Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin @ Regen Projects

First Thoughts:

Sets up the theatrical correspondence through material choice. Blair Witch aesthetic. Rotational space. Synced content? ADD. Front and back? Recto/Verso? Or "in the round"? POV and rehearsals. Like the proposal as an alternative way to view narrative. At some point it needs to cohere even if after multiple viewings, perhaps as many viewings as there are screens. Cf. Timecode. Also, surround literalists. MTV “Real World” meets Valley Girl meets Californians. Multiple entrances/exits in terms of the viewing space itself and the work. Both the thing and the making of the thing on display.

"There are no people around anymore."  Is this work about being “around?"

"What kind of structure is this?" The question answers itself as an unknown and as the proposal inherent in the work.

Levels of the "real." The reel?

"It's like we're being observed or something." Voueurism and surveillance within the video space (the content) and the viewing space (the audience) as set up by the narrative in relationship to the random seating options.

Forces the viewer around to the point of rubber-necking. No rear-view mirrors. Criticism is what's not there but should be or what's there but should be different. Vocal affectation through inflection and vocoder. So, body and technology. Burning Man encampment. External ambient noise. Lighting shifts through the interstitial space. Forts and the playfulness of youth.

In the end, how much fun is it to only watch others having fun, especially if it doesn't take me through a series of moments that achieve and transform in some sense of catharsis and empathy? Perhaps the denial of as much is part of its point about desensitized elements of contemporary culture where a false sense of being together (being “around") has supplanted simply being, invariably together and alone. Roving, rumbling bass lacks coherence in a good way like a dark unknown lurking, emerging, receding (a sublime, subliminal sensation). 

The ultimate absurdity in reality show(ing). An ungrounded world both staged and given.

Repeated images from room to room allow an even more disjointed view of the whole show and an opportunity to consider my thoughts applying to all instances. Floating and falling imagery. Social space of the installation versus the one of the work, the latter presumably amongst friends though not necessarily. As such, levels of intimacy are challenged thereby also emphasizing potential themes of the show regarding ungrounded humanity. What is the relation of the inside world to the inside world? Perhaps what's not accounted for here, at least responsibly in my estimation is the suggested relationship between rip-stop, tents, and tears in a web of space-time.

Second Thoughts:

All the antics of the slumber-party, the sleep-over. The time and place when and where kids rule in excess in the absence of authority (until the next day when everyone’s hungry).  Overall, as an alternative approach to going to the movies and indulging in the multiplicity of being as a function of technological possibility in light, sound, and space (cinema actually) is a nice enough proposition.  The way that Trecartin’s mastery of virtual space in past works such as "I-Be Area," (2007) plays out fairly well in “real” space (the gallery) points directly to what I think Gene Youngblood was getting at in Expanded Cinema, when he spoke of technoanarchy.