Disco Ball Funeral

Created April 2023

This project was made possible through the production and technical support of the Movement Lab in the Milstien Center of Barnard College.

Screened with live performance and installation as part of Performance Arts Course at the Undergraduate Arts Showcase in May 2023.

Disco Ball Funeral is a 7.5 minute film about the death of a romanticized, personified Disco Ball. A murder mystery, the process of uncovering the truth about Disco Ball’s death is emotionally chaotic, like any good funeral. Since his burial was improper, this piece serves as the synchreses of many different memorials that honor his life through sculpture, sound, movement, and ritual. In his physical absence, the film does not dote on his shiny aesthetics. Instead, the meaning of his life is captured through memories of Disco Ball shared in interviews, video footage of his funeral, and photographic memories from his life, alongside interpretive dance and narration that avenges his demise.

Disco Ball’s reflective and refractive nature, and his creative and connective reciprocity, guide the film’s thematic motifs that explore relationality. He is more than the sum of his audience of friends, through time-transcendent glimmers. Cliche filmmaking styles such as vlogging, public parodies, and collage are satirically employed to comment on humanity’s obsessive materiality and the cognitive dissonance of romantic idealism, particularly within patriarchal norms. Additionally, this piece is imbued with deeper meanings exploring loss, blame, insecurity, justice, closure, and memorialization through this emotionally charged mission to reckon with Disco Ball’s death, at the hands of male violence.