NC>>  NIGHTMARE CITY COPY LAKE THE HORDE

Nightmare City (Carol Anne McChrystal and Keturah Cummings) present a new work in collaboration with Copy Lake (Alex S. Lukas,) an interdisciplinary performance piece, NIGHTMARE CITY COPY LAKE THE HORDE.  The work explores the process by which 1960s counter-culture, despite its former political and cultural potency, has become a flaccid caricature of its own values in popular culture.  The performance reinterprets the songs A House is Not a Motel (Love), Hotel California (The Eagles), California Dreamin’ (The Mamas & the Papas), and Dreams (Fleetwood Mac.) Seamlessly merged, the songs are performed with lyrics intact but accompanied by and filtered though mangled amusical tape loops and washes of noise.  The performance is punctuated by psychedelic projections, in which retro aesthetics and form are mediated by digital interventions such as wipes and pixelization. Vibrant dashiki costumes are spray-painted dull beige, tambourines and hand-made, pan-ethnic, mysterious percussive instruments turn prop-like, becoming totem-poles of multi-dimensional and occult-based dream catchers adorned with strings of Tibetan bells. The performance was recorded at sites historically significant to the 1960s counterculture movement in California, including Altamont, People’s Park (Berkeley), Golden Gate Park (San Francisco), and Monterey and will be performed at Queens Nails Projects for the exhibition’s opening.