Buy a ticket to a theatre show, arrive at a nightclub, and become a part of the video installation.
Do you feel fragmented? Are you drowning in the ever-rising tide of digital content? Are you exhausted by the constant competition? Sounds like you are a perfect client for Ancient Ocean, a rehab facility for struggling with digital addiction. You are in the right place because this where Arcade Amerikana takes its audience in this multimedia production. Upon navigating Industry City, an analogue “hipster arcade,” (a complex of multiple factory buildings turned into hip offices, studios, shops, and restaurants) the audience enters a “performance cube,” the venue/installation that has been created specifically for this production. The four projections screens that form the walls are 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, two VJs synchronize video elements and a DJ mixes an original techno-infused score.
The year is 2020. The first stop on the journey is The Cube, a hip club, in which audience members can get acquainted with the environment and take selfies, drink in hand. Imagine yourself in Times Square, being bombarded by a constant stream of video, only instead of commercials you are looking at three female cast members applying makeup, walking around the kitchen or just flirting with the camera. They are present in the flesh as well, glued in place, performing a single dance move on a loop with an absent gaze. Meanwhile, the other four cast members mingle with the audience. The lighting and haze add to the club-like atmosphere.
As the bombardment of video streams and lighting effects intensifies, so does the choreography. What had started as a chill evening at the club culminates in dance madness with performers twitching and twirling under the strobe lights among the scattered patrons. This beautifully designed scene effectively combines all the elements at the production’s disposal: video art, lighting, music, live choreography, and the audience. It is at that moment when the phones go down, the eyes widen, and I can see people are taken by the moment completely. The agony of the performers reaches its peak and bang! The projection walls turn black for a few seconds. The solution to the unbearable withdrawal presents itself from the void: an Instagram-like frame featuring a serine oceanic landscape. One of the performers reaches for it and after a short hesitation presses the button, “activating” the Ancient Ocean, the retreat for the digital adicts.
After the transition to the digital rehab in the middle of a Nevada desert, Arcade Amerikana’s narrative takes off, carried by monologues, and the show becomes theatre-in-round with the audience standing against the walls. A series of short scenes introduces us to the inhabitants of the retreat and features commercials for it. Occasionally people get reshuffled by the cast for unknown reasons. Every time somebody takes me by the hand and puts me in a different spot in the circle, I experience discomfort followed by disappointment. The discomfort comes from a feeling that I am standing somewhere I am not supposed to stand or am obscuring the view. The disappointment comes from the broken promise “to take me somewhere else,” which is unspoken but presumed when a performer engages you directly. Ideally, I would expect a “one-on-one” scene to follow, or even a meaningful or puzzling sentence whispered in my ear (since the show only utilizes one space). Instead, each time, I am simply moved to a different spot. It is unclear whether the performers were trying to organize some spontaneous flow of people this way. In this case, an internal motivation to move would feel less intrusive.
I found myself unwilling to move, mesmerized by the monumental landscapes of the Ancient Ocean virtual facilities unfolding around me. The hypnotic effect is achieved by a soothing robotic voice narrating. The previously-clubbing youngsters appear on the screens, diving in pools and doing tai-chi on the beach in slow motion. The less glamorous, and more anxious, live versions of themselves share their stories of what brought them to this retreat. One of them, performed by Russell Kahn (also a producing director), asks me to take a picture of him with my phone. He critically stares at the image of himself for a few long moments as if looking for the affirmation. His loss of interest in this activity is as sudden as his request. After a sharp inhale, Kahn ventures in a rapid monologue intensely convening that he always knew that he was “the shit.” Now the projected image on the walls of the cube changes to photos of him, with ink running. As the camera zooms out, we see that those photographs are printed on paper and then applied to his body with water, forming a slowly peeling second skin.
Arcade Amerikana is full of haunting video art; you can catch a glimpse of it by looking the show up on social media. But it’s one thing to scroll through the feed at your leisure or lose yourself in a video art piece in a gallery setting, choosing to look for the amount of time you are comfortable with. Submerging oneself into the performance cube for the 40 minutes of the show is something that’s not for everybody. Growing up, I heard horrible stories of how parents would make their kids quit smoking by forcing them to smoke the entire pack of cigarettes in one sitting. Maybe the creators of Arcade Amerikana are trying to do just that? Promoted as a show created for gen Z, who would “never ordinarily attend a play,” Arcade Amerikana is both compelling and overwhelming for the same reason: visual overload.
The fragmented narrative, devised by the Arcade collective is suitable for the subject matter of the dystopian near future, where virtual addiction became epidemic. This scenario is not difficult to imagine, as occasionally it does feel that we already live in a world of “hyper reality, constant competition, and endless choice”. Arcade Amerikana invites its audience to rethink their relationship with the digital image, but doesn’t provide an alternative. Rapid cuts, camera movement and close-ups of faces flooding entire walls made me feel physically dizzy and emotionally emptied. If you feel like this is something you are immune to, I recommend checking out the show, even if just for the sake of the form: an experiment of blending a nightclub vibe with video installation art and live performances, one that is incredibly well executed. As for me, I am definitely in need of a technology detox after attending Arcade Amerikana.
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Arcade Amerikana plays at Industry City, 51 35th Street Brooklyn, through December 15, 2018. The running time is 40 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are $50. For more information visit arcadeamerikana.com.
Arcade Amerikana is devised and produced by the artistic collective Arcade. It is directed by Dulcinee DeGuere.
Arcade Amerikana is performed by Emory Campbell, Quenton Stuckey, Simone Grossman, Aarron Ricks, Russell Kahn, Lio Mehiel, and Owen Campbell.
[This review was published on noproscenium.com on 12.11.18]
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