Last Thursday I spent the afternoon at the Tribeca Film Festival watching a series of intriguing experimental shorts (some far better than others of course), and the evening at Brooklyn Academy of Music watching Trisha Brown Dance Company, whose program included a couple of pieces that are experimental, or at least were when they were created.
The reason I’d chosen the Human Landscapes series of shorts at Tribeca was that I expected most of the films to be about the landscape of the body — so kind of related to dance. But, except for two – -maybe three — all were about cityscapes — human interaction with urban environments with the focus on the latter, which I didn’t mind because I love cities.
The film that most caught my eye in the program listing was Chop Off by M.M. Serra, about a man, performance artist R.K., who sees self-amputation as an art form. At first I thought “amputation” was metaphorical, but, no no, the film revealed it was actually quite literal.