On a day-to-day basis, my studio practice is fairly solitary, so when I get drafted to do a workshop for a bunch of people, designing it to be joyful and fun is aesthetically—and actually politically—important to me. This is because I think that small but meaningful spaces of trust are created when people who don’t know each other, from various walks of life, can simultaneously let their guards down together, be absurd, and creative collectively, especially when this is outside of the context of consumerism. These spaces are where culture is most exciting to me.
I had wanted to open my writing about a short movie that I made at the RISD Museum last month with a quote by director George Kuchar about how the point of movie-making is to have fun, and that if people aren’t having fun, well then, the filmmaker should just stop making the movie. But, alas, when I couldn’t find in the annals of the internet this snippet of an interview that had made such an impression on me, I instead came across this one, which is also pretty great: “Normally, I don’t have much of a personal life. Making a movie is very personal. You get to interact with people. It’s like a party. You make a party and then you’re home alone for a long time. You edit it, and put it together and then you go—and another party happens when you show the rushes. So it helps your social life.”
Since I was very young, my idea of ultimate fun times often involved playing dress-up and goofing off striking funny poses. In designing the RISD Museum workshop, I hazarded a guess that I was not alone in enjoying these things. I also had been wanting to experiment with pixilation for a long time, and decided this workshop was the perfect opportunity. Pixilation is a stop-motion animation technique where actors are used as frame-by-frame subjects in a movie, posing while a single frame is taken then changing pose slightly for the next frame. The actor becomes a kind of living stop-motion puppet.
The design of the set was influenced by the Paul Morrison piece that wraps the room where the workshop was held. (As soon as I saw the space, I got really excited about designing a mise-en-scène that worked in conjunction with the stark black and whiteness of his painting, and now I’m slightly obsessed and want someday to build a whole black and white universe!) Other artists who have long been sources of inspiration for my sets/costume/puppet/diorama work are Stephen Arnold and Red Grooms.
The movie was shot over the course of an hour and a half. Jeremy Harris made the soundtrack. Carolyn Gennari and Maggie North were awesome assistants. And the performers, obviously, were the best. Totally fearless in donning strange adornments and jumping right into the set, transformed by their masks and shrouds. At any given time throughout the night, the room usually had about 20 people in various states of getting costumed and prepped / performing / getting un-costumed again. Spanning a radical range of ages and walks of life, everyone was so supportive of everybody else, cheering and whooping when people got on the set and did funny things. Thank you times a million!
Xander Marro (American b. 1975) is a fake scientist/olde style tinker based out of the Dirt Palace; a feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river (which is to say in Providence, RI USA)