2009
Video HD, 51’, 26”
Any Ever | Trill-ogy Comp
P.opular S.ky (Section Ish) submerges characters from other sections of Any Ever into an extreme poetic state where their creative limits bloom, but perhaps only on an illusory level. As the section “ish” (vs. section “a”) to the works above, the movie’s threads appear to be the culmination of situations initiated during other parts of Any Ever, but at the same time they are annexed as outcomes that might not be part of the official record. The feeling of continuing past what is normal or certain is the most pervasive, binding sensation throughout the movie; not characters themselves, but the continuance of who they were in other movies, are the lead roles. The events of P.opular S.ky are the fevered and shadowy projections of a mind being played with: Trill-ogy Comp can be taken as a human brain, and here the organ is jabbed to produce life-like illusions. Whether real or not, the situations brought to life in P.opular S.ky key the arc and understanding of the rest of Trill-ogy Comp by depicting versions of their finalities.— Kevin McGarry
Ryan Trecartin’s Any Ever comprises seven autonomous but interrelated videos. The work is structured as a diptych, with Trill-ogy Comp (three movies) as one side and Re’Search Wait’S (four movies) as the other.
The title Trill-ogy Comp freely associates with the words “trill” and “comp”—as in the musical sound resulting from rapidly alternating between two notes, or the phonetic sound produced by rolling Rs, or other iterations of linguistic tremolo; and as in “composition,” “complement,” “comprehension,” and in general, with regard to a sense of built completeness, especially in reference to music and in digital editing. This wordplay hints at the frenetic interplay within Trill-ogy Comp, as well as the role Trill-ogy Comp plays as the more kinetic half of Any Ever. The narrative development of each video follows the structuralist unity of form and content, self-reflexively building formal logics through abstraction. — Kevin McGarry
