Concurrent with its ongoing exhibition Parallel Worlds, Phase Gallery in Los Angeles presents screenings and a panel featuring several CalArtians this Saturday, Nov. 16 from 2 to 5 pm. Joining the conversation are School of Critical Studies faculty Norman Klein, School of Art faculty Scott Benzel, School of Film/Video faculty John Hawk (Art, Film/Video MFA 91), Patrick Winfield Vogel (Art MFA 22), and Margo Bistis.
The event features a selection of works from the Parallel Worlds show, which notably features new works by Benzel and new and recent collaborative works by Klein. The exhibition explores the concept of “parallel worlds,” and the oft-unfinished ways in which they can manifest—as “collage or bricolage,” data, or even invoking simultaneity. The concept finds its roots in the Gilded Age, calling to mind early sci-fi and planned cities. More from Phase Gallery:
As the philosopher Williams James observed in 1895, humans were living in a “moral multiverse” where “visible nature is all plasticity and indifference.” Today theoretical physicists are on the verge of proving James’ insight. At the same time, memes and multiverses are roaming freely inside our minds and politics. Indeed, parallel worlds are always imaginary and relentlessly tangible. They are meant to blur the fictional into the real. Of course, to what end?
The event begins with one chapter of Klein’s and Bistis’ interactive media novel The Imaginary 20th Century (2016), which boasts a database of some 2,200 images and films, maps, sound composition, and voiceover narration. Following the protagonist Carrie, she and her suitors take viewers on a trip through time and fantasy as each of them uniquely misremembers the future, allowing viewers to “puzzle out the phantom that was collectively imagined a century ago.”
Next in the program is Hawk’s “A Third of a Dollar” (2024), a 13-minute film featuring Klein as he reimagines the mysterious disappearance of Russian inventor Leon Theremin in 1938. The film was assembled around The Imaginary 20th Century, as were other works in the exhibition; Vogel’s and Klein’s installation The Secret Rise of Skunk Works (2022) is based on a new chapter by Klein, staging “threads of espionage connected to the Lockheed Corporation just before World War II.”
The third and final presentation is of Benzel’s first-person racer game Forget the Labyrinth (2024), which, per the gallery, was “birthed from Sylvia Plath’s and James Merrill’s “channeled” Ouija board poetry, digitally-scanned artifacts from the archives of museums world-wide, and data-derived imagery of impossible-to-see cosmic phenomena.”
Following the screenings and performances is a panel moderated by independent writer and critic Sabrina Tarasoff with Klein, Benzel, Hawk, Vogel, and Bistis.
Also accompanying Parallel Play are two text publications: skunkworks by Klein and Notes on Parallel Worlds by Benzel. Find more information about the show at Phase Gallery.
