Artist of the Week	Brian Milbrand by Lauren Newkirk Maynard

(photo: Rose Mattrey)

Why you should know who he is: Brian Milbrand is a video documentarian, technical director and well-known performance artist by day, and a serial killer by night. Well, in his dreams, that is. Milbrand is creatively obsessed by his vivid, terrifying dreams and uses Jungian psychology to help him transform his graphic dreamscapes into powerful, thought-provoking video and performance works. His films have been screened across the country and here in Buffalo at venues like Hallwalls, Squeaky Wheel, the Carnegie Art Center and the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. Appropriately, Milbrand is a member of the Real Dream Cabaret and was a founding member of Kamikaze—the former Buffalo art collective that performed a season of interactive micro-cinema works in 2002-2003. Currently, he is an adjunct professor of media technology and a multimedia technician at Medaille College, and he serves as technical director at Squeaky Wheel. You can see Milbrand’s work in Squeaky Wheel’s voyeuristic, interactive and perhaps even dreamy “Love and Sex: The Peepshow” art party, February 25 on the 8th floor of the Lenox Hotel.

Hometown: Buffalo

Education: B.A. in media studies at UB. “I originally wanted to be a scientist and study genetics, but then I took a basic film class in the second semester of my sophomore year and it sort of ruined my life.” (laughs) “But science and math are still really involved in what I do, like in digital and audio manipulation. A lot of the software I use involves numbers.”

Chosen media: Video, installation and performance art; watercolor (Milbrand makes vibrant, colorful paintings by freezing and diluting watercolor paint into cubes and letting them slowly melt while filming and then projecting them onscreen.)

If you were sent to a deserted island, what would you take with you? “That would be hard, given the lack of electric outlets on a deserted island. But I’d definitely take my Super 8 camera. I’ll take it anywhere, it doesn’t matter what I’m filming, I just fool around. I feel more freedom using it.”

Recent show: “Hallwalls’ Resolutions ’06 festival, a 15-act performance based on the 15-part essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, by Walter Benjamin.”

That sounds pretty academic. “It was a loose adaptation.”

How did you get started with performance art? “At Kamikaze’s monthly events. The [performances] were very much about audience interaction. I just said to someone the other day, what’s the point of performing in front of an audience if you’re not going to use them? But the first stuff I did at Kamikaze was very physical for me…getting tortured, being shocked, drinking syrup of ipecac before going out to do a one-man performance of Waiting for Godot, which I’d never read before. That was horrible.”

Describe your goals for your Real Dream Cabaret performances. “I like strong reactions. After I played “Zombie Jesus” at Trimania last year, a woman came up to me and said ‘Shame on you!’ And I was pretty pleased that she got so riled up about it…that I was doing work that made her think.”

Describe one of your bad dreams: “My dreams are terrifying. One time I dreamt about this boss I used to have who I hated. I put her in a coffin, filled it with dirt and sealed it shut. I also dream a lot about pop culture…Lost, Buffy, etc. Or horror film characters, like Michael Myers.”

Are you a horror film buff? “Oh, yeah.”

What’s your favorite horror film? “Suspiria, by Dario Argento. It’s sort of a stupid movie, but how it was shot—what he did with color was incredible and intense. I’ve totally ripped him off while painting the walls of my house.”

Current projects: Shooting people’s dreams on film, with some hand processing. “I love talking to people about their dreams. I like to work with the emotions and try to bring out Jungian interpretations…how your own psyche is involved.”

This weekend and on March 5, Milbrand also continues filming Part III of his ongoing “Claire Cycle,” a multi-phase work on black and white 16mm film depicting his dreams. Involving a central protagonist, Claire (Milbrand plays both the male and female characters), the film project deals with difficult topics like rape, abortion and serial murder. “Claire’s always the victim, but in Part III, we’ll see…she may finally get her revenge.”

How do people react to your Claire films? “It’s very much a love/hate thing. I think people got upset that, in the first two films, I was tackling some pretty serious female issues. So that’s kind of why I’m breaking away from that now.”

What’s next? “I’m going to start filming a Scarlet Letter adaptation, where I play both Hester and the Reverend. I’m having someone make me a beautiful embroidered dress. Then I’ll have other people do some double roles, like Pearl and Robert Chillingsworth.”