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For those of you who missed The Matrix, not to worry; Nic Nicosia's On Acting America creates a false reality twice removed. The Palermo family is deep inside Plato's cave and they are `acting' like the Anderson family from the old sitcom "Father Knows Best," and Nicosia takes on an alter-ego to direct. Spoofing the 1950s tv show, the Andersons deliver their contrived speech in a strange setting. Everything has a double meaning and the semiotic structure signs have no home base: Their living room is a train station, a dish rag is a formal dress, money is invisible and the Anderson mother doubles her role as a New York hostess. Funny, check, surreal, check, intentionally out of touch with reality, check plus.

This series wraps up beautifully with Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos. Without a doubt, this film is dated, but it manages to fit into Hickey's nebulous paragon. This visual journey into the car's detail is accompanied by the song "Dreamlover." Is it a dream? There is a strange verisimilitude to Alameda on a Friday night, but [Jean Baudrillard] would say that Friday night is the hype.

FILM AS REDEMPTION: But is it Real? Beau Monde; Towards a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism

What if you woke up to a world with only antiseptic plastic creations, a Matrix-like reality in which all that you knew was fabrication or construction? Well, Site Santa Fe's Beau Monde: Towards a Redeemed Cosmopolitanism may not restore the balance in your world, but I perceive some redemption, Morpheus--I mean Dave Hickey, curator.

Although it is limiting to pin down one theme for all six films, each comments on or tangentially relates to a false construction, what the French culture theorist Jean Baudrillard calls `hyperreality' or `simulacra.' In this hype place, we are unable to distinguish between what is true and false, real or imaginary.

The films range in length and style. The most flawless examples and winners of the Cosmo Redeemer Prizes are awarded to Ed Ruscha for Miracle and the Wilson twins, Jane and Louise, for Dreamtime.

Miracle allows us a glimpse into the day of a dirty and disgustingly filthy mechanic. We see him smoke, burp, spit and eat mayo on Wonderbread in front of naked pin-up girls. Then we see him fondle a carburetor and witness a redemption, a miracle if you will. Grease monkey evolves into angelic vision of cleanliness and a prolix chemistry. There's even a vague illusion to the transubstantiation, complete with gospel music. It's funny and unrealistic as we behold the Darwinian evolution of a blue-collar worker.

The Wilson twins clearly present us with the ontological question: Is it real? They've titled their film Dreamtime and it looks like a dream. In documentary style, the Russians are preparing a rocket launch into space, and the Wilsons capture all of the spectacle of the before and after. We see simultaneous frames as the screen is broken into four equal sections of the same event. Like the filmmakers themselves, images are identically doubled and multiplied, referencing a typology. Since the same action is photographed in two or four sequences, time is not a seamless experience. It is perplexing to place the operations on screen into relative time; hence, it feels like a dream.

For those of you who missed The Matrix, not to worry; Nic Nicosia's On Acting America creates a false reality twice removed. The Palermo family is deep inside Plato's cave and they are `acting' like the Anderson family from the old sitcom "Father Knows Best," and Nicosia takes on an alter-ego to direct. Spoofing the 1950s tv show, the Andersons deliver their contrived speech in a strange setting. Everything has a double meaning and the semiotic structure signs have no home base: Their living room is a train station, a dish rag is a formal dress, money is invisible and the Anderson mother doubles her role as a New York hostess. Funny, check, surreal, check, intentionally out of touch with reality, check plus.

Sarah Morris's AM/PM and Stephen Prina's Vinyl II both expose constructed spaces. Morris flies up high and gets down low with the Vegas Strip and its attractions, including the AM/PM store. Like Disneyland, the lights flash as the Vegas goers enter their trance of buffets and spending. Feeling slightly enlightened and redeemed, I licked up the simulacra colors and sounds in this one.

Prina's film takes us inside the Getty Museum for a micro-to-macro view of the paintings, the guards, the labels and an attractive female string quartet, which plays beautiful music in one frame, followed by a series of inharmonic chords. Prina gives us audio diarrhea amongst canonical works of art. He taints the purity of the museum, perhaps the intellectual equivalent of Disneyland or Vegas.

This series wraps up beautifully with Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos. Without a doubt, this film is dated, but it manages to fit into Hickey's nebulous paragon. This visual journey into the car's detail is accompanied by the song "Dreamlover." Is it a dream? There is a strange verisimilitude to Alameda on a Friday night, but Baudrillard would say that Friday night is the hype.

NOW SHOWING...

The following films are showing in rotation at Site Santa Fe as part of Beau Monde.

Kenneth Anger Kustom Kar Kommandos, 1964, 3 min.

Sarah Morris AM/PM, 1999, 12 min.

Nic Nicosia On Acting America, 2001, 20 min.

Stephen Prina Vinyl II, 2000, 21 min.

Ed Ruscha Miracle, 1975, 28 min.

Jane and Louise Wilson, Dreamtime, 2001, 7 min.

Photo (Grease Monkey-turned-driven chemist in Ruscha's "Miracle.")