A mandala projected from the third eye of suburban back yards, cracked drive ways, and dusty VCR's. The wizards of Baltimore and Wham City deal powerful magic, we'll need it soon, the dawn of this post-postmodern age is upon us." - J. Roche

TRUE LIES and CONAN psychedelic subversive conceptual Mash-Up

Ultimate Reality is a collaborative performance by Dan Deacon and Jimmy Joe Roche that combines an intense musical composition for electronics and two live drummers (from the bands Ponytail and Video Hippos) with a psychedelic montage of Arnold Schwarzenegger films that is projected at a monumental scale. The live energy of the performance with the popular content of the projection has allowed the piece to freely move between art and music venues and grant it a wide audience of appreciation. The forty minute music composition, written by Dan Deacon, blasts from three sets of loudspeakers during performance.
Driving and cinematic, the electronic piece is accompanied by two drummers who pound a marching rhythm. The footage was appropriated by Jimmy from Schwarzenegger classics such as Terminator 2 and Total Recall to accompany the composition for Ultimate Reality. Jimmy has transformed the violent struggles of these films into a mesmerizing sequence of fantastic images where popular science fiction icons seep in and out of mirrored layers of kaleidoscopic color.
Dan and Jimmy are both Baltimore-based artists who have worked together for the past five years. Ultimate Reality represents their latest collaboration produced in their current residency at Wham City. The performance premiered at Wham City during Baltimore's Whartscape Festival in July 2006, and has since been shown at Anthology Film Archives in New York City in September 2006. It is scheduled to be shown at Corcoran Gallery in DC in November 2006 as a part of the Experimental Media Series, curated by Peggy Parsons and Paul Roth. and at The Walters Museum of Art in Baltimore in February 2007.

Previously
* more Dan Deacon