Lizzie Fitch

Shot in a former Masonic temple in Los Angeles – a five-story warren of large, cavernous rooms akin to a windowless convention center – Temple Time unfolds like a horror-movie group expedition in a campsite wasteland. Exploring the mildly eerie wilderness substitute, the characters talk about what they see instead of how they feel, giving the impression that everything they encounter is a discovery. For some characters these discoveries feel like memories of events that are about to repeat – the past and the future seem to occur simultaneously via overlapping layers of reality. The use of different video-capturing technologies – including handheld cameras, drones, and GoPro action cameras mounted to the actors’ bodies – offers numerous perspectives and vantage points, reinforcing Trecartin’s exploitation of cinematic discontinuities. In Temple Time, purpose and agency are constantly delayed and the multi-linear narratives are expressed in a networked sense of time.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

Re’Search Wait’S comprises four movies: Ready, The Re’Search, Roamie View : History Enhancement, and Temp Stop. The setting is a complicated industry predicated on the supremacy of metaphysically evolved market research. The base commodities are personality traits; while ordinarily they are considered malleable, here they ossify into static examples (“examplize,” to use Trecartin’s term) that can be traded among owners. With market research lording both the supply and demand of existence, characters are wrapped in a knot where their every action is studied, and the findings dictate the brands that pilot everything they do. As a picture of modern consumer society literalized to an extreme, Re’Search Wait’S verges on social science-fiction; and by examplizing Any Ever’s other half into fuel for their own stories, these works tie the seven together as a yin and yang of nihilism and boundless meaning.

Dazzling and raucous, Ryan Trecartin's first feature-length video takes cues from chat rooms, social networking web sites, YouTube, John Waters, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and then turns them upside down and inside out to create an entirely singular video genre. In I-BE AREA, Trecartin intertwines the stories of an incredible ensemble cast to follow a day in the life of I-BE II, the rebellious clone of I-BE.

Dazzling and raucous, Ryan Trecartin's first feature-length video takes cues from chat rooms, social networking web sites, YouTube, John Waters, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and then turns them upside down and inside out to create an entirely singular video genre. In I-BE AREA, Trecartin intertwines the stories of an incredible ensemble cast to follow a day in the life of I-BE II, the rebellious clone of I-BE.

Dazzling and raucous, Ryan Trecartin's first feature-length video takes cues from chat rooms, social networking web sites, YouTube, John Waters, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and then turns them upside down and inside out to create an entirely singular video genre. In I-BE AREA, Trecartin intertwines the stories of an incredible ensemble cast to follow a day in the life of I-BE II, the rebellious clone of I-BE.

Dazzling and raucous, Ryan Trecartin's first feature-length video takes cues from chat rooms, social networking web sites, YouTube, John Waters, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and then turns them upside down and inside out to create an entirely singular video genre. In I-BE AREA, Trecartin intertwines the stories of an incredible ensemble cast to follow a day in the life of I-BE II, the rebellious clone of I-BE.

Trecartin describes (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me.) as a "narrative video short that takes place inside and outside of an e-mail." Trecartin's intense visualization of electronic communication is inhabited by a cast of stylized characters: Pam, a lesbian librarian with a screaming baby in an ultra-modern hotel room; Tammy and Beth, who live in an apartment filled with installation art; and Tommy, who is seen in a secluded lake house in the woods. Pam, Tommy and Tammy are all played by Trecartin, who, wearing his signature make-up, jumps back and forth between male and female roles. Totally self-absorbed and equipped with vestigial attention spans, the characters are constantly communicating with one another on the phone or online.

Ryan Trecartin’s film A Family Finds Entertainment is a camp extravaganza of epic proportions. Starring Trecartin’s family and friends, and the artist himself in a plethora of outrageous roles, A Family Finds Entertainment chronicles the story of mixed up teenager Skippy and his adventures in ‘coming out’. In this over the top celebration of queerness, Trecartin’s film mines the bizarre and endearing in an unabashed pastiche of ‘bad tv’ tropes. Cheesy video special effects, dress-up chess costumes, desperate scripts, and ‘after school special’ melodrama combine in the fluency of youth-culture lingo, reflecting a generation both damaged and affirmed by media consumption.

Ryan Trecartin’s film A Family Finds Entertainment is a camp extravaganza of epic proportions. Starring Trecartin’s family and friends, and the artist himself in a plethora of outrageous roles, A Family Finds Entertainment chronicles the story of mixed up teenager Skippy and his adventures in ‘coming out’. In this over the top celebration of queerness, Trecartin’s film mines the bizarre and endearing in an unabashed pastiche of ‘bad tv’ tropes. Cheesy video special effects, dress-up chess costumes, desperate scripts, and ‘after school special’ melodrama combine in the fluency of youth-culture lingo, reflecting a generation both damaged and affirmed by media consumption.

Trecartin's extraordinary digital manipulations reach a new level as he speculates in vivid animation about reproduction, sexuality, and contemporary moralities. Collapsing footage appropriated from television, the Internet, and pop culture, Trecartin and his elaborately costumed collaborators manufacture an alien yet familiar reality. Inside this startling new video world, technophile gods wearing acid-washed denim argue about the future of gender and produce cryptic TV commercials. In a surreal backyard town meeting, characters deliver disjointed polemics assembled from clashing phrases that could have originated in ad campaigns, instant messaging conversations, or twisted episodes of syndicated science fiction. Constructed from the raw material of disposable media clichés and fads, Trecartin's narrative leaves us to answer the riddles he poses.

In Yo! A Romantic Comedy, Trecartin borrows clichés from hip-hop culture and genre films to craft a dark, dream-like narrative that veers from comic melodrama to goth fantasy. Applying his signature digital editing and delirious sound processing to remarkable effect, Trecartin creates an alternative narrative universe that suggests a kind of psychodramatic hyper-reality.

In Kitchen Girl, Trecartin's frequent collaborator Lizzie Fitch throws herself into a state of total hysteria, portraying a girl who takes the childhood game of "playing house" to a dark and disturbing place. After pretending to cook dinner for her "kids," represented by colorful plush toys, she finds them lacking in appreciation of her efforts and throws them out the window. Fitch's overwrought performance is perfectly matched by Trecartin's skillful, hyperkinetic editing. Together they turn Trecartin's kitchen into a dimly lit world of mental trauma. Combining the innocuous with the malevolent, Fitch and Trecartin escort the viewer on a whirlwind tour of household dysfunction, child abuse, and isolation.

Hailed as cartoonish hysteria, showed at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.