Presented in collaboration with PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK
This event includes live ASL interpretation by Candace Davider
PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK and PICA present DOOMSCROLLING, a livestream video premiere of Michelle Handelman’s THE PANDEMIC SERIES (2020-2021), with a live collaborative reading and performance between Handelman and musician/performer Shannon Funchess, co-founder of the band Light Asylum.
THE PANDEMIC SERIES (2020-2021) recontextualizes characters from Handelman’s previous works into a hypnotic visual essay about the transfiguring of interiority during periods of isolation and fear. It takes as its starting point the current coronavirus pandemic and filters it through theorist Jill Casid’s writings on the necrocene, which
Casid has described as living and dying on a dying planet; and Walter Benjamin’s writings on the difference between thresholds and boundaries. Handelman's characters, who each have already struggled with existential questions of belonging and fear in her projects DORIAN, A CINEMATIC PERFUME (2009/11), IRMA VEP, THE LAST BREATH (2013/15), and HUSTLERS & EMPIRES (2018) are juxtaposed with found images and texts sourced during the pandemic to take on a new form that both denies and struggles with containment.
Videos and Live Reading by: Michelle Handelman
Live Performance: Shannon Funchess
Livestream/Video Director: Glen Fogel
Technical Director (PICA): Chris Balo
Audio & Video Engineer (NY): Lazar Bozic
Animation: Enrique Maitland
THE PANDEMIC SERIES
Director/Producer/Editor: Michelle Handelman
Cinematographer: Ed David
Performers: Quin Charity, Zackary Drucker, Shannon Funchess, K8 Hardy, John Kelly, Armen Ra, Viva Ruiz, Mother Flawless Sabrina, Sequinette
Costumes: Neon Music, Garo Sparo, Karen Young, Zaldy
Hair/Makeup: Michael Gwaltney, Armen Ra, Naomi Raddatz, Sequinette
Composers: Vincent Baker, Quentin Chiappetta, Jonathan Kreinik, Stefan Tcherepnin
Full credits for Hustlers & Empires (2018/2020), Irma Vep, The Last Breath (2013/2015), and Dorian, A Cinematic Perfume (2009/2013), can be found at: www.michellehandelman.com