the gallery and black box of the screening/performance venue. It was conceived as a place where artists working with these time-based arts can show their works in one or the other or both contexts according to their artistic intent. Alongside its regular exhibition schedule, Microscope presents a weekly event series complementing and expanding the curatorial programming through screenings, performance, readings and lectures. From its original micro-sized 4 Charles Place location, in September 2014 the gallery moved to a larger space at 1329 Willoughby Avenue, Brooklyn NY.
In 2021 Microscope relocated to its current space at 525 West 29th Street in New York.