EXTRAORDINARY LIVES
London Roxy Bar and Screen
Tuesday 20 November 2007, at 8pm

BOGMAN PALMJAGUAR
Luke Fowler, UK, 2007, video, colour, sound, 30 min
“Bogman Palmjaguar is a portrait of a man who after a series of disturbing events became distrustful of people and withdrew into nature. Bogman describes himself as ‘the hidden cat’ and ‘wild outlaw of paradise’ and is fighting against a diagnosis that that brands him as a ‘paranoid schizophrenic’. Bogman’s early life, and the diagnosis, subsequently conditioned his relationships with others, both within and beyond the medical establishment. The decision to take legal action to remove this label is of paramount importance to him, both as a search for justice and to seek reason in the course his life has taken over the past three decades. The film was shot across two visits to Bogman’s home in a remote village in the north of Scotland. The former was motivated by Bogman’s solicitor’s request of an independent report by Dr. Leon Redler (author and college of R. D. Laing), to assess whether the label ‘paranoid schizophrenic’ was justified. The latter was in collaboration with sound artist Lee Patterson, documenting the environment which Bogman sought to preserve during his time as a conservationist. Bogman had been passionate about the threatened habitat of Scotland’s Flow Country; a wilderness made of blanket bogs and peatlands that houses a unique diversity of wildlife. However the peatlands also became a hide-out, when Bogman fled attempts to section him. The film is a reconciliation of the young conservationist with his older self; isolated and withdrawn from society.” (Luke Fowler)

A BALLAD WITH GENESIS P-ORRIDGE AND LADY JAYE
Marie Losier, USA, 2007, video, colour, sound, 37 min
“I met Genesis by accidentally treading on her feet. I was at an opening in Soho, one of those where you can barely walk and breath and I ended up on her toes. I turned around to apologize and there she was, staring at me smiling with all her golden teeth glittering in my eyes. That’s where it all started. For a while we emailed, learning about each other more and more and one day I ended up in her house, sitting on a giant plastic green chair in the shape of a hand. Since that day I’ve been, in a way, adopted by the family of mom and pop, as Genesis and Lady Jaye call themselves, and by the whole Psychic TV3 band. I’ve been filming them at their home, waking up and going through the routine of being Pandrogynes, which is their main art work today: it’s a living performance in a way. They’ve been having plastic surgery to resemble one another, or rather to be closer to each other in order to break the binary system of male/female, good/bad … creating a third identity that is free from the rules of society. It’s been now a year since I started shooting: they took me on tour in Europe with them, to film them on the routine of the tour. My camera and myself have been totally invited to their life at the rehearsals with the whole band, at home with their favourite person, their dog, Big Boy, with friends, their daughters, going through their incredibly busy daily lifestyles between recording albums, preparing concerts, being in three bands, making art pieces for gallery shows, writing books, doing a raw food diet, shopping for mini skirts, cleaning, and growing their garden in their Bushwick house … there is a lot more I need to capture, but what you will see now is a sort of love ballad for them.” (Marie Losier)

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