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i watched @ensemblethingNY's new zoom piece SubtracTTTTTTTTT (with Comet's @gelseybell and @paulfpinto) last night and was blown away; it's happening again live tonight and sunday at 6pm EST. https://twitter.com/ensemblethingNY/status/1253804543177080832
it's weird and hilarious and soulful and uncompromising, high/low and pop and now and avant-garde, all things thingNY does so well. but most vitally was absolutely thrilling to see artists skillfully responding and adapting to both the moment and the form.
obviously i'm a big believer in making any and all archival videos of theater widely and freely available; but that feels to me like a distinct form of documentation, an artifact of something once alive, interesting and potentially moving but not fully *the thing*.
this had the excitement of live performance (the preshow banter was great), but was clearly not just live capture; it was designed for the medium, with excellent sound and video craft, and most vitally content that was dictated by the form itself; a wild inversion.
all of this set it apart from live capture, and from the DIY iphone aesthetic, which i love, but again feels like a distinct form: quick and sparkling morsels, freely available here and on youtube/tiktok etc, created by people who are *really good* at that form.
but it also had a spontaneity and rawness/liveness that kept it distinct from film/tv, which of course has been around for decades and also has a ton of people who are really really good at making it.
to be honest i'm a little weary/wary of internet performance that sits in an uncomfortable and sometimes hasty middle ground between live capture/archive, tiktok, and film. but this was the first time i've felt a little less bleak about the prospects of zoomformance.
anyway, give it a watch!
