Rich Bott

Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.

An electronic disturbance created during a live audio meltdown by Animal Charm as part of their Hot Mirror Mix in the fall of 1998.

Recorded live on August 10th 2001, at Sidestreet Projects DTLA.