
Ronald Fraser-Munro's "Dschungel!" an EZTV "Off-Hollywood" movie is the first video by a new collaborative media lab called Off-Hollywood Digital. The studio/laboratory created by EZTV with KNET/World Television with technical assistance from David Fiedler, Web Developer and Robert Gelman, InterActivity. The video was the completion of year-long discussions with EZTV and London's ICA and a month long residency by Ronald Fraser-Munro at EZTV in Los Angeles. Additional support was through Digital Diaspora and the London Arts Board. On April 26th at the ICA the world of anti-fashion met the world of "Off-Hollywood" for the screening of "Dschungel!" and performance by London writer/performance artist Ronald Fraser-Munro. "Dschungel!" is a piece commissioned by the ICA pairing the two artists, L.A. video artist Michael Masucci of EZTV and Ronald Fraser-Munro resulting in the creation of Munro's story "Dschungel!" The piece is a cross between a satiric retelling of Dick Gregory's "The Watermelon Man", and Mel Brooks' "The Producers" set in Los Angeles in the near future. An evil Nazi (Zeke Heil), in 1942 is cryogenically frozen by a team of doctors & engineers in a top secret German experiment taking place in California. A malfunction in the cryogenic apparatus revives him two years early (in the year 1999) to discover that while he has retained his Hitler youth and racist ideals, that his skin has turned Black... The video takes place before his transformation as well as after and includes a cast of 30 outrageous characters ranging from "Ethyl Meatplow" band member John Napier as a drop out video phreak, to art critic Peter Frank as himself. Zeke Heil has returned in order to help fascism take over the world through music and in this first installment it looks as if the bad guys have certainly won. |
David Fielder | Robert Gelman | ICA