by Mike Telin
No Exit continues their Year of Surreality this week with “The Unconscious.” The ensemble will be joined by longtime collaborators Zeitgeist for a program featuring four world premiere films — The Birdhouse, conceived and written by Timothy Beyer and filmed by James Praznik, breathing room by Luke Haaksmsa, In Fourteen Steps by James Praznik, and Between Here and There, a collaboration between Zeitgeist and composer and multimedia artist Philip Blackburn. The free, 7:00 pm performances will be held on Thursday, November 30 at Cleveland State University’s Drinko Recital Hall, Friday, December 1 at Waterloo Arts, and Saturday, December 2 at SPACES.
As part of “The Unconscious,” Cleveland-based artists Leila Khoury and Kristen Newell have created Revelations of the Unconscious Mind (a surrealist dreamscape), which will serve as an exhibit unto itself as well as a performance space. The exhibit is on display at SPACES through December 15.
What’s in a dream? For the surrealists, it was a lot, according to the accompanying program. They believed that the rationalism of modern society stifled and ultimately suppressed the imagination. Surrealists sought to tap into the unconscious mind to unleash the power of the imagination and access a superior reality.
“The Birdhouse is a broad representation of my unconscious,” Timothy Beyer said during a recent phone conversation. “It’s basically a silent look at my dream world. While I’m interested in making a cohesive film, dreams don’t make sense in a logical way — although they do reveal some profound and important things. And while I wrote and directed it, James did all of the actual film work, and I’m lucky to have had such a brilliant partner.”
While The Birdhouse is a completely silent film, in breathing room the music is as integral to the film as the film is to the music, as Luke Haaksmsa writes in his program note. All the sound effects are produced by live musicians and the line between film-sound and film-music is in effect blurred.
In his program note, James Praznik writes that In Fourteen Steps is a short film where the covenant between performer and audience is bound to be broken. He goes on to say that the film is a collection of his most terrifying dreams that he hopes the audience will find as funny as he does.
Zeitgeist’s and Philip Blackburn’s Between Here and There draws upon individual, collective, and universal dreams, memories, and ancestral connections to create a house filled with rooms of imaginary and sonic possibility. Blackburn’s film is accompanied by live music, a combination of improvisation and set pieces played on traditional and newly invented instruments. “Philip designed these wild instruments, like a lobster banjo which is sort of like an anthropomorphic typewriter,” Beyer said.
“We were encouraged by the great response we received from the first set of concerts and we hope people will come out for this program too — I think it will be an amazing experience.”
Published on ClevelandClassical.com November 30, 2023.
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