Who: Juice Break / Fuzzy Crystals
When: Friday, August 27 / Doors @ 8PM / Music @ 9PM
Where: Spark Contemporary Art Space, 1005 E. Fayette St.
Cost: $5

About Juice Break:
Once described as “Porcupine Tree getting sexually molested by John Zorn and Bootsy Collins in outer space,” Juice Break is a band that defies definition. The Syracuse-based trio combines the sweaty, bass-driven grooves of P-Funk with the feverish experimental rock of The Mars Volta to create a fresh-squeezed blend all their own. Featuring Anthony Donofrio’s frenetic guitar, Keegan Kelly on the funky slap bass and A.J. Penizotto exploding on drums, the band’s complex arrangements, intricate riffs, and nonsensical wardrobe have the ability to render a crowd “not-so-stealthily riotous,” says Michael K. Thomas of the Syracuse New Times. The band broke out in September 2009 at the Westcott Theater’s Big Break competition, beating out over 60 bands to secure a place in the top five. Hailed by the New Times as “the most musically talented band” in the contest, Juice Break’s tight instrumental set made an impression on critics and spectators alike, spurring the band’s swift rise to the top of the Syracuse music scene. Since forming in August 2009, Juice Break has shared the stage with national acts such as Jounce, the Marco Benevento Trio, and The Breakfast. With their first studio release on the way, Juice Break is sure to bolster their already impressive resume—and break some juice in the process.

About Fuzzy Crystals:
Fuzzy Crystals started actually writing music together back in 2006/2007, but didn’t start the Fuzzy Crystals project or recording material until 2010. Look out for our ep FREE WITH PURCHASE, being released within the month. This will be their first show!

As the video first opens Markidis and trustee video companion McPhail situate themselves in front of the camera making last minute adjustments to their attire. Markidis pulls his hood over his head, and as he pushes his glasses to rest higher up on the bridge of his nose, he looks to McPhail and asks “you ready?” With that said, a jump cut exposes the two of them in what appears to be a self-induced fit of hysteria. Across the bottom of the screen a caption appears informing the viewer “these are actors, not real people.” From this point forward the validity of the emotions displayed by Markidis and McPail comes into question as we begin to wonder if we should be laughing with them or at them. The cut to camera B provides us with an alternate perspective as it reveals the artificiality of the set and the interactions that James and Ian have assembled.

After we join James for a brief road trip somewhere out West, we travel back to the studio where he repeatedly tells us we are watching a documentary. Just as the laughter in the beginning of this piece felt forced, a certain level of disingenuousness is maintained as Markidis develops a winking-type tic as he repeats himself over and over again “this is a documentary.” Contrary to what James is saying, captioning appears once again at the bottom of the screen, informing us “this is not a documentary.” Are we to believe that Markidis is telling the truth?
It s when a narrative voice over is introduced that the video begins to develop into its own catch 22. “You don’t get it. We’ll never click,” Markidis begins to explain in his voice over establishing a lack of connectivity with his viewers. “My only goal in life is to reach complete understanding. I don’t care about your understanding. I don’t care about the way you look at me or the way you understand me. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things,” Markidis continues to divulge before cutting back to the footage of the two of them in the studio. Ian’s voice places him behind the camera as he attempts to direct James positioning on set. Ian’s tone quickly escalates to a heightened level of frustration as he struggles to position James correctly within the frame. The juxtaposition of the actions on screen with the narrative we have previously listened to makes for one rather large contradiction.

Markidis wraps up his video by declaring, “This is some bullshit,” and in keeping with the theme of the video, this statement is untrue. Markidis builds a wall around himself through his use of contradictory language while his actions read as the complete opposite. Simulacrum embodies a superficiality in which his viewers have difficulty relating to. However, when Markidis brands his work and theory as bullshit, are we to believe him, or should we wait for his next eye-winking tic to suddenly develop.

-McPhail

-McPhail

-McPhail

I am writing about James Markidis’ tape, Maturation of an Artist. In this tape, Markidis reads a text over an inverted green-screen cut out of himself (famous hair being tossed in signature style), with underlaid footage of urban exteriors featuring himself and frequent collaborator, Ian McPhail. The sound scape shifts from a single voice in voice-over to a mash-up of that same voice, distorted and overlapping. The negative space of the image moves from unmotivated green screen to Takeshi Murata-esque pixelated color fields, then shifting to red-orange. At the same time, the inky outline of Markidis’ form slowly morphs to a oscillating boundary, to finally, a translucent image of the artiste himself.

Markidis’ script describes the chronology of his development as an artist. He tells us that “[his] teacher says that [his] video was the best video she’s ever seen… but because [he was] laughing when [he] presented it, she’s not going to give [him] a good grade… it makes no sense… she’s a bitch.” It would appear that Markidis hit his stride at an early age.

He also tells us that “Mr. Hallow’s an asshole… he says [Markidis is] talented at art, but, because [he] fool[s] around all the time he’s not going to give [him] an A… but it’s just because [he's] better than everyone and so [he] finish[es] quicker.” The speed at which an artwork is made has always been the hallmark of its greatness.

“[Markidis] find[s] that [he's] really upset by the bovine nature of people.” I find that I am really upset by the porcine nature of this comment, but apparently “[he] is an artist out of frustration!” (which “may seem pompous, but [he] can’t help but feel angry”).

The only place where Markidis comes close to redeeming his otherwise impossibly arrogant pose is when he suggests that there may be some reason for it: “I want my dad to move back from Ohio to live with us again… that way we can get a house.” In this one statement, Markidis paints a picture of a real boy, somebody for whom it’s possible to feel empathy.

What’s notable about all Markidis’ statements is that they all share the same adolescent tone. It’s interesting that Markidis describes this as his maturation as an artist, because his voice throughout the piece remains consistently puerile. He is petulant and juvenile from his first statement through his last. If this is a maturation, he still has a long way to go.

By Rachel Pigott

The tapes work to describe and then explode the conditions upon which a man can be understood as adequately masculine. What I mean by “explode” here is to destroy by inflating. Egan and Ferguson seek to deflate the tropes of hyper-masculinity by following them to their un-natural conclusions. Their motif is the open rejection of conventional boundaries of “bro-mo-sexuality”: Egan and Ferguson urinate and defecate near and then on one another; they bathe and caress one another, and perhaps most significantly, they talk openly about the way they feel.

One of the problems with ambitious work, however, is that it rides for a fall. And Egan and Ferguson’s work is very ambitious.

They are taking as their project nothing less than the remaking of masculinity in their own leaky, poignant, half-baked images. The work, we sense, is undertaken not only for Egan and Ferguson, but also for everyone who’s ever felt inadequate in the face of gender norms.

At its best, the diptych is an attempt to represent tenderness usually forbidden among men and boys because of the powerful prohibition against homosexuality. However, the power of that prohibition has marked the two authors/subjects of the work more indelibly than they would have us believe. In both tapes, both boys reiterate again and again that they can behave the ways they do– touching and speaking intimately– not because they desire one another sexually or romantically, but because they do not.

It brings to mind a particularly disgusting tradition of Greek Life: during initiation into fraternities, boys are sometimes asked to perform rites not dissimilar to those Egan and Ferguson undertake in their tapes– rites that push college boys into much closer proximity than they are used to. A phrase I recently learned, “No Homo,” evolved from fraternity-life. In these situations, the brothers will call “No Homo” for clarification purposes that there is no intention to promote homosexuality. “No Homo” is also used if the speaker says something that can be mistaken as homoerotic or “homo-flirtatious,” such as one guy complimenting another guy’s hair. Some argue that this phrase implies latent homosexuality on the speaker’s part, and possibly some degree of homophobia, as the speaker’s worst fear is to have someone pick up any amount of homoeroticism and call him out on it.

There is an implicit (and often explicit) call of “No Homo” in Cybernetics and Anything But That. It occurs on the level of dialogue (the boys repeatedly proclaim their sexual indifference to one another), but it’s essentially built into the whole premise of testing the boundaries of the boys’ relationship. It’s impossible not to wonder what thesis it is that they are trying to prove. What are they testing for?

Is the goal increased closeness? Is it physical pleasure? Is it a test of endurance, like a triathlon, but with events like the Wipe-His-Ass, the Heart-to-Heart, the Back-Scrub? Or are they simply trying to illustrate their immunity to one another’s charms?

The No Homo cake is taken, though, by the second to last scene in Anything But That. Clearly there is no residual erotic tissue connecting– or disconnecting– Ferguson and Egan if Ferguson responds to the prospect of a French kiss with projectile vomit.

In a culture soaked through with fear and hatred of gay men, it is hard to see beyond this aspect of Egan and Ferguson’s diptych. This is a real loss, because I don’t believe for a minute that homophobia lies at the heart of the works. I am certain that the impulse to make these tapes was a generous one, one marked with tenderness and even courage.

That homophobia seeps through the cracks of this project is not evidence that it should not have been made. In fact, the opposite is true! That even these boys, who are aware of the cost of being “manly”, have unwittingly lent strength to edify gender norms– this is proof of precisely how important it is that they continue with this work. Not to be confused, I chose to write about Egan and Ferguson’s work because for me personally, their work is the best work I’ve seen undergraduates perform.

By Rachel Pigott

Anything But That is a continuation of Cybernetics. Revamping the previous ideas and themes from it, by pushing the lines even farther. Cybernetics left the audience and the creators feeling incomplete. Although Egan and Ferguson were pushing their friendship to a level beyond previous experiences, and challenging social norms in their wake; they never reached the point where one or both felt uncomfortable. In this video they attempt to reach it through more intense experiences. Egan and Ferguson share with each other and the audience their exchange of bodily fluids in various ways and eventually attempt to kiss. Again, they try to uphold their non-sexual friendship throughout all of this, almost as proof of the oversensitivity males face with their own homophobia. The form of the video is much different than its predecessor. A voice-over of their discussion post ‘their attempt to kiss each other’ is heard, while the visuals take us through the various experiments that they attempted. Eventually the audience is brought up to speed as we finally are revealed to see where the conversation is coming from. Anything But That may be a continuation of the Cybernetics, but it may surpass it, both because the experiments are more intense and because we have some form of closure.

-Markidis

Cybernetics from Brian Egan on Vimeo.

Cybernetics is an exploration. On the surface it is simply an exploration of a friendship. But beyond that it is an exploration of the societal confines that were established as boundaries of what is considered a “normal” straight-male friendship. Brian Egan and Colin Ferguson address in the beginning of the video that they are very close and comfortable with each other; more importantly they express that outside observers consider their friendship bizarre, or more crudely: gay. So as a sort of quasi-experiment they plan to test this hypothesis to see how comfortable they can be with each other and still keep that non-sexual status between them. With ‘cybernetics’ as the safe-word. The audience is soon taken on this journey with them as one wipes the others ass, they pop each others pimples, and eventually shower together. Cybernetics seems to have very minimal edits or no edits at all, this helps to keep the authenticity of the performance. The use of humor is offered as a technique to help the audience through these series of events that often leave the audience uncomfortable; a feeling that seems to never be achieved by either Egan or Ferguson, as their comfortability actually thrives through this experience.

-Markidis