AJ McClenon/Photo: Onion City
To peer behind the curtain of film and play with the medium of viewing collectively, Onion City Film Festival and CCAM, the Center for Concrete and Abstract Machines, bring together a night of live performance and manipulation for their aptly named “[We Don’t Know Yet] What A Cinema Can Do.” Three performances, united in bodily intervention into live projection and sound, reflect disenfranchisement of a personal archive. On Friday, April 10, “We Don’t Know Yet” returns for its third iteration at Public Works, exploring the margins of the audiovisual, with a culturally salient critique featuring AJ McClenon, Alterotics and James Connolly.
AJ McClenon’s performance will feature a set that mirrors the dimensions of a prison cell, otherwise reserved for those in solitary confinement. Historical found and home footage projected onto a translucent scrim illuminates scenes that condense the American prison into a bloated system that inequitably targets Black and brown bodies. This equally informs McClenon’s experience, which they personalize through records of their upbringing. As these videos get narrowly caught on a permeable screen, they harrowingly cycle through policy and practice, through policy made even more ingrained into the social fabric that McClenon vocalizes through readings from the New Jim Crow.
Alterotics/Photo: Onion City
Alterotics, a trans collective producing art and queer events that act as a joyous celebration of sexuality, takes the stage and the backroom for a subversive performance. The group’s cryptic promotion plays against the wonder of their early internet aesthetic, adding layers of intrigue to their recurring activations that prioritize gender-diverse pleasure. Trans joy, repeatedly targeted through political persecution and public shaming, gets flipped on its head in the group’s voyeuristic activation of the private sphere. Co-founders Anais Alias and Avery Jaye poke through the contradictory nature of fetish and perverse, inviting a clarifying eye into a radical embrace of diverse bodies’ continuous evolution in search of love. The piece by Anais Alias and Avery Jaye, accompanied by three additional performers—Clover, Cassie and Leah—request an air of mystique for their baroque new media work. Without telling too much, expect the curtain of your curiosity to reveal itself throughout the night.
James Connolly/Photo: Onion City
James Connolly takes the archive to the roots of film. Using an analog setup, he visualizes the black box of technology. Performing with his RGB.VGA.VOLT, Connolly activates his custom-built audio-video chain synthesizer that allows sound to mechanically distort simultaneous projections. The marvel of a glitching machine bends electronic signals that generate the display of cathode ray tube screens. Magnets activated in accordance with qualities from the sonic performance hack the outdated technology that was once omnipresent in film. Connolly plans to incorporate home videos and commercials from the nineties that he will manipulate with his CRT Flux Phaser, which relies on an algorithm to phase shift incoming signals through a hardware intervention. By cracking archival footage with obsolete technology, Connolly works through nostalgia to unsettle the eerie onset of mass surveillance.
On April 10, this year’s iteration, themed Disintegrating Archives, will also include a presentation from Aria Pedraza, the founder of the Midwest Rave Culture Archive, who is restoring an almost forgotten history of electronic music’s legacy. Through the breadth of Onion City Film Festival’s programming, “We Don’t Know Yet” stands out as a gem during Chicago’s busy spring arts season. This unique night of performances offers a bridge between Chicago’s film and arts scene, operating on the breaks of categorization.
“[We Don’t Know Yet] What A Cinema Can Do” takes place at Public Works, 2141 West North, on April 10 at 8pm. Tickets and more here.
