I kneel before the films of Ryan Trecartin

Ryan Trecartin is one of the most innovative young artists working with video today. Trecartin's fantastical video narratives seem to be conjured from a fever dream. Collaborating with an ensemble cast of family and friends, the 26-year-old Trecartin merges sophisticated digital manipulations with uncanny performances and footage drawn from the Internet and other media. While the astonishing A Family Finds Entertainment has drawn comparisons to Jack Smith, early John Waters, and Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Trecartin crafts startling visions that are thoroughly unique.





Ryan Trecartin’s film A Family Finds Entertainment is a camp extravaganza of epic proportions. Starring Trecartin’s family and friends, and the artist himself in a plethora of outrageous roles, A Family Finds Entertainment chronicles the story of mixed up teenager Skippy and his adventures in ‘coming out’. In this over the top celebration of queerness, Trecartin’s film mines the bizarre and endearing in an unabashed pastiche of ‘bad tv’ tropes. Cheesy video special effects, dress-up chess costumes, desperate scripts, and ‘after school special’ melodrama combine in the fluency of youth-culture lingo, reflecting a generation both damaged and affirmed by media consumption.






Trecartin describes (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me) as a "narrative video short that takes place inside and outside of an e-mail." Trecartin's intense visualization of electronic communication is inhabited by a cast of stylized characters: Pam, a Jewish lesbian librarian with a screaming baby in an ultra-modern hotel room; Tammy and Beth, who live in an apartment filled with installation art; and Tommy, who is seen in a secluded lake house in the woods. Pam, Tommy and Tammy are all played by Trecartin, who, wearing his signature make-up, jumps back and forth between male and female roles. Totally self-absorbed and equipped with vestigial attention spans, the characters are constantly communicating with one another on the phone or online. Their e-mail exchanges and Internet searches are channeled into bright animations that intersect with the "real world" locations. The story moves from person to person like a browser surfing through Web pages. Engrossed in manic electronic interactions, the characters become increasingly isolated and solipsistic.

Ryan Trecartin’s videos uncannily reflect his generation, which was raised using the Internet, digital television, and interactive video games. He mixes cheap special effects with absurd narratives in which he and his cast of collaborator-friends act out a sort of Lord of the Flies for the 21st Century. He tells sad love stories and bizarre family dramas utilizing technology to heighten the action and reflect the information overload we all experience today. In his latest work I-BE AREA, 2007, Trecartin weaves together several unruly stories with fast-moving, fast-talking characters that deal with such themes as cloning, adoption, self-mediation, life-style options, virtual identities and larger questions of an existential nature.

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Watch for yourself:

A Family Finds Entertainment

Tommy Chat Just Emailed Me

I-Be AREA

Trecartin's work has been especially inspiring and informative for me recently, and has definitely helped me to start to navigate my way through certain new ideas that I've had with regards to my own work. So yeah, check out some of this stuff if you fancy. Personally I've found his stuff to be pretty amazing so far.

OK, enjoy

TM x