FLEEGIX

FLEEGIX is a science-fiction film set on Earth,  although some of the population have become convinced that they are in fact living on the planet Mars.

The film investigates the nature of belief systems which overlap, co-exist, and create conflict in any human society.
Its subject is the nature of reality. It takes place in a recognizeable world of parks, parking lots, gas stations and video stores, which makes the episodes stranger and more tangible. It does not create a fantasy world: the extraordinary is mapped onto a recognizable landscape.
The film is inspired by and loosely adapted from on a Young Adult novel by Daniel Pinkwater, Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars, in which alienated high school students Leonard and Alan escape boredom through developing telepathic powers and learn to travel to other dimensions overlapping their own. I have received permission from the author to make a film that is a creative interpretation of his book.

The film was shot on color 16mm and includes both live action, stop motion and hand drawn animated segments. The appearance of animation in the narrative is to illustrate propaganda, such as depictions of newsworthy events on Mars.
This film is an organism that grows and continues to develop a web of connected motifs and ideas.
FLEEGIX is constructed through the accumulation of short scenes that echo and lead into each other, making connections across time and space. It is a a “Situationist Fairy story” …, a non-linear narrative that is based around a series of surprising images, that nonetheless describes an entire world.

At the heart of the film is the question as to how Fleegix (a beverage enjoyed by Martians) is manufactured.The film details further conflict among New York “Potato-Eyed” Martians who express themselves in animated movement, and the Hand Shadow Punks of Baltimore, who represent a pre-cinematic faction.
The film proposes various absurd answers to this question, and the dispute takes on symbolic and mythological proportions.

Filed under: 16mm, anarchy, animation, artist in attendance, environmental, expanded cinema, experimental, film, music, new media

Meanwhile presents Bye Gurl Bye

 

Meanwhile is a new storytelling and live zine-making series hosted by Megan Kirby and Jan-Henry Gray every other month at Delilah’s in Chicago. While performers are on stage, the audience will be drawing and writing to the show’s theme. The pages will be collected and a zine will be created to be released at the next show.

Meanwhile presents
Bye Gurl Bye: a going-away extravaganza for Jan-Henry Gray.
With special performances by Megan Kirby, D.J. Williams,
and Zyle Christian Cook. BYOB. Free. Party starts at 7.
Performances throughout the night.

Programmed by Nabil

Filed under: artist in attendance, literature, music, narrative, new media, performance, poetry, queer