Craig Baldwin
Tribulation 99
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm, video
Year 1978-1996
Language(s) English
Artist(s) Craig Baldwin
Running time 99 min
Films
TRIBULATION 99 (1991) 50'
ROCKETKITKONGOKIT (1996) 30'
WILD GUNMAN (1978) 19'
Description
Upon its release in 1991, Tribulation 99 instantly became a counterculture classic. Craig Baldwin's "pseudo-pseudo-documentary" chronicles factual accounts of American interventions in Latin America in the form of the ultimate right-wing conspiracy theory, mixing covert operations, ecological disasters, extraterrestrials, cattle mutilations, killer bees, religious prophecies, apocalyptic rants, and just about every wild fantasy broadcast through the artificial jaw of the modern paranoiac.
A true vortex of harsh truths, deadpan irony, and archival collages—industrial films, graphics, cartoons, Hollywood B-movies, and Mexican Z-productions—Tribulation 99 constructs a perverse and hallucinatory vision of American imperialism.
And also! Two rare works from Baldwin's early period:
RocketKitKongoKit: a kaleidoscopic collage-essay tracing an alternative history of post-colonial Congo, the CIA, and adventurous militarism.
Wild Gunman: a dense montage of cowboy iconography, advertising campaigns, and pop culture images, transposed into an interactive arcade game.