IMPLOSION, 2011

Based on a play by Kathy Acker, this thirty-minute film is an experiment in translation, not only between mediums and formats but between decades and bodies. IMPLOSION (2011) can be seen as a continuation or exacerbation of a literary gesture initiated by Acker, who set a drama about the French Revolution in late 1970s New York City, transposing this historical content into the language and bodies of downtown punks, drug addicts and sex workers. Fahrenholz’s adaptation involves a cast of contemporary non-actors, young men who in real life spend their time in gyms, clubs and on iPhones, sometimes working as graphic designers or internet porn actors, but basically jobless and in flux. By making Acker’s punk voice return through the channel of these young bodies and in these mouths, IMPLOSION occupies and activates the gap between two New Yorks (1977/2011), in-between a hard, transgressive, bankrupt city with no future and the smooth, networked, abstract New York of today. The word revolution sounds strange again here, as it has down in the street these past months, with New York preparing itself for continued disaster in the wake of financial crisis. Shot in a high-rise condominium located near Ground Zero, the film’s actors are seen against vistas of postmodern glass curtain wall architecture and open blue sky, planning chaos and terror on laptops. These are the slim, dispersed and connected, abstract bodies of cybercapitalism, and we still don’t know what they are capable of, what they want. IMPLOSION produces an HD image of the horror and anxiety of the now, allowing us to see ourselves freshly from the perspective of the vanished punks of 1977, who seem to urge a betrayal of the present.


With: Edwin Figueroa, Ryan Lawrence, Robert Macaraeg, Murphy Maxwell, Park McArthur
Camera: Loretta Fahrenholz
Sound: Travis Houldcroft
Costumes: Inka Meissner
Music: Timo Ellis
Sound Editing: Steffen Martin
Color Grading: Kilian Hirt
Titles: Lina Grumm