Welcome to the Rubber Room (2017)

Director: Trent Harris

Screenplay: Trent Harris

Cast: Natalie Keezer as Fatima; Dan Morley as Gary Guy; Davey Morrison as Alexis Thrill

"You gave money to a duck?"

Another Trent Harris production and the most poignant detail about this film is that, whilst an openly silly film, it has as a reoccurring reference Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (1917), a urinal that was upturned, signed and presented an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. In art, Duchamp was connected to the Dada movement, the urinal in itself creating a hypothesis whether his intention that any object could be art, causing an inherent provocation from an object that was both manufactured, and thus not unique, and usually urinated in being held on a pedestal. Whilst it is played for humour, such as a video artist having the misguided historical theory that the Nazis already existed by World War I and started it to steal the urinal, despite the "fountain" itself only coming to existence when World War I had long already started, it is poignant how much it is referenced. It is viewed in Welcome to the Rubber Room as a world shattering creation in art, with characters here trying to find the newest piece as radical in its influence as Duchamp's readymade was, all whilst having to worry that even the art gallery they might show their work in is about to be replaced with a Bed, Bath and Beyond store.

Rubber Room is structured as if three episodes of a micro budgeted television comedy, which if Trent Harris ever wanted to elaborate upon I would be more than welcome to see as, here, he hits upon a premise where he can show his best traits. That he has allowed himself to write memorable characters and dialogue and, notably, not be structured around a plot based around a mystery narrative as the other work I have seen have been, allowing him to try something different for me. Set initially at the titular Rubber Room, it is a beatnik place outside of time in the various idiosyncratic figures within it and their jive talk; that club however is not immortal as it is having its last night before being replaced with a Pottery Barn. Everyone is a stereotype of artistic minded people but you come to love them, be it Alexis Thrill, the neurotic poet whose broken relationship with a Fatima or informing bubble obsessed aliens he has no love to give is among his deeply personal work, or Small Lily, a cat obsessed artist who hangs around the guy whose literature does not use commas. There is even a bongo player - Beat Bob - who speaks as a fifties groovy cat and is in love with an artist Clover Dover who is obsessed with painting horses. I initially presumed Clover was a male actor playing a female character, or was trans, but in character has a very elaborate sexuality when Beat Bob finally pushes her to be straight forward with him the more he tries to woo her.

None of the jokes in Rubber Room are mean to art itself, but play to absurd touches and that a lot of the art feels out of time already, the "modern" Tracey Emin era of installation art going as far back as the nineteen nineties or earlier, or video art with an artist trying to sell Beat Bob a video loop of buttocks, possibly his own, to have as art in his house. Also, if anyone is going to have the piss taken out of them, Harris does it to himself, a brief tangent for a 1972 avant-garde film by a Trent Harris, involving a man's romance with a female mannequin in black and white, which no one is impressed with.

Episode One does show the absurdity that I have seen in his other work, as it is revealed Earth has been acquired by a very drunk alien (voiced by Harris himself), who intends to turn it into a tourist attraction for other aliens. The film is working on a minimal budget, so that interior is thankfully as home made as possible, with coloured cloths hanging everywhere, the floor wet in bubbling pools and bubbles floating everywhere. A lot more emphasis, even to the other films I have seen, is laid on his dialogue and comedy, and I will say now Trent Harris has a gift for it. By Episode Two, where Beat Bob has managed to gain a lot of money and decides to search for a piece of art to decorate his wall, Harris has this material down perfectly, and barring acquiring a few rooms and having some jazz on the soundtrack, he can instead rely on this dialogue and the cast instead.

Baring the abrupt cuts to the cast dancing, Rubber Room is structured as a sitcom envisioning this group of artists and beatniks, lovable figures who over presume their talent or joke about modern art. Whilst the jokes can be obvious, some are drawing from the reality of art, such as the artist who paints a canvas in just one colour with nothing else, not only evoking Yves Klein who became fixated on the colour blue, but that he did paint a (hugely tactile) canvas of one colour called Untitled Blue Monochrome (1955), going as far with his work to create his own trademarked shade of blue called International Klein Blue. Even the audio video installation of the buttocks I mentioned earlier just evokes the fact Andy Warhol made a film called Taylor Mead's Ass (1964), because he rightly realised a film had to be made of Factory star Taylor Mead's butt.

It helps that, whatever the necessary acting quality, everyone is interesting and memorable, a spark between them to stand out in a large cast of figures, be it artists trying to placate Beat Bob for a competition for prize money or the final Episode being Alexis trying to make a film against the evil corporate "crab people", literal or not, in spite of a lack of focus and the only background prop he requests being a miniature homemade volcano.

There is also a heart here. The references to places of art and culture being bought out and replaced with stores selling consumer goods is both a joke but a comment, clearly, for Trent Harris of the dangers of losing these interesting people and art. He loves them all, the characters ways of expressing themselves earnest whilst their gripes of this encroaching culture is evident and felt; it is a film from 2017 which felt it was worth even joking that there was a danger of losing this world even if, even in my neck of the woods in England going to my nearest city, there is some semblence of culture still but always a sense of this being marginalised by an encroaching store, or when a free gallery was being considered being changed into a building for wedding receptions. There is even a line mocking social workers who think painting butterflies on children's' faces qualify as an art festival which is a darker, scathing joke from Trent Harris, one that we can dilute art and culture from its raw, startling form. Remember, the film is practically worshiping Marcel Duchamp and his "Fountain", so clearly Trent Harris in his own odd way has raised the flag for the real subversives.

The result is a charmingly silly work, a further piece where I have come to really admire Trent Harris. Particularly as a film like Delightful Water Universe, whilst fun, can be seen as indulgent and too freewheeling in tone, this however is from that same position where an older outsider makes digitally shot films with full creative control, but also makes something entirely from this period which is also continually funny. Constantly hilarious and imaginative for the better.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None