TAKE BACK THE INTERNET
Community hang, screening, and multi-media performances
Cactus Club | MILWAUKEE
August 18, 2025
TAKE BACK THE INTERNET
Multi-media event that focuses on our relationship to Screens, seeking Queerness in online spaces, connecting the Internet to REAL LIFE, and moving through multiple Modes of Vision. All of which ask us to reconsider our relationships to screens and make The Internet fun again.
Cruising the Web (FREE Community hang)
Surf the Web together for Queer Media. Learn how to explore online archives or take the cursor and journey us into your own corner of the World Wide Web
Visiting sites like
Otherness Archive
Queering the Map
QZAP
NeoCities
Screening and Performances
A/V Performance by Taylor Dye and Deirdre Fromberg
Taylor Dye is a plunderoptics video collage artist. They use a Roland V-4EX alongside a custom Jitter patch to bathe the room in psycheprojection moving images.
Deirdre Fromberg is an improviser and electroacoustic musician working amongst experimental, free, and dance music traditions. She is an active performer in the Chicago underground as a solo artist and member of the ensemble Anti-Soul Organization.
The Chicago duo have developed their works separate and together in the Chicago DIY Scene, booking, promoting, hosting, and collaborating with artists. This is a special collaborative performance.
FREE COUNTRY
One of Milwaukee artists Gnat Bowden’s projects FREE COUNTRY is in its STING cycle.
“There is a passive programming that dehumanizes us with each death, each harm we witness and accept as earned. We accept the state and expect them to control the danger. While we construct a useful alibi and narrative that justifies our own survival.”
As a conceptual researcher their work flow is research driven incorporating Black radicalism into underground art works and spaces. From drawings they liven with soundtracks to video essays that integrate their doom disco, funk politic, Black noise music. Their video works will be integrated into their set.
"There is no safety within silence. Only a repositioning of the scope. It becomes our duty, our instinct, our programming to surrender."
"As they eventually work their way through the people you think deserve it. Sooner or later. You’ll realize what you’ve done.”
i H8 it here (w/ VJ Taylor Dye)
3 women from Milwaukee/Chicago making harsh dance music. Having made their debut on the Cactus Club stage in late 2023 the trio is once again bringing their blend of dance punk, noise, techno, no-wave inspired high energy, antic laced fusion back to the stage.
“Exhibitionists for the surveillance state. Kill all artists”
CYBERSLIME: a touring short film anthology curated, produced, and distributed by Full Spectrum Features and Henry Hanson.
2195CE: Tune in to your compound’s public access channel for a 90-min collection of short films & video art. Feels like candy and whippets at the end of the world. Tastes bloody and tender. Smells like hot fax machine, mouse pad, mac carcass, and tattered wire.*
Content Warnings:
Violence, gore, suicide, nudity, sex, substance abuse
FILM LINEUP & FILMMAKERS:
7G: The Fight Against Phones - David Leo (NYC, 2024)
7In a near future, Pascadia, an outsider in a rebellious but ultimately ineffective group of humans, is struck by lightning and transformed into a digital superwoman. Director Bio: David Leo is a transgender-American director, writer, and multidisciplinary artist from New York. He’s best known for his online sleeper hit 7G: The Fight Against Phones (2024) and his video art narrative hybrid Mommy on Drugs (2023). IG: @transmascreplica Email: davidjleo03@gmail.com
Rose Tinted - Jay Villalobos (Chicago, 2022)
Lilly is slowly transforming into a rose while being chased by a persistent bee who wishes to pollinate her. She has nowhere to run. An invisible studio audience observes her spiral. Director Bio: Jay Villalobos is an experimental filmmaker who primarily focuses on experimental films that utilize lo-fi technology such as mini DV/DVD and HI-8 handycams. She occasionally makes narrative films with a focus on the same digital and esoteric aesthetics that she utilizes in her experimental work. IG: @jdotmp4 Email: jvillalobosmp4@gmail.com
Stuck in the 90s: Episode Negative 1 - M Woods (Chicago, 2025)
The prequel nobody asked for and the reunion episode that makes you wanna kill yourself…all in one! Let’s catch up with the producer of the former hit television show Stuck In the 90s (Starring the Prom Date Fuck). Director Bio: M. Woods (They/Them/He/Him) is the principal media drug designer at DISASSOCIATIVE PRODUCTIONS www.thedigitalsickness.com. M is a Latinx, multidisciplinary artist, curator, and media terrorist based in Chicago. Their collective body of work, known as the Numb Spiral, has been exhibited internationally since 2009. IG: @numbspiral Email: disamedia@gmail.com
A Few Things I’m Beginning to Understand - Xenia Matthews (Philadelphia, 2021)
