Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks Powel House Museum

What makes one history or artwork more  authentic than another? Resident artist J. Makary will work with composer Michael McDermott, the Brooklyn-based Janus Trio and a team of actors to create a new suite of site-specific narrative works on film that create oppositional dialogues between diegesis/mimesis, image/sound, history/fantasy and fallacy/authenticity. The structure of the films are informed by an expanded interpretation of printing concepts such as layers, multiples and progressive states, encouraging a frictive visual and auditory experience for viewers. Landmarks Exhibitions: Contemporary Projects, curated by Robert Wuilfe, is a program of site-specific artist projects and experimental performance in historic sites.

Paloma and Raúl in San Serriffe

Paloma and Raúl in San Serriffe is a site-specific film installation by J. Makary, created with composer Michael McDermott (Mikronesia) and contemporary trio janus. Curated by Robert Wuilfe, the exhibition will be presented at the 18th century Powel House.

A stylish and slyly humorous piece shot on 16mm film and accompanied by interventions in the museum, Paloma and Raúl in San Serriffe is a meditation on history, intrigue, experimental narrative and the biggest typography-based hoax in history. The project is influenced by both the aesthetics of 60s/70s filmmaking and an expanded definition of the artistic model of dance-for-camera. It takes its title from an enduring 1977 April Fool’s Day hoax by the British Guardian newspaper, which published a travel supplement featuring the fictional islands of San Serriffe. It described centuries of their history, politics and economics through myriad fake names based upon printing and typography terms. Visitors to Philagrafika 2010 will be especially interested in the resuscitation of this infamous prank.

Makary utilizes the San Serriffe tale as a discursive and metaphorical site through which the current Powel House space is recast as a stand-in for countless possible eighteenth and nineteenth century British colonial structures around the world. San Serriffe provides a playful but important route to a critical conception of imagination and history.