If you feel it let it happen
Single-channel video with sound, color
39:50
2017
NOTE: Due to ongoing copyright claims, If you feel it let it happen cannot currently be publicly distributed. Please contact me directly for a private viewing link.
Bruce Conner’s 1976 film Crossroads, named after the atomic bomb test project documented in the footage the film appropriates, luckily shares its name with a 2002 Britney Spears movie. The original
Conner film is re-presented here, with each of the 15 explosions in the original being
stacked on top of each other, intercut at an increasingly rapid rate. (The final 20 minutes show
all 15 explosions nearly simultaneously, 1 frame each). Wordless excerpts from another Britney
Spears release, "Till the World Ends," are looped on top of each explosion, a latter-day answer
to Terry Riley’s iconic score.
Conner left the source film was relatively untouched, adding only the soundtrack and several
transitions. I’ve followed suit, replacing all of Conner’s dissolve transitions with helicopter-shot
tracking shots of Britney Spears on the edge of a rocky cliff (from the music video for "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman," the soundtrack to her Crossroads).