Video

Your High Imperial

Kenneth Doren

2000, 17:00 minutes, colour, English

TAPECODE 611.04

Your High Imperial has a duration of seventeen minutes with music composed by Kenneth Doren who also developed the concept. The libretto developed by Christina Willings forms disparate sexual and political text inpired by the biblical Songs of Soloman, George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and the Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer) which served as a guidebook for Insquisitors during the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. This is a digital video opera based on the compositionsof J.S. Bach's organ music and Guiseppe Tartini's The Devil's Sonata form the digitally recomposed music that is transcribed for a brass quintet and two violins for a live rendition. Two opera singers, Christina Willings and Maman (a man in drag) perform the libretto in a number of different costumes and settings. Clips of the opera singers are combined and edited with a video performance of Bizet's symbolic Carmen to create a visual and musical collage while also being intellectually slippery. The opera creates a visually pulsing new musing on the selected text while penetrating traditional musical and theatrical methods with the use of technology.

Rental and Sales

Single Screening Rental

$190.00

Educational Purchase DVD (Bluray +$15)

$260.00

5 Year Educational Streaming License, Digital File with DVD Circulation Copy

$550.00

Gallery Exhibition and Installation, complete Media Request form for quote

Institutional Archival Acquisition, complete Media Request form for quote

Curators and programmers, please contact distribution@vtape.org to receive a login and password to preview Vtape titles online.

Screening and exhibition rentals and archival acquisitions include public performance rights; educational purchases or licenses include rights for classroom screenings and library circulation. When placing an order the customer agrees to our general online terms and conditions. Payment (or a purchase order number) and a signed licensing agreement must be received before media can be shipped to the client.

Critical Writing

Your High Imperial: Performance by Kenneth Doren
by Kristin Evenden. Artichoke, Spring 2001, v. 13, no. 1.
Kenneth Doren
by Zoe Williams.