My Word Press blog was hacked last week, which explains the spate of spam comments pushing my inbox ever-wider. I found spam-a-lot inserted into my own header.
Beckleyworks saved the day.

This is the least haunting image I can find from the film I started watching last night: the male lead trapped in an attic while bloodthirsty savages (vampires like you haven’t seen them before, see below) claw and pry the windows. I started watching it but quickly realized this was not a film for Jillian to watch alone, at night. So I’ll save it for next week’s trip to Québec City, where no doubt I’ll watch it even more alone, at night.

The snowbound “Alaskan” landscape is stunning, though the darkened town was filmed on a sound stage in New Zealand. Note to self: more footage for Snow Stories. Another snow covered landscape signaling despair, doom, and entrapment. There is no explanation so far for why the townspeople can’t simply drive away.

These vampires are more closely related in demeanor and appearance to the furious and faster frame rate zombies of recent films like 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Land of the Dead etc, than to debonair and handsome Hollywood vampires played by Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas. That’s a relief.

They resemble the original Nosferatu, or even the blind post-human cave dwellers in The Descent - batlike, with razor teeth.

Gone is the slow courtship, the stealth, the dark beauty… these vampires are messy, blood covered, and undeniably inhuman deadly monsters.

pictured above: 30 Days of Night, and Nosferatu.

Horror Stories, my new show at ThreeWalls in Chicago, opened on Friday. The Sparkling, an interactive video installation, is the highlight - shown above and below. The haunted chandelier gets eerier as visitors approach, a reference to chandeliers in films like The Amityville Horror, and also non-horror films like The War of the Roses. Thanks to the wonderful artists and administrators at ThreeWalls for all their support, especially Shannon, Lucy, Elizabeth, Andy, and Liz. Also to Josh Rose and Cesar Cornejo who helped me in New York with programming and putting together the chandelier.

Also on view are:

TV = Evil which juxtaposes little girls and TVs from Poltergeist and The Ring. Playing on a TV in a room all alone, it’s creepy.

Vamp it Up, a companion piece to Horror Make-up, filmed on the Chicago elevated train. More info about this work in my Performance section. Special thanks to Beckley Roberts and Liz Hood who secretly filmed these performances, and to Elizabeth for driving me half way around town in search of fangs, size XS.

Everyone Will Suffer, an animation featuring taglines recited from popular horror films and a low-fi animated country sunset.

Break through! I’ve been working on an interactive video installation titled The Sparkling for months - very sporadically - and it’s finally coming together. Luckily, since it’s in a show opening April 4. I was frustrated for days with the program - written by programmer Josh Rose - which just would not talk to my videos. But sleepless in Chicago at 3am I had a brainstorm and figured out the missing link. The projected video chandelier will shiver and make eerie noises based on visitors’ proximity to the image, in reference to many films - horror and otherwise - in which the haunted chandelier signals a larger presence.

Marcin Ramocki curated a show titled B I T M A P: as Good as New for vertexList gallery opening Saturday Nov 24. It sounds great, I am making a minimal animation for the show (yes still), image above. It’ll scare the pants off you!

“B I T M A P: as good as new” is proud to feature: Cory Arcangel, Chris Ashley, Mike Beradino, Mauro Ceolin, Petra Cortright, Paul Davis, DELAWARE, Notendo (Jeff Donaldson), Eteam, Dragan Espenschied, Christine Gedeon, Kimberley Hart, Daniel Iglesia, JODI, Olia Lialina, LoVid, Kristin Lucas, David Mauro, Jillian Mcdonald, Tom Moody, Aron Namenwirth, Mark Napier, Nullsleep, Marisa Olson, Will Papenheimer, Prize Budget for Boys, Jim Punk, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Eddo Stern and CJ Yeh.

A couple of weeks ago there were zombies doing yoga at the East River State Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Meawhile, the art team Praxis (Delia Bajo and Brainard Carey) posted this
video on Youtube, intervening in George Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead