Item Falls

Constructed sets give way to virtual environments where characters’ avatars walk silently through air like zombies. The evolution of our relationship with the camera parallels the evolution of humans into animation-based cyborgs.

In Item Falls, we are peaking. We start out at a casting call, but before long we're firmly in the grip of hallucination, shedding our anxieties and evidently regressing to the animation era, a time when stunt chickens were mere chicklets. Friendly archetypes float in and out of what seems like our bedroom. The red-headed Jenny has returned, but this time she's squeaky and trusting. Unlike in Center Jenny, here our perspective is literally centered. The camera seems to be the in middle of the room, which is good, because we're too blissed out to move. Luckily, our hallucinations look directly at us.

The driving force of our trip is a producer named TK (played by Allison Powell) who seems to be coordinating auditions, which enable going from first-level basic to second-level stupid to level-center. An Adele-like figure pops in from time to time--or is she the good witch of the north? As the film progresses, the producer shows off a boy band she has purchased, and mostly they seem really gay.

Since we're having a peak experience, the big questions show up. Do we have free will? Is what we're seeing real? What does it mean to be normal? "This is not a real chair," we're admonished at one point, "We animated it. It's not really here." Nothing quite makes sense, but it doesn't matter. "One of the most significant things about my stunt chickens is that I deserve a solo," says Jenny, who continues to muse about clubs and applications, but without the fear and regret that fuels Center Jenny.

Jenny makes various attempts at logical argumentation but gets distracted by her own words. "Some of my friends believe that I should be an eagle," she asserts. "I believe that I'm grounded and that I should stay on the ground with the chicken, because chickens used to be dinosaurs. And it's a fact. One of the most elegant things about fact is that I believe in them." Her logical leaps take on a sharper edge when discussing her family. "My parents ran one of the last print magazines... I was very generous to acknowledge the things that they did. It was a very common decision to make now. I fired them." As with the rest of Priority Innfield, worries about the past and previous generations get tangled up in violent delusions. Later, a boy-band member is disturbed to notice his own armpit hair. "Oh no! Look at my armpit hair. Hence my airs, hence my synonym, hence my vibe, hence my arm!" The logical chain becomes a sort of failed genealogy. To the extent that boy-band functions as a discrete gender, the speaker appears to be worried about becoming a man.