Lex Brown: The Glass Eye and Communication

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, February 14 at 7pm for two films by multidisciplinary artist Lex Brown. The evening will commence with a screening of the film Communication (2021), followed by the world premiere of The Glass Eye (2023). Afterwards, Lex Brown will be in conversation with series curator Daniella Brito. This screening constitutes the first program in the three-part series What are you afraid of? taking place at e-flux Screening Room In February and March 2023. Read more on the series here. 

Across these two films, Brown converges the language of speculative fiction with theatrical strategies like satire and dark humor to chronicle a world governed by a fictional media conglomerate called Omnesia. Set in a vaguely distant future, the people of Earth no longer exist. The catalyst for their end appears to be late stage capitalism—a lecherous force that haunts and surveils in both films. In Communication, Omnesia workers—each of whom is a character performed by Brown herself—plot the displacement of the people of the fictional city, New Framingham. In The Glass Eye, Omnesia executives “delete” a woman that uncovers a range of human emotions, thought to be rendered obsolete. Disassociation plagues characters in both films: Protagonists Jordie and Coretta each grapple with their bifurcated selves, lost within the abyss of corporate control. 

Communication (2021, 30 minutes)
In Communication, Lex Brown assumes multiple characters involved in the parodically rendered telecommunications company Omnesia, and its next target for development, the residential neighborhood of New Greater Framingham. Aspen Van Der Baas (a gen-something girlboss), Jordie (her tech bro analyst), and Sylvie (an impassive and sentient AI) use their extensive technological powers to displace the consumer-citizens of New Greater Framingham. Finding their strategies insufficient, they enlist the help of B. Marbels, a fast-talking, ambivalent film director who is tasked with creating “plotholes” to displace the citizens of New Greater Framingham. To Omnesia’s chagrin, one such consumer-citizen, Marie, discovers the power of her inner voice to interfere with the algorithmic forces of Omnesia and its plotholes. These characters, the argots that they speak, and the scenarios they play out are reminiscent of the speculative fictions of the present, but Brown’s video also questions the way that speculation (as capital) and fiction (as a constructed narrative) work. Communication suggests the many ways that we are drawn, cajoled, and coerced into “the future,” at the expense of what (and who) exists here and now.

The Glass Eye (2023)
A celebratory dinner turns dark when Coretta gets “deleted” by her corporate investors, Omnesia Telecommunications, after they acquire her database, the Catalog of Human Emotions. Her dinner disaster is just the plot of another TV episode that her body-double-bot “accounts” are enjoying until they realize they need to save her—and themselves—from a marketplace of images in this camp sci-fi noir.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility            
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.          
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.          
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.