everything is everything and there is nothing else

EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING AND THERE IS NOTHING ELSE

United States, 2019

Written and Directed by Marc Lafia

Stars Marc Lafia, Ellen Ko, James Burgin, Monica Sanborn, Ana Guzman, Ayodamola Okunseinde, Yvette King, Chad Raines, Andreea Mincic

Photographed by Chris Andrews, Marcus Burnett

A singe and multichannel video installation, running time: 2:20.00

SYNOPSIS

Everything is Everything and There is Nothing Else was created as an art installation performance film. The work was recorded with a live audience of 90 people on May 11th, in New York, at Nowhere Studios.

This five screen installation performance film of Everything is Everything and There is Nothing Else presents, in the guise of a travel memoir, the ancient Greeks as they moved from the ecstatic to reason, and from the mythopoetic to logos. In lending voices to plants, glaciers, wind, stars, spices, and cultural histories—he presents each as possessing unique temporal intensities. These diverse forms of time, whether prayers, history, plants, stars, paintings, or photographs, subtly dissipate, erode, and decay, at times transforming into something new or disappearing altogether.

Collaborating with Butoh dancers, mask and movement performers, a chorus, and technical design the films invites audiences to extend themselves through time and embrace the beauty and chaos of existence.

REVIEWS

Communing with this work by Marc Lafia is like a frenzied trek back to the rituals of the Greeks. In Athens, theater was a great mystery, whose secrets still remain hidden.

But imagine: if bloody bull-fighting were combined with the solemn Catholic Mass, plus a military funeral, while training for the Olympics, and on a drug trip into the center of the galaxy. The vast, political and cosmic scope of these festivities are far exceeding most contemporary theater-making–until Everything is Everything and There is Nothing Else, which propels beyond mere art and into the realm of fantastically reconstituting the weird core of reality itself.  

-A.W. Strouse, My Gay Middle Ages, poet, medieval scholar

A stunningly beautiful and expansive work, addressing both political and cosmic themes, suggesting that performance art can propel us beyond conventional boundaries and immerse us in a deeper reality.    

-Chiara Bottici, Imaginal Politics, Chair of Gender Studies, The New School