Summary

Through sampling, glitch editing and pitch play, Malfunctions combines early newsreels and Harvard University science footage of actual, imminent hazards: past disasters that foreshadow present current environmental and infrastructural crises. Connecting this cinematic collage is a remix of Mae West’s intensely sexualized version of a 1913 song by Black Canadian composer Shelton Brooks, from the film She Done Him Wrong (1933). Radically slowed, West’s mournful, sensual voice transforms loss and longing into a haunting stillness played out over oddities in the news.