John Sully Universe

Thursday, March 29, 2012

An Evening with Temporary Distortion | The New School | University Events

An Evening with Kenneth Collins & Temporary Distortion | The New School | University Events

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Temporary Distortion artfully deconstructs the NYPD. By Helen Shaw

The creative duo behind Temporary Distortion—theater-artist Kenneth Collins and filmmaker William Cusick—just keep elevating their game. You could call that game sculptural video, or perhaps living set design, or maybe just multimedia ravishment. Whatever it is, their police-portrait Newyorkland passes their other, already high bar (from sleek genre explorations like Americana Kamikaze) with a welter of textures, the interaction of which proves as seductive and sad and funny as narrative can elsewhere.

As always, Collins designs the piece as a contained world-within-a-world, this time as a sort of exploded Cornell box framed in neon and draped in yellow caution tape. The structure’s facade is a massive screen displaying Cusick’s bleached-out re-creation of ’70s-era cop movies, while at floor-level a quartet of lawmen speak from square openings—impassive as dolls in their plastic packaging. The 60-minute work operates as a series of beginnings and then one very long ending: the film switches from pretend-documentary to the jazzy titles of imaginary TV show (like “The Rookie: He Can’t Catch a Break”) to dreamy, blued-out images of New York. It begins again and again (which genre willNewyorkland settle on?) and then it fades away, mournfully, into the dark. Not every moment rings perfectly true, and much depends on your ability to jam to John Sully’s varied, frequently spectacular score. The surprising match between subject and aesthetic, though, carries the day. Who would have thought that the boys in blue—themselves so accustomed to herding the rest of us—would look so beautiful pinned behind an artistic cordon

http://newyork.timeout.com/arts-culture/theater/2486261/review-newyorkland

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Join A Band........

If you have to express yourself personally, join a band.

If you have to make a social commentary, join a band

If you have to make a political statement, join a band

If you're looking for a higher power, join a band.

If you're looking for self destruction, join a band.

If you're looking to break the grip of conformity, sterility, repression, oppression, join a band.

If you're looking for the meaning of it all, join a band.

Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond in his book 'Guns, Germs and Steel' credits 'the band' as the first 'social' structure formed by humans.

The 'band' experience has an advantage over more complex social relationships in that it is designed and created by it's relative members. A band must continuously balance the dynamics of harmony and dissonance between members and the unified expression being created.

This intimate social process eventually presents itself as a performance at which audience and the band exchange instant emotional responses and feedback. The band has as its potential the power to repel or attract an audience exponentially. The audience has the potential to be completely transformed and engaged in the performance.

This kind of direct emotional social communication far exceeds an individuals expression within institutionalized mass cultural media. The experience of feeling vulnerable in the process of creation and performance enlightens the individual to a more visceral reality.

Playing in or hearing a band live is being alive. It's how we gather as potential brothers, sisters, friends or enemies. It's where we come to sing, dance, hope and dream. It's an act of liberty, a fight for freedom, a mythology of monsters and heroes.

Turn on, plug in, turn up!

Join a band..........

John Sullivan 1/14/09