Doors & art installation open from 7pm.
Afterparty from 10pm: DJ set by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler and performance by Olivia Newton-Dawn.
Additional screenings:.
Wednesdays + Thursdays: 19:00–22:00.
Come and celebrate with us the inauguration of Trauma Bar and Kinos new artist video program. We are really proud to present 'THE SUMMONING OF GROOVIN’ GARY'. With supporting artwork from Constant Dullaart and Jesper Just.
As the start of our collaboration with LA curator and former Berliner Aaron Moulton, he has created our first video art show around Trent Harris's masterpiece 'THE BEAVER TRILOGY' starring Groovin Gary, Crispin Glover, Trent Harris and Sean Penn (in one of his first ever movie roles).
This film remains one of the most important and yet underrecognized hallmarks of recursive filmmaking. Seen for the first time together simultaneously, the films explore queering through a complex echo, a transcendental karaoke that reverberates across each case study. Gary’s sacred rite becomes a cinematic energy frequency. Works by artists Constant Dullaart and Jesper Just each reference the reference of the reference, rippling and metabolizing Trent’s film into a cultural ritual.
Trent Harris, The Beaver Kid, 1979
Trent Harris, The Beaver Kid II, 1981
Trent Harris, The Orkly Kid, 1985
Jesper Just, Bliss and Heaven, 2005
Constant Dullaart, Keep Me Waiting, 2013
On the morning of September 28th, 1979, a young filmmaker named Trent Harris stood outside the Channel 2 studios in Salt Lake City fixing the jam in his new video camera. He raised it up to his eye and hit record. Across the parking lot in that same moment was a guy from Beaver, Utah by the name of "Groovin’ Gary”.
Driving since dawn Gary made the pilgrimage to the big city because it was his destiny to be on television. He felt it. He wandered around the property of Channel 2 taking the odd photo while waiting for the door of TV Land to open. When Trent hit record Gary knew this was fate knocking.
Charming Trent with a serenade of his favorite Hollywood soundbytes, Gary convinced him to come to Beaver to see the talent that was happening there. Trent was forging his own unique brand of gonzo filmmaking, one that mixed John Waters camp with Utah’s aesthetics of repression. He was a one-take Johnny. Trent took Gary up on the offer knowing that it would be great material for Channel 2’s avant-garde program EXTRA which aired every Sunday.
Gary would organize the most important talent show in Beaver’s history, scheduling himself as the closing act. Gary’s best life was lived singing the songs of Olivia Newton John in a makeshift resemblance of blond wig, tight leather, and garish makeup. While getting his makeup done at the mortician shortly before going on stage, Gary grapples on camera to explain who he is and what all of this means. This would be the first time anyone would learn of his secret talent, a discovery with real-life consequences in the rural Mormon town of Beaver, Utah.
Gary would attempt suicide to avoid the humiliation that would follow. Trent would walk away from this film but it would haunt his mind from his desk drawer. In 1981 for a budget of $100 he would reshoot parts of it with the then unknown actor named Sean Penn, a performance that is spellbindingly awkward right down to the failed suicide, and again a story that wouldn’t end well either. Not stopping Trent would take his obsession further and in 1985 create a baroque dramatisation, a glorious folklore of Groovin’ Gary starring a then obscure actor named Crispin Glover. Yet another surreal and tragic tale.
This is the story of the phoenix.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beaver_Trilogy