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INTERVIEW: Video Artist/Filmmaker Michael Tom Vassallo on GATE Philly – Tomorrow Night!
Recently, I got tuned in to GATE Philly, an experimental electronic music series. GATE is hosting an event at The Rotunda in West Philly tomorrow night. The evening, commencing at 8 pm, will be comprised of a pastiche of audio and visual stimuli from the following artmakers…
Electronic/Ambient Musicians:
AT WORK
MAD
Audiovisual Work:
MT Vassallo
Lucky me. I happen to know Michael Tom Vassallo, the video artist, who will be showing a short series of pieces from a forthcoming video compilation entitled MIND CONTROL. Michael Tom (aka MT) took some time to catch me up on this latest project with GATE and field a few more of my quasi-relevant queries. Read on…
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Who are you and where do you come from?
I’m primarily a filmmaker/video artist, but I dabble in a few other areas (writing, printmaking). I like horror movies a lot – particularly slashers – so they’re a big influence on my work: why do we (that is, I) watch these kind of violent images, what is attractive about them, why do they persist in popular media, who do we identify with on-screen and why, etc. I graduated from college last year, studying film theory and creative writing. Originally from Northwest Philly, living in West Philly right now. On that topic, I’m basically just waiting around for baseball season to start so I can go to some Phillies games and hopefully see even more chaos on Broad Street.
How did you get involved with GATE & The Rotunda?
I saw a flier for an open call for video artists and filmmakers to collaborate with the GATE series, so I submitted a few of my videos, saying I’d like to use some of my older work in combination with something new, created specifically for the event. A few weeks later I got an email back saying that GATE would like to work with me – it was as simple as that.
Tell me a little bit about this event. Are your videos playing simultaneously with the live musicians?
We went through a few different phases in deciding how the night was going to work – in the end, it was easiest for me to do a screening first, of my own work, independently. So I guess it’s arranged more like a typical show – each performer has their own “set.”
I’m showing a series of 4 short, semi-abstract, appropriated-footage videos. Together, they’re part of “MIND CONTROL,” a sort of “video album” that I’m working on putting together. It’s all of noisy, psychedelic kind of stuff. I’m screening a rough cut of the upcoming DVD.
How much of your footage and audio is appropriated? Original? Found?
Almost all of the work I’m showing was created with appropriated footage, usually from horror/sci-fi movies and film trailers. One of the pieces (using video from “Night of the Living Dead”) has original sound that I created in Logic, but the rest of the videos are entirely appropriated content. Recently, I’ve been really interested in Futurist theories of music (Russolo, etc.) – the idea of taking sounds from the environment – usually sort of hard, abrasive sounds – and re-ordering, arranging, replicating them to make “music.” Russolo used industrial sounds, as appropriate to his time; what I’m trying to do is take sounds/images from our current media “environment” to create new compositions.
Why or why not would you categorize your work as “narrative”?
The work I’m showing at the Rotunda definitely isn’t narrative – but then again, I almost always use appropriated footage from narrative feature films, so there is the reference to a narrative in these pieces. Besides these videos, though, I also make narrative short films – usually focusing around some of these same ideas of horror, violence, obsession and film spectatorship.
Currently, name one thing/idea/movement you find culturally titillating.
I’m really enjoying things in mainstream popular culture right now – I feel like we’re getting into a really interesting period for pop musicians, TV, popcorn movies, etc. – from an aesthetic and analytical/critical perspective. Specifically, I’m fascinated by the aesthetics of reality TV, Kanye West and Lady GaGa and this whole weird gender-bending glam performative thing they have going on, current media targeted at teens. If Andy Warhol was alive he would love 2009. It’s all about celebrity, but in a completely bizarre way. This is mostly the topic of my blog, at tinygems.org
How do you take your eggs?
Tofu scramble!
Would you rather be Olivia Newton John or…a fig newton?
OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN… BECAUSE OF XANADU (DUH!).
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Check out some previous pieces by Michael Tom, below…
More on Vimeo.
Written by robin on 03/19/2009 in Blog | Exhibition Review | Interview | Music | News | Philadelphia | Video
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