Excerpt
Full Film
Maul Mauls doubles as a live action game and an exercise of both performance and cinema by positioning the camera crew in a near future world as both Surveillance team and reality TV crew. Self-surveillance and the Cult of celebrity are both considered in this maul punk science fiction about labor, the body and commodities during high capitalism. Both pieces are heavily informed by their actual sites, and thus place or site-specific-ness becomes another kind of performer or actor. From homeless encampment to the world’s first post modern mall, Horton Plaza’s history with Jon Jerde and Ray Bradbury (Aesthetics of Being Lost) inform the production of Maul Mauls. By drawing on the actual history of place/space, both of these pieces employ something I call myth-poetics or the ethno-fictional, which combines notions of documentary and fiction to arrive at a different kind of truth and open up possibilities for re-imagination.
Drawing from Ray Bradbury's texts who was a key collaborator in building Horton Plaza Mall. The film shoot doubles as live performance. Shot LIVE on location in Horton Plaza Mall, Authentic Earthlings are hired to work as Mall Mascots on a newly formed Planet X.
Labor, performance, authenticity are explored. In this scene the Maul Gang workers are at the EL PUNTO RITUAL ceremony where someone will get the EL PUNTO to get to travel back to EARTH. Featuring a live performance by the punk band cult icons, The MAUL MAULS.
*Recommended to watch in 720HD.
