Harkening back to the tripped out psychedelic lightshows of San Francisco’s 1960s counter culture as well as early Beat Generation experiments in stop motion animation, the artists included in Not Free, Not Dead pay homage to the Bay Area’s rich relationship with the moving image while simultaneously transcribing their fragmented technological experience onto these varied strategies and materials.

Ranging from narrative to music video to experimental – these mixed shorts are united by a visual vernacular specific to California. Cobbled together from internet search words, these kaleidoscopic fragments are informed equally by subculture, the Bay Area’s rich underground film and video history as well as Hollywood’s cult classics and formulaic genres.

These hazy dreamlike states are populated by rock-and-roll devil horns, hang-loose hands and smiley faces floating freely alongside processed clips appropriated from major motion pictures. The darker side, a bad trip, emerges as surreal worlds give way to surreal worlds in a narrative buddy film and a horror flick, twisted from the mirrored, rainbow static of California’s once frontier landscape.

Featuring recent work by Caitlin Denny, Gregory Kaplowitz, Alex S. Lukas, Jessica Miller, Dan Olsen, Skye Thorstenson, Virtual Pubes, and Nightmare City

The Bonfire for  Humanity

Kickstarter Campaign

2011

We are asking for $9999.99 to set on fire to warm the very soul of humanity.

HELLO! and welcome, from NIGHTMARE CITY.

THE BONFIRE FOR HUMANITY is a one-night  performance art event centered around a bonfire that uses cash as kindling and whose flames are fueled by the currency donated by Kickstarter backers (minus the cost of postage for shipping the rewards).  The act of lighting and tending to the bonfire itself  is a performance that will be broadcast live on the web in the style of the New Year's Eve Television Specials in which two hosts (Nightmare City) tend the fire in formal-wear until all the cash is reduced to ashes.  Utilizing the conventions of this genre, the broadcast will include cut-aways to performances executed in proximity to the bonfire by Bay Area performance artists  Frankie America, Eric Svedas, Jonah Susskind, and Paul Knowles.  This crux of this project relies on a launching a Kickstarter campaign-- if the funds are not raised through Kickstarter, the project will not move forward.

View Kickstarter Campaign

Project Website

PPush Hush (w Myles Cooper)

Music Video

2010

Music © Myles Cooper

Video taken from "Into the 3 A.M. Void with Carol Anne & Keturah PIXIE TROLL WITCH HOUR The Princess Diana Episode.

findings (by elise irving)

video

2009

Shot and edited by elise irving.

“A study found that making adolescents get up early for school deprives them of sleep. Researchers announced that many people start to go crazy by age fourteen.”

jonny blaze in nightmare city

(w jonny grindstaff)

video game

2008

This hands on Gaming Experience Educational Tool was initially produced in collaboration with Jonathan Grindstaff in 2008 using open source code "SuperTux." It is a classic 2D jump and run sidescroller game in a style similar to the original Super Mario games.

Features:

• 9 formidable opponents

• 26 BEAUTIFUL playable levels

• completely redone psychedelic graphics

nightmare city high

(by Skye Thorstenson)

video

2008

Written, directed, shot and edited by Skye Thorstenson.

Adapted from everybody's favorite ghost-written teen soap-opera novels, "Sweet Valley High," which chronicle the lives of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth of Sweet Valley, California.

Starring none other than Nightmare City and the usual suspects.