24th New York Queer Experimental Film Festival
The Ring (Reloaded)
Ring Reloaded Image
Peter Cramer & Jack Waters
2011, video, color, sound

Using visual and sound elements from The Ring Our Way, a ten year work in process by Jack Waters & Peter Cramer that culminated in a performance at MIX NYC in 1992. The selected material is culled from media that was never edited into the three stand-alone screening segments of the work, from material that functioned as live "B roll" in the performative multi media realizations, and from inspirational material such as studio photographs, and unreleased publicity stills from various performances of the cycle. Some visuals are manipulated to alter the figurative/narrative association of the Wagnerian context as romantic signifiers, while other elements are subtile extant remnants of their intended origin. The sound is a modification of the Wagner score following the vibrational tone physics inspired by musical/acoustical experiments of André Azevedo. The acoustic/sonic experiments of Einstein and Tesla are referenced.

Vignettes will be played on the small screens of recycled digital players; mini TV, ipod, iphone, Treo 650 dispersed throughout the space under floorboards, behind walls, to be nearly undetectable. The sound of acoustic element will function as the clue to finding the visuals as viewers may follow the sound during viewing hours. During screenings ear phones will be supplied so as not to interfere. The headsets are also available optionally for viewers who want to hear the audio unadulterated from the ambience of the venue.

Abstractly harnessing the homoerotic themes of ideal racial supremacy transposed to Riefenstahl's Massai photo shoots and James Dean photoplay stills; and the others in various performances (culminating with the Anthology Film Archives performance) with Cramer’s Siegfried opposite Jack Waters’s Brunhilde in drag where reading of sexual and racial idealism becomes ultimately transparent with the accidental removal of Brunhilde’s wig before a knowing winking audience at the line “Das ist kein man!” (“that is no man!”).