The Return of VJ Persona

VJ Persona (the name I sometimes use when VJing) performed a short set in Boulder last week as part of the opening night festivities for the new ATLAS center on the University of Colorado campus. Most of the performers who participated in the event have in some way passed through the TECHNE lab in the Department of Art, though two of the players were visiting (Twine and the Pharmanaut, both of whose sets were awesome).

During the set, called "Excerpts from the Random Life of VJ Persona," I decided to "derange" some images in splitscreen and played with the idea of VJ performance as a live video art installation with accompanying sounds by Twine. The idea was to create an alternative to what others, myself included, have been calling live cinema.

The ATLAS black box performance space was an excellent venue for this type of program and can accommodate many performative contexts. The move toward live video art installation (instead of live cinema) was an attempt to further mix up the possible uses of the space.

(Of course, the few of us researching an interdisciplinary art-research practice at CU-Boulder are not the only ones doing this. In the heart of the heart of the country, things are starting to catch on. For example, there is Perform the Media in Bloomington, Indiana)

The brains behind VJ Theory might look at this approach toward mixed-use academic/club space as part of an investigation into "hybrid methodologies," where artists (who also happen to be professors, students, and instructors) invade university-sponsored social spaces and examine processes of real time interaction as part of the performance.

During the set, I remixed many memorable psycho-drifts which brought to mind the many international dateline crossings I experienced in 2001-2005 during a relatively busy VJ touring schedule. The memories, time-trips, flashbacks, manipulations, light forms, verbal imaginings, and thoughtographical expressions, all came to life as the images appeared and disappeared like the elusive markings on a mystical writing pad.

For some reason, the Talking Heads "Memories Can't Wait" fills my head as I write this:

There's a party in my
mind...
And I hope it never stops
There's a party up
there all the time

[...]

Take a walk through the
land of shadows
Take a walk through the
peaceful meadows ...

[...]

There's a party in my
mind...
And I hope it never stops
I'm stuck here in this seat...
I might not stand up

[...]

Everything is very quiet
Everyone has gone to sleep
I'm wide awake
on memories...
These memories can't wait.

---

Metadata: VJ, art, performance, theory