Eve Sussman & Rufus Corporation "The Rape of the Sabine Women"
Haunch of Venison
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'The Rape of the Sabine Women' will be presented in New York for the first time since its US premiere in 2007. Over the past three years the film has toured to festivals and exhibitions internationally, including shows in London, Berlin, Moscow, Athens, Melbourne and San Francisco.
Created with Rufus Corporation, the company Sussman founded in 2003, 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' is an 80-minute allegory loosely based on the myth of the founding of Rome, in which women from the neighboring Sabine tribe are kidnapped in order to propagate future generations of Romans. Rufus Corporation re-contextualizes the myth, setting it in the 1960s, casting the Sabine women as butcher's daughters and the Romans as G-men. The film, conceived in an operatic five act structure, is set in five locations with clear metaphorical, psychological and historical implications: the Pergamon museum, Tempelhof Airport, the Athens meat market, a Case-Study style modern summer house, and the Herodion Theatre where the final fight choreography culminates. The mid-century modernist context suggests the concept of 'better living through design', inevitably doomed by the chaos that lurks just beneath that promise.
"Throughout my work I have been investigating ways to imply narrative though gesture, psychological interactions and group dynamics" says Sussman whose newest project with Rufus Corporation, whiteonwhite:algorithmicthriller, a science fiction-noir - shot primarily in places where oil is plentiful and water is scarce - investigates similar ideas surrounding the quest for the perfect future. Concurrent with the new piece beginning to tour as a work-in-progress, 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' returns to New York City for its first major gallery run, giving audiences an opportunity to appreciate the underlying subjects common to both works - desire, power, utopia, and the loss of identity.
[Image: Eve Sussman "The Rape of the Sabine Women" single channel video, 83 minute feature film © Eve Sussman 2010]
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Schedule
from September 16, 2010 to October 30, 2010