Recombinant culture is in a fractured state that oscillates between spew and blockage, chaos and control, screen and flesh--and all of this while you lounge, recline and drink yourself into a fine stupor. The crowd at the Void seemed to be in an frozen frenzy as each of the works played themselves out. 'Not from Concentrate' by Robert Attanasio played at the edge of racism and commodity that the OJ trial has brought to the foreground with a hyperbeat the crowd could really dance with. But, one must ask if this type of reprocessing of the event is too simple when faced with the complexity of the issues that the trial created. Perhaps Attanasio could have avoided straying into the seductive surface of screenal racism by reframing OJ with a specific counter-context, such as the media (white)out of the Mumia trial. Why did one case become the nexus of entertainment while the other did not?

The beat of black culture under the electronic gaze was also archived by the performance that followed, Ursula Endlicher's 'Hot Voodoo,' which again played within the state of emergency that black culture as representation finds itself in during the midpoint of the 90's. Endlicher's performance criss-crossed the issue by twisting it beyond itself and by interjecting into the old black and white filmic outtakes of jungle drums, grass skirts, and undulating dancers--the real bodies of a cuttie transvestite and a dancing gorilla which then tranformed itself into Popeye the Sailorman--who then sang 'Hot Voodoo.' Endlicher's use of cartoon colonialism to subvert the history of electronic racism played at the edge of critique and reinvention--without falling to either side easily. The tension was pushed to the limit with a spin that is unique to Endlicher's performative approach.

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