Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road)

Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) is a hybrid of stage and cinema. During the performance, a constant stream of video is projected above the cast. In scenes of prolonged silence, stillness, and impassivity, doppelgangers of the characters on stage navigate the hyper-real cinematic landscape as if lost in a dream.

While the stage characters’ specters float silently above them, the text is spoken live by the actors on stage in a way that mimics accepted cinematic tendencies and references filmic styles of performance. Constantly in “close-up,” the performer’s softly spoken words are amplified by microphones that riddle the box-like set around them. Underplayed and restrained, these conversations and monologues act as a voiceover for the accompanying images above them, while at other times complete scenes are played out solely in the world of the film, leaving the live actors silent. This continual juxtaposition of stage and cinema becomes one of compliment, complication and contradiction, suggesting multiple ways of interpreting the dynamics between characters and the incessantly shifting narrative fragments.

Part road movie, part fractured memory, part love story, Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) employs one of Temporary Distortion’s claustrophobic boxlike installations to stage the story of a man who is haunted by his past and drifting across America. There is blood across the dashboard, headlights in the rearview mirror and the vague memory of a hitchhiker who may have been a dream.