~the Interrogation Room, GUNZ & GIRLZ
‘QUIET: WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ – ROUGH CUT SCREENING, WHITE BOX – OCT 21, 2011 – PART 2
a young(er) ALFREDO MARTINEZ ran the shooting gallery art installation at ‘QUIET’.
it was the most popular exhibit there. mostly because it was interactive. you, meaning anybody – could come shoot big guns, under professional conditions . . . I mean even, or esp in New York City – how many ordinary city folk, incl hipsters get to . . . really play with guns.
everybody jumped at the chance. and I mean everybody, but esp (stylish) girls.
Alfredo’s self-enclosed plexiglas bullet-proof enclosure was super too. very futuristic. Alfredo designed it himself.
it cost him well over $60,000 to build. year 2000 dollars. not including the salaries for the licensed professional film prop weapons specialists, who were there 24/7 – as required by city ordinance.
(there’s some funny back & forth in the film about that, as well. the film production laws in this almost tinsel town.)
video artist FEEDBUCK conferring with Josh – in the early stages of the installation.
insider’s will catch – a really funny sequence in this edit, about the so-called budget.
FEEDBUCK, the Pseudo resident video artist – is shown chuckling . . . over that.
he says something like: “Josh had made a budget for the party, I think he spent the entire budget – the very first day” !!
meaning after that, it was just one big free fall. money-wise too. outta-control.
I remember Josh’s most frequent question throughout the entire 2 weeks: “anybody see my credit card ?
I can’t remember who I last gave it to.” famous last words.
what is it about guns ? that make them such a babe magnet ?
the chicks just lined up . . . to play with those big guns.
girlz and gunz.
more girlz with gunz. it was the never-ending story.
even Josh, of course . . . got into the gun game. nothing like being around big guns, to make you look – just like a FED !!
you can just start to make out Alfredo’s futuristic $60,000 ‘shooting’ gallery – behind him.
note: Year 2000 $$
this is what it looked like, inside. just one small section – lottsa guns. and big ones.
plus, note that FOX TV logo – yep, we made a big splash – on the local media. the Millennium, how could we not. we were the biggest, and baddest thing happening – in the entire Big Apple – at the turn of this century.
think on – that.
the Interrogation Room.
on the left, the interrogator, and he did a great job of terrorizing everybody: that was ASHKAN SAHIHI.
he was so for real. he could go work for KHADAFY – if Khadafy hadn’t just been taken down by a Yankee fan.
it didn’t help that the interrogation room was right next to the shooting gallery. even though it was soundproof – in the middle of being interrogated / terrorized – every now and then, a big gun would blast out. and the poor jerk under scrutiny – would jump. I mean, who really knew what Josh was capable of ?
yep, they did indeedy catch a big gun blast – ‘jumper’. . . in the rough cut. it’s in the next frame.
R.I.P.
JUDGECAL. aka CAL. he ran the video game consoles next to the Interrogation Room. he also ran the local Vampire branch. for real. he threw the best flat-out party, of the entire 2 weeks, the very nite before New Year’s Eve – it was absolutely and fabulously wild, ritualistic . . . and everybody had fangs. when he passed away a year or two ago, under suspicious circumstances, his friends spread his ashes on the famous Pseudo door – at the SE corner of Broadway and Houston.
R.I.P.
MARK ENGER. he’s the dude who silk screened the red or blue concentric ‘target’ circles on the uniforms of the chosen few. kind of like the anti-army hierarchy.
yeah, I had many ‘targets’ silk screened on mine.
Mark Enger is the guy who got the huge ‘Drunken Cowboy’ cameo – in the finished documentary.
Mark had big ‘targets’ for the back of the shirts, and smaller scale ones – for the sleeves and fronts.
JOSH often walked around, and M.C.d as his alter ego: LUVVY . . . the clown ? the bad clown ? how about the last man standing ?
it was an escape from the C.E.O. label, but also it was an easier and more effective way to encourage (way) bad behavior.
just compare Luvvy to Josh the Fed, a few frames above, and Josh the internet C.E.O. (previous post) below. get it ?
Luvvy’s shinning moment was when he got to judge the live sex act competition. between a straight couple,
a lesbian couple and a gay couple. the straight couple won, but the lesbo bed crew elicited one of the biggest laugh-out-loud moments in the rough cut. When the official competition monitor, a tough lady moderator type, who was helping out Luvvy, went to sit on their bed to chat them up, she immediately jumps back up, exclaiming: “it’s wet !!”
that was Luvvy in a nutshell.
we get to see ALEX ARCADIA, whinning about Josh, having trampled the “purity” of his installation. even though as an individual artist – he scored the biggest budget . . .
for his over-the-top sci fi temple . . . more fascist than Buddhist, truth be told, it was a temple to . . . what else ? Alex Arcadia, himself – with a capital A. it even had live goldfish, the big ones, carp as they are known at that point, swimming in the when finished water-filled moat !!
even though Josh paid and paid handsomely for the honor of allowing Arcadia to build a temple in honor of himself. Arcadia is seen in the film, grumbling, and burning, apparently to no avail, sage to re-purify his temple, after Josh had trampled on its “sanctity” – by using it as a ‘new age’ speech podium . . . trust me, it was an almost Star Trek moment.
p.s. the reported budget on the Arcadia temple installation was $80,000. those were the fab golden dot.com days.
the best Star Trek moment – of the party.
QUIET – be careful what you wish for. it’s closer than you think.
photographer ASHKAN SAHIHI, currently based in London and New York – who played – the notorious and chilling – ‘QUIET: WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ interrogator, is alive and well . . . and showed up – at the Oct 21, 2011 WHITE BOX screening.
on the right: the notorious performance artist – PATRICK BUCKLEW – aka – MANGINA !!
also alive and well, he also made the WHITE BOX rough cut screening this past weekend, with his companion, Sprout.
like I said: QUIET, be careful what you wish for . . .
PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH