RED FLY/BLUE BOTTLE

Aided by a young doppelganger straight out of silent film and an elderly entomologist, composer/performer Christina Campanella spins a sonic web that traces a young woman’s discovery of her companion’s deployment to a secret war and the steps she takes to make sense of his absence. Staged as a concert that unfolds within a densely layered video installation, Red Fly/Blue Bottle conjures an associative visual landscape in which objects open up in unexpected ways, revealing worlds within worlds. Tightly crafted songs emerge from an evocative terrain of found sounds, ticking clocks, and analog tone generators. Miniature noir films are projected onto floating surfaces; live and pre-made video animates still objects.

Red Fly/Blue Bottle explores the mediating effects of memory and how we use the power of our imagination to surmount that which we have lost.

Co-created by Christina Campanella and writer Stephanie Fleischmann, with director Mallory Catlett and video artist/filmmaker Peter Norrman

Production
• Premiere: HERE Arts Center, NY, 2009

• Noorderzon Festival, Groningen, NL, 2009

• EMPAC, Troy NY, 2010

“Moody, driving music…, lyrical monologues, otherworldly videos and an ingeniously eerie set…a purposefully elusive work, a poetic meditation.”
The New York Times
…Sweetly strange…a complete, unique universe…. Red Fly/Blue Bottle just might generate some buzz.”
The Village Voice
A mesmerizing fusion of performance art and multisensory installation….a compelling meditation on time and the agonies of waiting for a reunion that may never come.
New York Press
”Eye candy, fantastically creepy music, and an expert dash of steampunk fill the stage in this deliciously haunting concert… They’re a ridiculously talented group…”
Bust
”Visually stunning….striking imagery…trancelike songs. ….reminiscent of early multimedia conceptual rock concerts, such as The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, …. Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon…and Neil Young’s Greendale concerts.”
The Free George