Remember the Mueller Report? Though quickly decontextualized and distorted by US Attorney General William P. Barr, the details of the report compiled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team, after over two years of investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, remain instructive. Yet what might be most important to take away is how swiftly its very grave findings were essentially neutered by Barr, in yet another example of the current administration’s penchant for misinformation.
Attentive to the ominous nature of such events, artists Rebecca Fischer and Anthony Hawley have made mining the details and redactions of the report a central component of their new (and gloriously named) project, X-Agent Destroy Monster Regimes (XDMR). Working together as the collaborative duo the Afield, Fischer and Hawley have remixed and reassembled key texts (and omissions) from the report into a 12-part graphic score that will guide a new multimedia performance work, set to premiere this Friday, October 23, at Brooklyn’s Residency Unlimited.
From sunrise to sunset, the pair, along with their daughters violist/vocalist Oriana Hawley and flutist/composer Ilaria Hawley, will present to small groups of socially distanced audience members a series of projections, live and pre-recorded sounds, and “sculptural interventions” that explore themes of misinformation, power, and the seductive appeal of populist language.
“Destroy Monster Regimes is in many ways a protest — against the current state of affairs in the US, against good old boys clubs; against conservative lovelust for Cold War Reaganism, against social media scams and fictional personas espoused by the Trump cronies; in general, against the petty thuggery of fascist monsters,” explained Fischer and Hawley (who is also a Hyperallergic contributor) by email.
Fittingly, the XDMR website compiles numerous pages from the report, alongside damning tweets and absurdist memes that attempt the humor required to cope with such entrenched corruption.
Viewers not yet ready to brave a performance in person will also be able to livestream the event from home, and peruse pages of the score, arranged in their stark elegance like so many pages of concrete poetry. Also of note, the website, designed Quinlan Maggio, will continue to grow with additional politically-themed resources, games, and more to be added following the performance. In the meantime, it directs readers to more information about how to vote by mail and (hopefully) take the first step in curtailing the powers of the misinformationist-in-chief.
When: October 23, sunrise to sunset
Where: Residency Unlimited (360 Court St, #4, Brooklyn) and online
See Residency Unlimited for more info.
