PLAN 9: George Jenne

PLAN 9
NEW WORK BY GEORGE JENNE

May 21st through June 27th
OPENING RECEPTION, Friday June 4th, 6-9pm

The plot of Ed Wood’s famously bad, Plan 9 From Outer Space, pivots on an extraterrestrial plot to sow chaos among the human race in order to get mankind to listen. The message: “Don’t build a doomsday weapon that will destroy the universe, dummies.”

In George Jenne’s mind, the deep antagonism of the last four years suggests that Plan 9 got the green light, and that the aliens are on a fool’s errand. His latest, color saturated video installation imagines this strategic chaos through an amalgam of images and a cacophony of sound. The work features a cryptic newscast, an anarchist cooking show, a man with vampiric delusions, a menacing altar, a taxonomy of conspiratorial totems, and the warbling voice of Reverend Jim Jones as he ushers his flock toward suicide.

The installation goes straight for the throat, in that each of its seven videos plays out loud, all at once. The result is at first, overwhelming. But the longer you watch and listen, the more your brain smooths out the jagged simultaneity, allowing the details of Plan 9 to become increasingly clear and disturbingly familiar.

HARVESTER (PLAN 9)