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RYAN TRECARTIN
Born 1981, Webster, Texas; lives in New Orleans, Louisiana Ryan Trecartin's video A Family Finds Entertainment (2004) is a carnivalesque, meandering narrative that chronicles the coming-out of a gay teenager named Skippy. Kicked out of his parents' house upon revealing his sexual preference, he attempts suicide, is run over by a car, and is ultimately "rescued" by a flamboyant coterie of "experimental people." The cast members— made up of Trecartin's family, friends, and the filmmaker himself (playing no fewer than five parts, including Skippy)— prance around inside a series of elaborate interiors (a style developed in his early videos from 2001 to 2003). Modeling an array of extravagant costumes, the characters include a drag diva, an androgynous dandy, a bespectacled "documentary video artist," and a group of men who are so masculine that their genitals cause them constant pain. In the spirit of filmmakers such as Jack Smith, George and Mike Kuchar, and John Waters, Trecartin orchestrates his burlesque parade of class and gender stereotypes as a hilarious send-up of conservative social and sexual mores. HH |
Still from A Family Finds Entertainment, 2004. Video, color, sound; 41:12 min. Collection of the artist; courtesy Elizabeth Dee, New York, and Q.E.D., Los Angeles
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