Saturday, June 29 @ 8:00 PM
Mrs William Horsley’s Vexations
A film and projection performance by Mrs William Horsley studio
directed, edited, performed by Matthew Thurber, 2021-23
The CIA around 1959 after successful forays into the visual arts, began to infiltrate “Easy- Listening” music. They secretly funded many favorite artists like Les Baxter, Arthur Lyman, and saw potential for weaponized sound in Erik Satie’s Vexations, an infamous piano piece that repeates a simple phrase 840 times. As John Cage had organized the only public airing of this work, CIA operatives recruited him to create an arrangement of Vexations for Mantovani’s orchestra with prepared piano plinking out the main melody line. Breakthroughs in miniaturization technology meant a capsule of microscopic musicians performing this torturous durational piece could be used to assasinate communist targets. What happened instead was a terrible accident during the recording session in Langley, Virginia during which all the musicians were turned into ethereal gas…But they are still with us, in a limbo state out of time, gathered around a piano bar physically located inside the dumpster of “The Thing” junk store in Greenpoint. As the condo buildings shimmer into being along the shores of the East River, the waves reflected in glass awaken dematerialized musicians. One by one, they are crossfaded from limbo into our hellish real world… in which the imperialist musical project has prevailed in endlessly Spotified coffee-shopping Furniture Music.
45 min • 16mm film with live mixed sound and multiple projections
Matthew Thurber is a cartoonist and filmmaker based in NYC. He is the author of 1-800-MICE, INFOMANIACS, Art Comic, Looking For The Cat. He has performed at the Serpentine Gallery UK, Hammer Museum LA, and had a 2 person drawing show with William Wegman in 2017. Thurber’s films Fleegix (2019) The Sea Masons (2021), and Vexations (2024) are feature length narratives on 16mm, manifesting as performances. Mrs William Horsley is a cinema “band” in which the films, made in a role playing game process, are projected in ritual performance.
Seating is limited for this program, RSVPs are closed! Join us next time.
This screening is supported by:
NEXT UP: The Day I Became a Woman on Wednesday, July 3 at NEIU
