Various head shots of the actor Tom Cruise against the backdrop of stars in the cosmos
Online Event
14 – 15 May

Transmissions Episode 4

with Johanna Hedva

Thu 14 May 21.00 – 22.00
Fri 15 May 09.00 – 10.00
Streamed Live
via Twitch

Johanna Hedva brings Tom Cruise Studies to our Transmissions series with expert guests Vivian Ia and Matthew Miller.

Tom Cruise Studies is a meander of curiosity. There is no driving inquiry other than the question, "What's, like, up with Tom Cruise?"

Hedva considers the various roles Cruise has played onscreen and in public, from religious zealot, to cocky upstart, to a man oppressed by his own masculinity, to couch-jumping love-nut, to an exiled actor who clawed his way back into Hollywood via a maniacal obsession with doing death-certain stunts.

Joined by two expert guests, Hedva and Vivian Ia will consider the astrology charts of Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard, while Matthew Miller will share his theory that the Mission Impossible franchise is Cruise's vehicle for making public apologies to his ex-wife, Katie Holmes.

Season 1 of TRANSMISSIONS will run as weekly episodes, screened only twice: every Thursday at 21.00 and repeated on Fridays at 09.00 on Twitch. Episodes will not be archived.

Artist Bios

Johanna Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of the novel, On Hell. Their collection of poems, performances, and essays, Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, will be published in September 2020. Their essay, "Sick Woman Theory," published in Mask in 2016, has been translated into six languages, and their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, and Asian American Literary Review. Their work has been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Performance Space New York, the LA Architecture and Design Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon, as well as featured in parrhesiades. Their album, The Sun and the Moon, was released in March 2019, and they’re currently touring Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a doom metal guitar and voice performance influenced by Korean shamanist ritual. 

 

Vivian Ia lives in Berlin. Their poetry is Pushcart-nominated and has appeared or is forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Tiny Seed, The Gravity of the Thing, Fourteen Hills, and Berkeley Poetry Review.

 

Matthew Miller is a video director from Sacramento, California. He works in both live-action and animation to create short films and commercial projects. In the last four years, he’s directed a series of short films for The Getty Museum with artists and authors such as Ellsworth Kelly, Yo-Yo Ma, Mary Beard, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Ed Ruscha. He is currently in quarantine with his wife and Snoopy-esque dog, Millie, in Hawaiian Gardens, California, where he has been dividing his time between starting a garden and collecting ideas for a film project.