A one minute info-mercial concerning smoking, sex, cinema, advertising and the reproductive habits of fungal matter.

synopsis:

The provocation leading to this short film was a series of Parliament Lights cigarette ads that graced the advertising billboard across the street from my studio at the corner of Canal and Varick Street in downtown Manhattan, at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. These images consisted of a very simple set of elements: a man (a young lord), a woman (normally reclining), an architectural setting (Mediterranean lite - airbrushed blue+white, Photoshop seaside villa), a floating pack of cigarettes, and a gentle reminder from the surgeon general about the hazards of smoking for one's health. Each successive ad was simply a recombination/repositioning of these elements, a slice extracted from the perpetual flirtation between these two figures, updated monthly. By condensing the duration between the images from one month to mere seconds, by opportunistically reconfiguring both sequence and arrangement of each still, by compunding a sense of frustration latent in the original ads through the narration of fungal reproductive habits in French (with English subtitles moving too quickly to follow), I wanted to explore what might stem from a counter narrative to the one intended by the manufacturer. Specifically, if we all were simply having more sex, would this mean that we'd quit smoking?

screenings:

Jessica Murray Projects - "HARD TIMES: New Video Work", Jessica Murray Projects, Brooklyn, NY, 2003
Impakt - New Media Festival, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 2000
Over-heard/Over-Site - film/video screening, 74 Varick Street, New York, NY, 1999
After a Few Drinks - roaming video lounge, various bars in New York City, 1999