#aztececonomy

Coming to L.A. in June for its West Coast premiere! Butcher Holler Here We Come. Tickets: http://hff19.org/5921

A few 'No Filter' test samples of my fav new website this month: deepdreamgenerator.com - and, yeah, I know it "feeds the programming experienced intelligence of the Google". I, for one, however, am not a naysayer to the technological virtual horizon - particularly for projects like these where we, the human agents, command the instrument (the brush, if ya will) to bring about the art/dream generation. Until a computer can write philosophical texts equivalent to, for instance, Wittgenstein, I'm not too worried about their computational cognition overwhelming the human capacity for inquiry. (Stumbled upon when searching for 'What Do Computers Dream' Popular Science article from a couple of yrs back).

#MyKindOfBlood was a devised performance featured at #BrooklynFireproof as part of #BushwickOpenStudios in 2010. A 3rd installment of #AztecEconomy produced 3-Year Trilogy, #BattlePlays(OfTheRepublic). We took #MilesDavis seminal mid-Century Jazz album, #KindOfBlue as our ‘script’ and entry-point. The performance ran almost exactly the length of the listening-time for the album, which was played regionally, off of a record player, and then patched into a surround system as a semi-1st-person-noir-narrative emerged: An Agoraphobic, lemon-obsessed, Private Investigator, addicted to snorting Tide w/ Bleach, pseudo-academically (using over-head projectors, and a lecture-series on topics including Civil War tactics, breakdowns of Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly’s musical techniques, and pulp graphic novellas) attempts to solve a series of diabolical serial killings with a Mets-loving pedestrian assistant. When his own Voice-Over psyche overtakes the self-induced web that marks a ritualistic delusion of his snooping, the jealous detective is exposed to his own sinister involvement in the crimes through the appearance of a character-playing, ‘Femme-fatale’. American History, Film Genre, and Psychological boundaries of narrative space/consciousness are explored - all the while transposed with Greek Myth (Odysseus), to pay homage to, and launch off, the most important jazz album of the 20th Century. 

“Psychojelly: Oh, These Bulgarian Shoes!” was a multidisciplinary performance: part devised theatre, part concert, part video installation, part performance art, and dance presented in Spring 2012 at BigSkyWorks (Brooklyn NY) Dir. by Cole Wimpee (Aztec Economy) and featuring collaborative work from Weasel Walter (Drums - The Flying Luttenbachers), Nonoko Yashida + Joe Merola (Cello + Alto Sax - Den Svarta Fanan), Esther Neff + Brian McCorkle + Arla Berman + Bonnie Kane (”Photons Be Free”* - Panoply Performance Lab), Sean Berman (Video Installation), John Lockie + Mike Morgan + Richard Hoffman (Drums + Guitar + Bass - SIGHTINGS) Julie Mortgentaler, Adam Laten Willson, Adam Belvo, and Nick Capodice (performers, Aztec Economy), with Casey Wimpee’s (playwright) text detailing a narrative involving radioactive jelly, turtle eggs, floppy discs, James Bond, and cold war escapism set in Bulgaria in the 1980s. *PPL’s 2012 piece attempts to provide a crucial platform for the voices of photon, electrons, and other enslaved particles (dear ones), as they shuffle together for warmth, scream their despair into ears too large and crude to understand, and riot across the spectrum in a haze of elementary self-organization. Originally cheap propaganda for the Hologram Liberation Front written by The Doctor (Joe).