Babylon Revisited
Warren Sonbert & Wendy Appel: Amphetamine (US, 1966, 10’, 16mm) Ben Russell: Black and White Trypps Number Three (US, 2007, 11’, 35mm) Mark Leckey: Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (UK, 1999, 15’) Barbara Rubin: Christmas On Earth (US, 1963–1965, 29’, 16mm x 2)
As night falls, the financial districts fall silent and it’s time to escape the discipline of work and money.
Warren Sonbert's Amphetamine (1966) portrays youth and free love within New York's 1960s gay subculture. In a Warhol-influenced euphoric short, young men take drugs and kiss while The Supremes play in the background.
Ben Russell's Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007) depicts naturally-derived psychedelia. Set in a dimly lit rock club, the camera turns away from the stage — where noise band Lightning Bolt performs — to focus instead on the sweating, ecstatic audience. Faces caught in stark light have invited comparisons to Caravaggio.
Mark Leckey's Turner Prize-winning Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is a found-footage essay on British club culture from the 1970s to the 1990s. The hauntological collage fuses northern soul, acid house and working-class youth fashion into a melancholic yet ecstatic flow of images.
Barbara Rubin's Christmas on Earth (1963–65), filmed when she was only eighteen, remains a landmark of feminist queer cinema. Presented as a dual 16mm projection with live soundtrack, the orgy film celebrates the city as a site of excess and transgression. Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll!
Curator: Joel Karppanen
Ben Russell will be present at the screening.