Surf the glittering channels of Xenia’s mind in this highly saturated, musical spectacular. Director Bio: Xenia Matthews is an innovative filmmaker and visual artist whose work explores personal experiences of black womanhood, the body, and the soul—externalizing what often only exists internally. Her impactful work has been selected by Sundance Film Festival, recognized by Filmmaker Magazine in their annual “25 New Faces of Independent Film'' list, and screened at programs held by Metrograph, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Gotham. In the future, she seeks to create immersive installation experiences and is currently working on her first feature film, entitled MAMABABY. IG: @glassdick Email: matthewsxenia@gmail.com
Tastes Like Pork - Dante Dammit (Chicago, 2023)
Two women meet as the result of a personal ad: an eager trans woman who wants to serve her genitalia to a cannibalistic cis woman. Director Bio: Inspired by midnight movies, pulp magazines, and punk rock, Dante Dammit has developed her own unconventional cinematic style which has been compared to the likes of John Waters and Roger Corman. Her work has been featured in several film festivals such as the Chicago Indie Horror Film Festival, Planet 9 Film Fest, and Exposures Montreal Trans Film Festival. She is a current senior at Columbia College Chicago where she co-found the collective New Rose Media. IG: @dantedammit, @tasteslikeporkfilm Email: dantedammitfilm@gmail.com
Stuck in the 90s Episode 1 - M Woods (Chicago, 2025)
Allow yourself to be transported back to now. Watch us watch you as we film ourselves watching ourselves filming you. Director Bio: M. Woods (They/Them/He/Him) is the principal media drug designer at DISASSOCIATIVE PRODUCTIONS www.thedigitalsickness.com. M is a Latinx, multidisciplinary artist, curator, and media terrorist based in Chicago. Their collective body of work, known as the Numb Spiral, has been exhibited internationally since 2009. IG: @numbspiral Email: disamedia@gmail.com
Neo New Jersey - Jennifer Marie Cella (Turnersville, NJ, 2021)
A night in the life of two blacklight gossip queens in the year 2999. Director Bio: Jennifer Marie Cella is an animator currently working out of south New Jersey. Her works tend to include mixed art mediums, queer themes, and pointy women. IG: @jcellaart Email: thejcella@gmail.com casual encounters - Austin Killips (Providence, 2025) Sean is a horny high schooler who spends all day cruising craigslist and scrolling through fetish porn on imageboards. When a stranger replies to a personal ad, Sean seizes on the chance for fantasy and reality to intersect. Director Bio: Austin Killips is a former professional athlete currently writing static words and making moving images. Some call her “an unsympathetic protagonist” doing things that are “very bad for our country.” She is interested in sisyphean things like communication and fulfillment. IG: @austin_trace Email: austin.killips3@gmail.com
eyes closed see stars - josh brainin (Chicago, 2025)
Shot on Hi8 and VHS tape, a surreal coming-of-age dance is cloaked in lace and datamosh. Two friends stagger under the influence of a mysterious elixir and crawl into Lake Michigan. Director Bio: josh brainin (b. 1997) is a filmmaker and artist based between Chicago and NYC. He holds a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago in Film & Video. Through films that blur the line between the fictional and the real, as well as through costume design and performance, josh’s practice investigates questions of youth cultures, Black/mixed racializations, masculine conditionings, and the relationship between art and its institutional settings. IG: @joshbrainin Email: studio@joshbrainin.com
Stuck in the 90s Episode 2 - M Woods (Chicago, 2025)
The Prom Date Fuck is feeling ugly and decides to go to the museum about it. Come along, you’ve got no choice! Director Bio: M. Woods (They/Them/He/Him) is the principal media drug designer at DISASSOCIATIVE PRODUCTIONS www.thedigitalsickness.com. M is a Latinx, multidisciplinary artist, curator, and media terrorist based in Chicago. Their collective body of work, known as the Numb Spiral, has been exhibited internationally since 2009. IG: @numbspiral Email: disamedia@gmail.com
The Triangular Door - Dylan Mars Greenberg (NYC, 2024)
The last survivors of an obliterated culture search for spiritual bondage in a reality show from hell. A salesman, a triangular door, a demon in the window with three faces. A miracle occurs. Shot on Super 8 film and narrated by Guy Maddin. Featuring Adam Green as the Earth's Salesman. Original score by the Flushing Remonstrance. Director Bio: Dylan Mars Greenberg is a filmmaker, video artist, musician, and performer from New York City. Multifaceted and almost entirely self-taught, she has been behind and in front of the camera since childhood, and makes music videos professionally. An absurdist with affinities for camp and horror, Greenberg has directed seven feature films, including her newest, Spirit Riser. Her video work has been featured in Rolling Stone, PAPER, NPR, and national television in three continents. IG: @dylanmarsgreenberg Email: Thisisdylangreenberg@gmail.com