JONAH MUTONO, NOTES ON MIRROR CINEMA

"Humanity has a long-standing fascination with engineering its own destruction; a tension captured vividly in the man-made apocalyptic cinema of the late Cold War. _Notes on Mirror Cinema_ utilizes the visual and emotional patterns of films like _Miracle Mile_, _Threads_, and _The Day After_ not merely as aesthetic backdrop, but as a reflective surface. The cinematic panic of imminent annihilation, the absurdity of the countdown, and the desperate urge to save oneself under pressure act as a direct foil to my own arrival in Los Angeles. Chasing the life the city promised on screen, I found that the paranoia and claustrophobia of the cinematic fallout shelter perfectly mirrored the crushing expectations, 'arterial red' ambition, and fragile momentum of my own artistic journey. This performance translates that shared dread into a live space, framing the apocalypse not as the end of the world, but as the turbulent, necessary rupture of self-discovery." –Jonah Mutono PARTICIPANT AFTER DARK is pleased to premiere **Jonah Mutono, _Notes on Mirror Cinema_**. Released over four weeks beginning on Sunday, October 4, _Notes on Mirror Cinema_ features an in-gallery live recording of four songs overlapping with Mutono's forthcoming music album, performed within a mirror-stage installation comprised of two large-scale video projections. The first chapter, _Hope_, begins with _I'll Find My Baby There_, a ballad that centers personal experiences of living in Los Angeles, chasing the American dream. Over the next three distinct chapters, _The Washing_, _Point of No Return_, and _Apocalypse_, the film moves from the mundane and despondent toward the chaos and mayhem of an imagined rupture.