presented by
Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 8:30 pm, $10
An Improvised Movie is a live performance collaboration with poet Steve Benson as voiceover artist, filmmaker Konrad Steiner projecting video samples, and musicians Jon Raskin (reeds), Liz Allbee (horns), Kanoko Nishi (koto), Gino Robair (electronics and percussion), and John Shiurba (guitar) providing music and sounds.
The performance will last about 40 minutes. A video collage made up of clips from a wide variety of narrative films from the 1930s – 70s has been prepared which strings together many genres and eras of american cinema from artists films to star vehicles into an arrangement suggestive of narrative without the continuity of characters or plot. The performing artists will create an improvised soundtrack, performing with the film collage as a sort of visual score, responding on the spot to the video images projected as movie with shifting scenes and characters, awaiting interpretation. This is not a VJ style projection of visual music, nor is it a typical scripted neo-benshi style narration. It is something new for all of us.
Preceding the performance kino21 presents the world premiere of a short video Love Before Breakfast by Konrad Steiner and Mac McGinnes. Love Before Breakfast, a play by poet James Schuyler, is read on the soundtrack by Norma Cole, Edith Kramer, David Larsen and Roham Shaikhani, set to a montage of some ephemeral landscapes and lustrous moments.