Double Lunar Dogs

Joan Jonas

1984, 24:04 min, color, sound

Inspired by the science fiction story Universe by Robert Heinlein, Double Lunar Dogs is an Orwellian vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a drifting spaceship whose timeless travellers have forgotten the purpose of their mission. To recapture memory and create a continuum between their...

Heaven's Gate

Peggy Ahwesh 

2000-01, 3:53 min, b&w, sound

Here Ahwesh employs a strategy similar to that used in her video 73 Suspect Words: against a blank screen, a metronomic procession of single words unfolds, gradually building into a cool, minimal portrait of the apocalyptic paranoia that runs through the American social body. Heaven's Gate takes up words from the Web site of the cult organization of that name, whose beliefs in extraterrestrial contact led to their 1997 mass suicide.

Spinout

Tony Oursler

1983, 16:02 min, color, sound

Spinout is an apocalyptic tale of a world spinning out of control to nowhere. Space travel, astrology, spirals, the universe, catastrophe and madness are recurring visual and narrative themes in this expressionistic theater. "Of course we're all a little scared of the dark," says Oursler in his...

The Tower of the Astro-Cyclops

George Kuchar

1994, 17:37 min, color, sound

Writes Kuchar: "A portrait of a French scientist and author who explores the heavens above and beyond the call of duty. A man unafraid to turn over the rocks that litter a terrain of terror and titillation: a terrain of things that go jump in the night and hide by day only, to re-surface in our...

What's The Love Making Babies For

Ryan Trecartin

2003, 20 min, color, sound

Trecartin's extraordinary digital manipulations reach a new level as he speculates in vivid animation about reproduction, sexuality, and contemporary moralities. Evoking lo-fi, promotional, cult-worship videos, Trecartin and his fantastically costumed collaborators manufacture an alien yet familiar reality, hyper-saturated with media. Inside this startling new video world, technophile gods argue about the future of gender and produce cryptic TV commercials, while characters deliver disjointed polemics that could have originated in ad campaigns, instant messaging conversations, or twisted episodes of syndicated science fiction.