Hidden Mickeys: Uncovering The Cartoon Self
Curated by Andrea Grover and Valerie Cassel
Hidden Mickeys serves as a cinematic companion program to the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston’s current exhibition Splat, Boom, Pow! The program showcases films and videos inspired by cartoon and comic book iconography. “Hidden Mickeys” references Disney’s marketing practice of hiding silhouettes of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters within their theme parks and products. Works by Martha Colburn, Michael Colton, Joe Gibbons, Lewis Klahr, Eileen Maxson, Bjoern Melhus, Tim Maloney and Negativland, and Rodney & Syd.
Somebody Goofed, 1997, Syd Garon and Rodney Ascher, 4:20
An animated version of the religious tract by Jack T. Chick.
Gimme the Mermaid, 2002, Tim Maloney and Negativland, 5:00
A new short from the band Negativland, with help from Disney animator Tim Maloney, who created this using his employer's equipment after hours. "Mermaid" combines the sound of a music industry lawyer with the voice of the Little Mermaid and Negativland's helium-tinged cover of Black Flag's "Gimme Gimme Gimme."
Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical, 1999, Martha Colburn, 5:00
A red hot collage, flat puppet animation that takes us into the world of the she spider. With webs that catch the closest recreation of an arachnophile's nightmare. With eight legged dance numbers set to a wickedly warped sound track by Jad Fair, J. Willett, and Red Balune. Filmed in Arachnovision Super 8.
Martha Colburn: As a self-taught filmmaker from Baltimore, Martha Colburn has completed over 35 films since 1994. She has toured the US and Europe with her "Helmo" projector and was featured in the New York Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Cinematheque's Big As Life, 8mm retrospective. Her two films, "Spiders in Love" and "There's a Pervert in Our Pool!", appeared as part of The Frontier Program at the Sundance Film Festival 2000. Her work is largely hand colored, corrupted collage animation and features musical and spoken-word scores by The Dramatics, The Jaunties, Jad Fair, Jason Willett and 99 Hooker. Colburn lives and works in Amsterdam.
Blue Moon, 1997, Bjoern Melhus, 5:00
The artist dressed as a Smurf with the voice of Elvis Presley.
Bjoern Melhus, born 1966 in Kirchheim/Teck, Germany, studied film/video at the Braunschweig School of Arts (1990-1997) and recieved a DAAD fellowship for the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles 1997-1998. From 2001-2002 he was in residency in New York at the ISCP.1. His work will be included in an exhibit titled “The American Effect” curated by Lawrence Rinder at The Whitney Museum of American Art opening July 2003.
Puppy Love, 2002, Michael Colton, 1:00
This improvisational short, starring a bull terrier named Punchie, was created in the offices of the Modern Humorist.
Michael Colton studied English at Harvard and worked as a journalist for Washington Post. He is the author of My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush, and the co-creator or Modern Humorist (www.modernhumorist.com), an award-winning comedy web magazine with writers from The Simpsons, The Onion, Saturday Night Live, Playboy and others.
Pony Glass, 1997, Lewis Klahr, 14:30
PONY GLASS is the story of comic book character Jimmy Olsen's secret life. In this 15-minute cutout animation Superman's pal embarks on his most adult adventure ever as he navigates the treacherous shoals of early '60s romance trying to resolve a sexual identity crisis of epic proportions. A three-act melodrama - each act has its own song - filmed in my signature collage style that "unmasks" our collective iconic inheritance as Americans while significantly expanding the notion of what a music video can do.
"Klahr cruises the elysian backstreets of childhood comic books to make a set of 'musicals' ripened by blue-eyed melos and soul-searching psychodrama. Cub reporter Jimmy Olsen proves to be a pony of a different stripe and a man of steel as he ascends beyond good and evil in this bittersweet bildungsroman." - Mark McElhatten, New York Film Festival
"Less fussy and far more transgressive than his previous work, Klahr's collage animation PONY GLASS makes comic-book hero Jimmy Olsen the locus of desperate anxieties about sexuality and race. The film is so charged with fear and desire that a simple iris down to black made the hair stand up on the back of my neck." - Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
Master collagist Lewis Klahr has been making films since 1977. He is known for his uniquely idiosyncratic experimental films and cutout animations which have been screened extensively in the United States and Europe. One-person shows of his work have appeared across the country including at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum (New York), the Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Museum of Fine Art (Boston).His grants include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and New York State Council for the Arts, The Jerome Foundation, and Creative Capital.
Three Untitled Shorts, 2001-2003, Eileen Maxson, 6:00
Maxson combines Disney animated cartoons with soundtracks from other, less two dimensional sources.
Eileen Maxson is a graduate of University of Houston, and currently works as Media Arts Coordinator for FotoFest. Her videos have screened at festivals around the country including New York Underground Film Festival, and LadyFest. She was included in the first ever Best of Aurora Picture Show program.
Multiple Barbie, 1998, Joe Gibbons, 9:00
Shot in pixelvision, Multiple Barbie features the artist as a smooth-talking psychoanlayst imploring the silent doll to explore her multiple personalities in order to purge their power from her psyche. Included in Whitney Biennial 2002.
Joe Gibbons's dry humor comes across in obsessive monologues that scrape the bottom of a monomaniacal mind—spilling forth with fantasies of power, destruction, and death. In his tapes, the hand-held camera allows Gibbons's alter-ego to surface as he gives vent to tyrannical rants that comically invert social values. He has recently screened his work at the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, Museum Of Modern Art, and on PBS. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a Creative Capital grant. Gibbons’s most recent project is a 60 minute autobiographical film titled “Confessions of a Sociopath”.
