Those New York ’Nineties—Performances by Rohan Quine
Those New York ’Nineties—
Performances by Rohan Quine
(deathless prose)
This footage that I’ve called Those New York ’Nineties (residing in the top-menu called “Film & TV Acting”) is just for fun—a frisky little soufflé laying no claim to profundity, presented for moral instruction. My presence in all these 115 items of footage probably adds up to something like one full B-movie’s worth of performance in total. A general introduction and an insufficient apology for Those New York ’Nineties as a whole is here. (See also my pages at the Internet Movie Database and the Oz TV Wiki.)
Hallucination Downtown. This is a compilation that was assembled in the early ’90s: first there’s a montage of too-gay-to-function snippets of me flitting through the Times Square area at dusk, through subway cars and passageways, and standing at the centre of that crazy intersection of Avenues and Streets and Broadway, filmed by my good friend Wayne; then there’s footage filmed by Mal and Kim as part of their generous hospitality in their Warhol’s-Factory-like apartment on Perry Street and on the surrounding streets of Greenwich Village; and then there’s footage of my reading or performing passages from my novella The Platinum Raven, lit by projections of my paintings, which was also filmed by Mal and Kim.
Professionally edited by Oliver Wicki on then-prevalent three-quarter-inch U-matic analogue tape, this compilation was made as a segment of Wayne’s project Metaculture, which explored various urban subcultures in NYC.
R.I.P., the lurid neon we can see here in the Times Square sequence. This was just before that neighbourhood started being forced into a lamentably sanitised version of the dark and characterful luridity that had flowered there so richly for more than a century until then. (16’15”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Performance 1. Apologies for this performance of mine; but I can offer something of an excuse, which is that it’s the only one of these pieces where I was playing a role within something larger, rather than just reading or performing a text as myself. This role was as a figure delivering some version of seduction. I’m not sure whom I could have seduced with this in reality, but that was the specific instruction given to me and to a few others too, by a talented artist named Jean-Luc Vilmouth, who filmed us all. He then used our various depictions of seduction to make an interesting and successful video installation art piece called Bar Séduire at the Guggenheim Museum Soho. My text from “Venus” in the published collection Hallucinations; shot by Jean-Luc Vilmouth. (3’41”)(See video here.) (read more…)
Performance 2. Here’s a souped-up little vol-au-vent of not-so-understated performance by me. The video projections are by Artpig; the text later became part of chapter 2 of my novella Hallucination in Hong Kong; and the combination of the two was produced and recorded, with his customary generosity towards other artists, by the multi-talented musician Caeser Pink at his creative hub in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for his The Imperial Orgy TV Show.
The full episode of Caeser’s show is here. More about him is here and the Imperial Orgy’s Wikipedia page is here. (1’18”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Performance 3. My text from “Action” in the published collection Hallucinations, with: projections of video by Artpig, shot by Caeser Pink for his Imperial Orgy online show; and projections of my paintings Sick Beauty and Conflux, shot by Mal Torrance.
The full episode of Caeser’s show is here. More about him is here and the Imperial Orgy’s Wikipedia page is here. (7’45”)
(See video here.) (read more…)
Performance 4. My text from “Pluto” in the published collection Hallucinations, with a projection of my painting Fried Eggs by Moonlight, shot by Mal. (1’35”)(See video here.) (read more…)
Performance 5. My text from “Enter” in the published collection Hallucinations, with a projection of my painting Corn in Flames, shot by Mal. (3’00”)(See video here.) (read more…)
The above “Performances” videos in Those New York ’Nineties are also here:
And in the Vimeo album “Those New York ’Nineties—Performances”:
Hallucination Downtown,
Performance 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
And in the YouTube playlist “Those New York ’Nineties—Performances”:
Hallucination Downtown,
Performance 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. (If playback of any of these videos looks at all fuzzy on YouTube, then you can quickly and easily adjust the YouTube video-player’s playback “Quality” setting, by doing the following: (1) if you’re on a mobile device, first touch the video image, then touch the three-dots symbol that appears in the top-right corner of the player, touch “Quality” and choose “1080p” (or the highest other setting available on your device, e.g. “720p”); or (2) if you’re on a laptop/desktop device, click the cog symbol on the lower edge of the video-player, click “Quality” and choose “1080p” (or the highest other setting available on your device, e.g. “720p”).)
If you’ve enjoyed any of these tales, then my warm appreciation for leaving a quick rating or just a handful of words of feedback on it, at the online retailer it came from. If you are able to do so, then this really would help me enormously, so very many thanks! 🙂
