Christopher Capriotti
A Moveable Sun
Low Fantasy
carved foam, wood, hinges, hardware, adhesive, pushpins, text on paper
There's a wounded king, well actually two, and one is more maimed than wounded. They live together in a castle on a hill with the Grail in a room between them. Neither can walk or fuck, but the Grail keeps them alive, so one likes to spend his days fishing in a little pond at the bottom of the hill. Their line is about to end, and the king that doesn't go fishing is pretty worked up about it.
The worried/maimed king tasks you with a quest to find the spear that castrated the two of them, as it's the only thing that will close these gaping wounds they've suffered.
He neglects to mention that these wounds might be self-inflicted, and that it's the spear that pierced Christ, and that he lost it in a moment of temptation in a magical forest filled with maidens who hang around all day waiting for knights to ride through.
Your reward for this little enterprise is eternal salvation, but with a good speech stat you can probably get some gold too. Plus you'll get to say you were present for the healing.
If you don't do it, you'll have to hear these miserable kings wailing all day until you get around to accepting, or leave the area.
They'll still be there when you get back though; fishing, complaining, leaking.
Accept? Decline?
24 hour looping audio
Seminal grindcore band Napalm Death was formed by a group of British teenagers in an effort to make the fastest songs ever recorded. Influenced by Siege, Crass, and a selection of other hardcore, anarcho-punk, and dbeat bands of the era, they wanted to create heavy leftist music for their friends.
The song "You Suffer" was written as a joke, asking the question "you suffer, but why?" in a brutal 1.3 second blast that could be repeated multiple times during a live set in bars and basements. It went on Side A of 1986's Scum; none of the original members stuck around long enough to appear on Side B.
That question, jokingly posed by teens with a burgeoning interest in anarchism, is actually pretty difficult if you try to answer it. It's further complicated by the power the song has gained over the years, as Scum became essential listening for the DIY punk set. Taken literally, it's existential, meaningful, a reinforcement of any ideal you can project on it. But more specifically, it implicates the listener in the identification of the inner and outer forces that work against their own interests.
In 2014, a year after Rupert Murdoch invested $70 million in it, Vice Magazine said that due to its "shithole" nature, Philadelphia had the best, and most honest, punk scene in the country. And there is a form of honesty in the opportunities afforded by cheap space: to create, to experiment, to charge sliding-scale at the door, to occupy and to use legally, illegally, and everywhere in between. That creativity, that drive, is attractive to certain outside influences; but the urgency, the need, is not.
I used to have a Napalm Death t-shirt, around that same time, and I wore it to punk shows in basements and art openings in warehouses, behind the counter at coffee shop jobs, and to all the cheap spaces my friends could rent. A lot of those places are gone now, lost to the churn of price increases, police attention, and the slow creep of the condo. There have been big changes in Philadelphia, culturally, economically, physically. The question remains the same: you suffer, but why?
In Mixed Use, "You Suffer" is slowed from 1.3 seconds to twenty four hours, reconstructing the lyrics "you suffer, but why?" into an unidentifiable, uneasy soundscape. The question now occupies time and physical space on a scale at odds with its origin, transforming into the kind of endless industrial tone that sends you searching for its source.
sawhorses, cuirass, branch, construction crayon
You're a knight errant. It's the 13th century, and you've gained fame as both a warrior and a lyrical poet.
You find the underground lair of Venus, the goddess of love; or it's someone much like her, enough so that you believe her to be divine. You live with her, you love her, you probably have a lot of sex. A year goes by, maybe more. You realize that this idea of reality, this life, is a far cry from what you used to do.
You used to be a knight in the service of god, the big biblical one, not this woman in a cave whose heyday of worship is far behind her. You long to be what you were, and you crawl back to the pope for forgiveness, a second chance, redemption.
He says no. Forgiving you for your trespasses is as impossible as his staff blossoming with flowers.
So you return to the mountains, to the cave and the woman and the fact that you've replaced one existence with another, while still acknowledging both.
It's not a bad life, really.
Three days later, the pope's staff blooms.
'sometimes you have to compromise' / even a fool learns to love
inkjet print on poly georgette silk, sewing thread, wood, wire
still image from performance
Ian (memorial to a broken skylight)
plywood, corrugated plastic, tar, gold spraypaint
fiberglass reinforced cement, steel
Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious
melamine, plexiglass, used motor oil, speaker, audio recording of
Riz Ortolani's "Cannibal Holocaust (Main Theme)"
still image from theft of a door. found object and performance.