LA Weekly

Jim Fetterley and Rich Bott are the L.A.-based Animal Charm, known for sublime video mashups performed live using low-end video mixers, switchers and samplers. With chunks of discarded video footage collected from yard sales, thrift stores and dumpsters as their source material, the pair cheerfully mix and mismatch everything from veterinary-training videos to nature shows and faded ’70s industrials. September marks the debut of their first DVD release, with a series of screenings throughout the city, beginning at UnUrban Coffeehouse in Santa Monica. Titled Golden Digest, the long-awaited collection features the cult favorite Sunshine Kitty, a collision of kittens, children in danger and nose swabbing, with the image snippets intercut so that viewers alternately cringe, sneeze and marvel at the brilliance of the demented mix. The more delicate Lightfoot Fever brings together leaping baby deers and a band, shot in silhouette, performing “Fever.” On their own, each of the sequences would be vaguely interesting evidence of American vapidity. Together, they become visually more complex, and the sound and music clips, cut and repeated in short bursts, form an entirely new syncopation. From their start in the mid-’90s, Animal Charm have demonstrated the power of DIY media-making and helped champion the culture-jamming ethos by refusing to quietly absorb the media around us in favor of making it into something new. Digital tools have now made this kind of manipulation de rigueur for most American teens. But Animal Charm were doing it back in the day, in analog, and their videos remain unrivaled in their sly wit and transformative power. UnUrban Coffeehouse, 3301 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica. Mon., Sept. 18. (310) 315-0056.