Kitchen Girl

Kitchen Girl

2001 · 3 min · Comedy

In Kitchen Girl, Trecartin's frequent collaborator Lizzie Fitch throws herself into a state of total hysteria, portraying a girl who takes the childhood game of "playing house" to a dark and disturbing place. After pretending to cook dinner for her "kids," represented by colorful plush toys, she finds them lacking in appreciation of her efforts and throws them out the window. Fitch's overwrought performance is perfectly matched by Trecartin's skillful, hyperkinetic editing. Together they turn Trecartin's kitchen into a dimly lit world of mental trauma. Combining the innocuous with the malevolent, Fitch and Trecartin escort the viewer on a whirlwind tour of household dysfunction, child abuse, and isolation.

Directed by Ryan Trecartin · Written by Ryan Trecartin

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Sibling Topics (Section A)

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Sibling Topics (Section A)

Sibling Topics (Section A) · 2009

Sibling Topics (Section A)

MovieComedyScience Fiction

Trecartin returns to his conception of family-as-business-enterprise, casting parent figures as managers and executives on one end of the spectrum, estranged children as freelancers on the other. The director plays four sisters named Ceader, Britt, Adobe and Deno, the boundaries of whom are indistinct. It is difficult to tell where one sister ends and the next begins. The sisters' questing—for identity, for romance, etc.—leads them on an episodic series of adventures, several of which are defined as "premises." A Trecartin premise plays out as a predetermined situation where the character initiating it has already set the tone, terms, and trajectory of the experience in their mind. The actual, lived event serves only as the shading-in of the outline.

Roamie View: History Enhancement

Roamie View: History Enhancement · 2010

Roamie View: History Enhancement

Roamie View: History Enhancement reveals JJ as a husk of his former self, overwhelmed by too many experimental personalities and reverted to factory presets. He hires Roamie Hood's (Alison Powell) company to roam backwards through time to research an opportunity for an edit that could alter his future-present.

A Family Finds Entertainment

A Family Finds Entertainment · 2005

A Family Finds Entertainment

A Family Finds Entertainment chronicles the story of mixed up teenager Skippy and his adventures in ‘coming out’. In this over the top celebration of queerness, Trecartin’s film mines the bizarre and endearing in an unabashed pastiche of ‘bad tv’ tropes. Cheesy video special effects, dress-up chess costumes, desperate scripts, and ‘after school special’ melodrama combine in the fluency of youth-culture lingo, reflecting a generation both damaged and affirmed by media consumption.

Center Jenny

Center Jenny · 2013

MovieScience FictionComedy

The film focuses on the life of Jenny who has, according to many of the other characters, become too “left-of-center” while pursuing her interests.

Temp Stop

Temp Stop · 2010

Temp Stop, as the title implies, has a disjunctive quality that separates it from the other parts of Re'Search Wait'S. As if emanating from the basement of Any Ever, each scene plays like a hidden-away epilogue rendering characters comparatively surreal--in part because they are often straightforward and ordinary. The movie opens with a less omnipotent Y-Ready barking an abusive monologue to hypothetical subservients and bidding Able to use The Re'Search to brainwash JJ into a duplicate of Wait. Able's work alter ego, Past Jessica, is battered by her office. She is out of time, and by that extension, timelessness in Any Ever is not equated with limitlessness but with total lack: no time.

I-Be Area

I-Be Area · 2007

MovieComedyScience Fiction

Dazzling and raucous, Ryan Trecartin's first feature-length video takes cues from chat rooms, social networking web sites, YouTube, John Waters, and Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and then turns them upside down and inside out to create an entirely singular video genre. In I-BE AREA, Trecartin intertwines the stories of an incredible ensemble cast to follow a day in the life of I-BE II, the rebellious clone of I-BE.

The Re'Search (Re'Search Wait'S)

The Re'Search (Re'Search Wait'S) · 2010

The Re'Search (Re'Search Wait'S)

MovieComedyFantasy

The movie is actual market research collected by Wait for Y-Ready. It doubles as the site of Wait's vacation, as well as echoed versions of scenarios from other sections of Any Ever from which characters either reappear or are replicated here as young girls. Separately, it is a production commissioned for Voy, a pigtailed pseudo-Olsen Twin, by her prop lesbian parents. Voy moves in and out of the action, blurring the boundaries of what is inside and outside reality and fiction. There is also the spectacle of beautiful, tortured Sammy B, who promises suicide every day, broadcast online from her pink bedroom. Although her fans watch her to hate her, what they love is to see her feel, and no one will join the audience that would allow her to permanently drop out.

(Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me.)

(Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me.) · 2006

(Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me.)

Trecartin describes (Tommy-Chat Just E-mailed Me.) as a "narrative video short that takes place inside and outside of an e-mail." Trecartin's intense visualization of electronic communication is inhabited by a cast of stylized characters: Pam, a lesbian librarian with a screaming baby in an ultra-modern hotel room; Tammy and Beth, who live in an apartment filled with installation art; and Tommy, who is seen in a secluded lake house in the woods. Pam, Tommy and Tammy are all played by Trecartin, who, wearing his signature make-up, jumps back and forth between male and female roles. Totally self-absorbed and equipped with vestigial attention spans, the characters are constantly communicating with one another on the phone or online.

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Plot Front · 2019

MovieComedyHorror

A delirious movie installed inside a ghostly barn made with prefabricated materials. The oscillatory movement of the rocking chairs on which visitors sit partly helps to alleviate the syncopated rhythm of the montage and the frenzy of images that follow. A series of brassy characters in wigs and thick make-up map the various locations of the film: a lazy river, a hobby barn, and forest watchtower.

Temple Time

Temple Time · 2016

MovieComedyHorror

Shot in a former Masonic temple in Los Angeles – a five-story warren of large, cavernous rooms akin to a windowless convention center – Temple Time unfolds like a horror-movie group expedition in a campsite wasteland.

Permission Streak

Permission Streak · 2016

Permission Streak

Permission Streak opens with a question: “Can you tell the difference between a camera and a camera?” Shown in a sculptural theater that combines aspects of gymnastics and aquatics facilities, the movie jumps jarringly between a string of unrelated vignettes, highlighting the potential for encountering confusion or deception in seemingly innocuous situations. Characters perform acts that suggest community participation, but do so under the constant threat of rejection and a sense of dread permeates the movie.

Yielders Path

Yielders Path · 2015

The video displays Fitch and Trecartin's signature style of ludicrous cut-scenes and ironic hyperbole. “Yielders Path” also features swerving point-of-view shots from a quadrocopter, often focusing on ceiling fixtures with stoic reverence. The plot oscillates between mundane detail and highly saturated shenanigans, reiterated by a bazaar soundtrack that punctuates atmospheric compositions with pop music. “Yeilders Path” is presented on the ceiling of a black-curtained room, positioned with the same perspective of much of it’s subject matter. A large futon and theater seats nestled between fake plants provide an inviting viewing environment.

Spirit Riser

Spirit Riser · 2024

MovieFantasyHorror

Two sisters are thrown out of their isolation and onto opposite coasts of America by a terrifying cosmic entity. On their quest to reunite they discover their own supernatural abilities and meet many strange characters.

Mark Trade

Mark Trade · 2016

MovieComedyScience Fiction

Shot in 2013 - In 'honor, of cause fake news - less gravity here - don't bird watch with a gun - remember your dreams before they remember you : the sloppy mix, bullshit version coming near soon USA.

Ready

In Ready, Wait, played by Trecartin, is introduced as the eponymous figure of the series. Wait waits. He forsakes a "career" in favor of a "job," the execution of which Trecartin calls a "work performance." A careerist like Y-Ready (Veronica Gelbaum) may call the shots, but she is locked in her own endless narcissistic ascent, whereas Wait can retire from his job at anytime, and does, only to come back from vacation marked for containment. A third type of worker, Able (Lizzie Fitch), more fluidly adopts and discards the gestures of job and career, positing herself as a hobbyist who contrives the situations and outcomes she needs to keep her wave going.

placebo pets

placebo pets · 2016

For the tenth anniversary of W's November art issue, supermodels Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid are inducted into the futuristic world of Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. The resulting project, commissioned for W and titled "placebo pets," features the two models as ultra-domesticated, ultra-friendly humanoid creatures and performance artist and frequent Fitch and Trecartin collaborator Jesse Hoffman as their extraterrestrial "owner."

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