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Eicha: The Book of Lumenations

Calling attention to the ecology and concerns relating to physical, emotional, psychological historical and environmental disaster, Eicha: The Book of Lumenations takes as its jumping off point the Biblical Eicha, The Book of Lamentations, which sings the dirges of mourning, and laments the destruction of both Temples and Jerusalem. Tracking through desolation, misery, hope, lament and prayer, the 5-part suite homophonically re-situates the original text to the horrors and hope of the present moment.

Through a luminous threading of light, Eicha highlights how darkness is a form of light; and through palimpsested language and shadowed identity, mirror an ever-disintegrating environment, and speaks to aspects of desire and recovery in an otherwise fraught time.

The entire text was recently published in Ærotomania, The Book of Lumenations, (Lavender Ink, New Orleans, 2023), and this multidimedic translation includes shards of the original Hebrew Book of Lamenations text, luxuriously layered, bifurcated language, covid maps, election stats, alchemical cosmographies, topographies of memory, meaning, eros and being.

The video was created and performed by Karasick, music composed and performed by composer and trumpet player, Sir Frank London, with vispo by Jim Andrews, Jim Leftwich and Daniel F. Bradley. Eicha 2,3 and 4 were created in collaboration with Italian filmmaker, Igor Imhoff.

  • Adeena Michelle Karasick
    Director
  • Adeena Michelle Karasick
    Writer
  • Adeena Michelle Karasick
    Producer
  • Adeena Michelle Karasick
    Key Cast
  • Frank London
    Key Cast
  • Frank London
    Music
  • Max Drexler
    Editor
  • Marvin Davis
    Cinematography
  • Genres:
    Videopoetry / Visual Literature, Experimental, Jewish
  • Completion Date:
    August 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    10,000 USD
  • Language:
    English
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • 2023 IndieFest Award Winner
    New York
    United States
    Award of Recognition in 3 categories: Experimental, Jewish and Women Filmmakers
  • Global Accolade Award Winner
Director Biography - Adeena Michelle Karasick

Adeena Karasick, Ph.D, is a New York based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of 14 books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein) "a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick's signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work.” (Mark Scroggins). Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas, (The Institute of General Semantics Press: 2022), shortlisted for Outstanding Book of the Year Award (ICA, 2023) and winner of the 2023 Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form. (MEA), Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018) and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera; Salomé: Woman of Valor CD, (NuJu Records, 2020), and Salomé Birangona, translation into Bengali (Boibhashik Prokashoni Press, Kolkata, 2020). Karasick teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, Associate International Editor of New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, 2021 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking, and has just been appointed Poet Laureate of the Institute of General Semantics. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” is established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University. Hot off the press is Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations, and Ouvert: Oeuvre: Openings, (Lavender Ink Press, 2023).

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