THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Maybe Kelley’s masterpiece, it is bonkers, an entity unto itself: a nearly three-hour movie musical extravaganza reconstructing and riffing on archival photographs of high schol pageantry – candle-lighting ceremonies, Hee Haw-style hoedowns, Halloween anarchy.  The cast includes singing vampires, neo-Nazi rappers, an extremely horny devil, a pantomine donkey, and Kabuki-faced dancers.

Fox/Tate

I wanted to create an experience akin to channel surfing.  The structure of movie musicals seemed a good way to achieve this, as they generally dispense with traditional narrative.  Musicals are episodic and contain a variety of scenes, acts and production numbers.  Musicals and pornography operate similarly: There are the popular acts, and then there’s the narrative glue that holds them together, which is generally unimportant and often ridiculous.

Mike Kelley in Welchman/Artforum