Sometimes it takes a stranger to notice just how strange a place is. When
Provincetown's Jay Critchley came to the other P-town for a four-month
artist-in-residency at AS220 early last year, he was a babe in these asphalt
woods. Now that he's about to screen four short films that resulted from the
stay -- on December 18 at 7 p.m. at AS220 -- he's gotten used to the city, but
he's still shaking his head at some of its peculiarities.
"One of the hysterical things I found was the way that partygoers are herded
around at 2 in the morning when the bars close," he says. "It's an absolutely
spectacular show. You've got police cruisers getting everyone out of the city
as fast as they can. The police are out in full force with flashing lights,
directing cars, blocking certain streets off. I don't know what they think
people are going to do at 2 in the morning."
Providence is not the subject of his shorts, just the decorative and sometimes
bizarre background. Take the derelict Masonic Temple behind VMAArts
&Cultural Center, a mecca for graffiti artists inside, with ranks of
concrete steps emblazoned like a circus tattooed man. And then there was the
installation by Michael Thompson.
"It was just the most incredible site-specific installation piece I've ever
seen," Critchley declares. "It's underground, near the capital in a water duct.
He strung up these life-size human body sculptures, floating through the space,
which is about 150 feet long. It's just spectacular. You have to go down a
little manhole cover to get into it."
That last challenge must have been of particular attraction to the artist. In
1997 he discovered an abandoned septic tank in his front yard, cleaned it out
and offered it as a summer rental -- part of his on-going burlesquing of
Provincetown commercialism. As a conceptual and performance artist,
environmental and social concerns have trumped his aesthetics, leading the
55-year-old Critchley to pull such stunts as posing as a nuclear recycling
company president who gave a pitch before a New Hampshire booster club. In his
never-ending campaign against the Boston sewage discharge that litters Cape
Cod, he made a costume of some 3000 tampon applicators that he picked up on
beaches and dressed as Miss Tampon Liberty.
Critchley's program of shorts are collectively called Providence Dirt
Newsreel -- Purchased by Love. The focus on dirt allowed Critchley to look
into both the literal and figurative underground, as in "getting the dirt on"
on some subjects. The mock-newsreel footage framework lets viewers hark back to
the naïve days of the 1930s and '40s, when such media input was accepted
uncritically -- we have to believe our eyes, don't we?
Such as in the opening shorts:
* Foxwoods Loves Roger Williams. This takes off from the statement of
the state's founder (Tom Paulhus) at the time of his 1638 treaty with the
locals, when he wrote, "It was not price nor money that could have purchased
Rhode Island. Rhode Island was purchased by love." It follows that he would be
a terrific PR-man for the casino, which was filmed surreptitiously.
* Genius Artist at Large. The spoof is about a scheme by the mayor
(Danny Crenca) to ensure recognition of Providence as the Renaissance City by
sponsoring a competition to find the creator of the next Mona Lisa.
Things grow ugly when the winner unveils a commercially appealing Mona
that upsets the crowd.
* The Chicken and the Chip. This one combines two oddities and
technological fantasy threats. Ad exec Juanita (Marcella Kroll) devises a new
venue for advertising -- commercials screened before captive audiences, on TV
monitors at Texaco gas pumps. She finds herself pursued by messages from an
escaped Rhode Island red rooster whose brain has been implanted with a computer
chip and who is now spouting Biblical prophesies of doom. This short draws from
a similar notion in Toilet Treatment, in which people on toilet seats
are subjected to commercials on TV screens.
* Providence Place Mall Prison. The camera goes undercover here,
exposing a secret Adult Correctional Institution program to teach shopping
skills to prisoners soon to be released. High school students train them in the
finer points of consumerism so the former felons can contribute to society,
paying for their crimes.
That last one wasn't ready to join the others for an AS220 screening last
month. Another short, filmed largely in Swanhurst Cemetery and involving the
local cult of H.P. Lovecraft, is still being edited and isn't ready to be
shown.
Random, spooky fun, not linear narratives or cinematographic technical mastery
is on display in these works, Critchley's first tries at making films. Even the
39-minute Toilet Treatments, which won the top shorts award at this
year's Provincetown International Film Festival, suffers from some bleached-out
images -- a contrast limitation of digital that film, with its wider latitude,
doesn't share.
"I'm not a technical person. I use technology when I absolutely have to, not
out of desire," he said, sitting at an AS220 Macintosh, fiddling with the
bare-bones iMovie program that he's been using to edit the shorts described
above, with the help of Aaron McCormack. (He also singled out Timothy O'Keefe,
who created the limited special effects.)
The artist directed and wrote the films, except for the chicken fantasy, which
McCormack scripted. In the April-through-June residency, Critchley tapped the
skills, imaginations, and resources of scores of contributors from AS220 and
the wider community. The Panic Band provided the soundtrack, Mark Anthony Brown
did the voice-overs, and close to 100 people were cited in the final credit
crawl.
"We had a workshop that met twice a week for several months, developing ideas
for scripts, collecting information about sites and things like that,"
Critchley says. "Going out on little explorations."
He came up with ideas for five short films, and there's more where they came
from.
"There's still a lot that I didn't see," he says. "But I think I found some of
the most dramatic underground places. I would've loved to have gone into some
of the underground spaces in City Hall."
Hmmm. Maybe he might encounter a subterranean river of the Mayor's Own
marinara sauce . . . . Someday, if Critchley keeps on visiting, we may just
find out.
The program will begin at AS220 (115 Empire Street, Providence) on
Wednesday, December 18 at 7 p.m. with Providence Dirt Newsreel and
Toilet Treatment. At 9 p.m., Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
will be shown, with a live improv electronic soundtrack by David Farewell, Joe
Moreau, Jonathan Vincent, Tim O'Keefe, and Kim Kazan. Admission is $6. Call
831-9327.
Issue Date: December 13 - 19, 2002
