Thursday and Friday felt like Friday and Saturday. Saturday felt like a day in limbo. Sunday felt like Saturday and Monday has felt like a Sunday. My head needs to get back in check. However i'm guessing that Tuesday is going to feel like Monday now. Confusing stuff. None the less, what an eventful few days i've had. On Thursday I went and collected my beautiful neon sign from a warehouse in Easterhouse after arriving in Glasgow to a temperature of 20c ! Unreal. I'm pretty happy with the way it looks. Went to see some G.I bits - Sacrilege (inflatable stone henge) Coloeur Cafe (the pipe factory), Karla Blacks exhibition at the GOMA and the highlight I have to say was Chernozem Kino at the Glue Factory. It was MENTAL! Awe inspiring and completely transformed a cinematic experience into an interactive one.

This little bit of blurb from the website explains a little about 85a Collectives vision

Burrowing through that dark vein of German Expressionism and Soviet propaganda films, 85A Collective, in association with The Glue Factory, are proud to present their first self-produced film: ‘Chernozem’ (Black Earth, written and directed by 85A's Judd Brucke).
Launching as a fringe event to G.I. 2012, the film has been expanded into a ‘total cinema’ experience- a hair raising Gesamtkunstwerk entitled: ‘CHERNOZEM:KINO!’
 

Quite literally taken on a surreptitious ride through a series of multi-sensory scenes from the film within a large-scale post-industrial environment, the awe-struck audience can expect mesmerizing mechanical kinetic sculptures, immersive set design, intense lighting + projection, pummeling live music, salvos of sound design and rapid-fire performance…with the terrified cinéaste ultimately ‘projected’ into the film itself! 

Basically they'd made a whole film - like a Cine Noir Steam Punk Industrial Metal Apocolyptic Totalitarian Horror Show and 13 room cinema installation in which you're quided through room by room to view sections of the film and experience the film as though you are in it.

At the start you are taken into a long corridor with about 12 others and told by dominatrix's that you are a prisoner. You are then told to put on a striped T-Shirt and a mask resembling a ghost or skeleton which you wear for the duration of the show. 

You are then told to switch on a screen right infront of you and watch the first part of the film. everyone then lines up and in pairs are dragged behind a sliding door obviously having no clue what is to come of you on the other side. On the other side a man in a striped t-shirt and a mask straps you into a carriage and tells you to hold on tight they then push you really fast through several different rooms with strobe lights going off, loud industrial noises and werewolf/monkey/gimp men running around beating planks of wood off of the floor. Quite terrifying. 

One of the most interesting uses of projection used was a reflection onto water. really still, dark black water and they projected directly onto it giving a glazed surface texture. Really beautiful. 

Anyways, I'm not going to sit and describe 13 different rooms as it's just too much, much too much. 

The bit with the witch was cool though. At one point you're chucked outside and there's a werewolf/monkey/gimp thing curcled in the foetal position at your feet as you walk out and he jumps out at you running after you and courting you to a back area where there is a fire and a video of a witch! I turned around as my sixth senses told me there was something behind me and creeping up behind us all was the witch! As she approached the monkey/gimp/werewolf thing starts fighting with her and this massive head dress pops up making her about 9 foot tall and like something from Mexicos The day of the Dead. A strobe goes off and they do some sort of ritualistic dance. So frickin cool.

Anyway.... the whole thing comes to a climax with a massive kinetic industrial god stamping its fist and insisting that we sacrifice ourselves to it. Our blood = oil. I am forced to sacrifice myself to the industrial god. The end.

Just found their show reel on line