Bloody Brilliant: Revisiting “Curing the Vampire”
Gene Ware (L) and Tilda Swinton (R) in stills from "Curing the Vampire"
An insatiable thirst has drained global resources. Gluttony has taken its toll on the world. Vampiristic irresponsibility is on the rise.
So begins Lynn’s introduction to a series of webisodes, commissioned by the Tate Modern, entitled Curing the Vampire. Although they were produced in early 2008, in this media moment saturated with bloodsucker frenzy from Twilight to True Blood, with echoes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer still reverberating through popular culture, Curing the Vampire deserves to be resurrected (so to speak) as a call to arms for the revitalization of the world’s intellectual and creative resources.
Part podcast, part documentary, part talk show, and part call to action, Curing the Vampire uses interviews, remixed reality, and a multiplicity of spatial and temporal environments to highlight the amazing work of four individuals who contribute to global cultural capital through a commitment to innovation, activism, creative problem-solving, and sustainable culture. The hosts, Second Life-dweller Gene Ware (one of Lynn’s many, many avatars) and actor Tilda Swinton, collaborate to interview their “guests”, who are filmed in various locations and then brought in to Second Life on screens that Gene observes and interacts with in a quasi-domestic, daytime/nighttime-talk inspired set. Swinton herself also appears on a screen, having filmed her segments while in Italy, and she and Gene refrain from direct engagement with the other even as they echo each other visually. Whether the subject is Tropicália musician and Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil or genetic biologist and aging-agent identifier Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, revolutionary record-keeper Elena Poniatowska or copyleft champion and creative commons founder Lawrence Lessig, each episode combines an overview of their work with their own thoughts on power, agency, technology, and society. Basically, like its contemporary counterpart TED, it’s an antidote to an intellectual recession, which in this particular climate definitely deserves to be revisited.
As English and Comparative Literature Professor Nina Auerbach, from the University of Pennsylvania, quotes:
Every age creates the vampire it needs.
Is the converse also true? Does every age breed the cure for its own gluttonous, seductive, undermining forces? Curing the Vampire makes a strong case in affirmative. So give it a watch, and put down that Young Adult vampire novel. As Bitch magazine contributor and English Professor Christine Seifert points out, Twilight is basically abstinence porn, anyway. And that…well, sucks.
