Breakdown & The Free Speech Zone - by Kasumi [deprogramming]

Breakdown & The Free Speech Zone - by Kasumi [deprogramming]

1) The Free Speech Zone (Redux) (2004)

- Name: The Free Speech Zone_ Redux_ 2004.mp4
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The veneer of American democracy twitches in its final death throes as the Church of Bush Rove Cheney, Inc. relentlessly jam their flag-waving religious sloganeering and invocation of god-like superiority down the throats of an uneducated, uninsured, uninformed public.

"We are the supreme race! We have the supreme weapons!"

Street protesters wishing to demonstrate against the zealotry of the Masters of Mendacity and Manipulation are confined – literally - to caged areas, euphemistically named "free speech zones" out of sight and earshot of average Americans who are "guarded" from the truth by the state controlled media.

"They won't win. They cannot win against the symbol of Christ!"

With ruthless calculation and Machiavellian logic, the Republican Princes of Power and Privilege have crafted a permanent war economy in order to provide welfare for the wealthy.

"It is the one and only way to maintain the supreme race!"

A fusion of multi-layered polyphonic sampling, heavy, relentless beats, and scorching satire, "The Free Speech Zone", a psychedelic Dada/techno opera, is a scathing condemnation of the American government's quest for world domination through unrelenting mind control.

"Thank you, and welcome to the apocalypse."

2) BREAKDOWN - The Video (2009)

- Name: BREAKDOWN - The Video_ 2009.mp4
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- Size: 277.1 MiB
- Duration: 0:18:21
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The New York Times called BREAKDOWN "an uproarious bricolage of alien-invasion panic, financial distress, military might and patriotic sentiment."

"...Infinite clones of the Chatty Cathy doll head is the (deceptively?) inane "unknown enemy" that mobilizes the forces of domination and greed in Kasumi's 2009 BREAKDOWN. The word "breakdown" can refer either to nervous or physical collapse, or to the structure of a point-by-point analysis. Both of these nearly opposed meanings apply. Kasumi's obsessively reworked film samples use vibrant color, visual rhythm and repetition to flesh out the abrupt juxtapositions of classic montage technique. With further sampling of sound and vocal elements stirred into the mix as a libretto, a story-line emerges from the entwining of nearly abstract, insistently suggestive elements that is nothing less than mythic: ambition, arrogance, and greed on an imperial scale rise and teeter on the precipice of hubris. Fundamentally the work is about the vulnerability of populations to disinformation and the often, corrupt agendas of those who control mass media. It is also unapologetically acerbic, bitterly funny commentary on the credulity of fools. And despite all that, much of it feels celebratory. Rich color, strong, dance-like rhythmic structure, and brilliantly inventive visual transformations inevitably convey deep sensual pleasures, as well as a sense of the thrills and spills of composition in new media; BREAKDOWN is not a downer.

Divided into four parts, the work moves with ever-increasing speed toward an uncertain conclusion. It begins with stock vintage sci-fi cosmic sights and sounds; men in lab coats have spotted the approach of what is known in contemporary art as the "uncanny" – something they hadn't bargained on, most likely feminine. Whatever -- it's a dandy excuse to dust off the mechanisms of repression and make a little moolah.

According to Kasumi's synopsis of Scene II, subtitled The Machines You Possess, "The US Government, now in the hands of the Illegal Party, puts the country on red alert: vast profits can be made from this unknown enemy." The enslaving of the American public begins in earnest. "Just so no one suspects who we really are," says a voice, abutted to a clip showing a corpse on a slab; someone unhinges the top of his skull with a squeak; cut to a woman screaming. "You better believe it," says a woman in matter-of-fact tones. Toward the end of the scene a cynical looking man in a pin-striped suit tells his underlings, "We haven't done bad, but we've got to do better. Money has to roll in." And roll in it does.

As Part 3 gets underway, images of fanatical preachers and marching shoulders begin to fade as the population falls under the spell of the united propaganda machines of church and state. A woozy man intones, "There are some things we do just because we believe in them," his speech slowed and distorted to a drunken crawl. The background now consists of painted, streaked and spattered film; everything is getting woozy. One of the few still-recognizable public figures in the opera, Bishop Sheen of late night TV, makes an appearance: "You will have your glory," he intones, with reverb and digitally-induced vibrato poured like gravy over the word "glory."

Thus, by Part 4, subtitled Breakdown, things have deteriorated. People barely have minds of their own. Some try to vote the "illegal party" out of office, but are rounded up, imprisoned and tortured. There are disasters, floods, as the government laughs. People are murdered in the streets, riots erupt. Ronald Reagan makes a cameo appearance (elsewhere he appears leading young recruits in calisthenics), recommending "Take human life." The end of the work leaves room for hope; the dolls' heads, at least, have retreated back to the interstellar void, and with them one of the pretexts for repression. But now what? The feed-back loop of history plays the same human harmonies and dissonances without end – or at least until the next comet strikes." - Douglas Max Utter