Neuromancer… with Porn Star Sasha Grey as Molly

It’s a play… no it’s a reading… no it’s… hard to tell.  But on November 22, from noon to 6 pm, the New Museum in NYC is doing some sort of cool six hour Neuromancer thing that they describe thusly:

"An ambitious new work by Brody Condon, Case is a contemporary adaptation of the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. Combining Gibson’s 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction, faux ‘virtual reality’ scenes will unfold via moving Bauhaus-inspired sculptural props accompanied by the Gamelan ensemble Dharma Swara." Full post here

According to the io9 posting that first hipped me to the event: "Creator Brody Condon wrote to us, and said, ‘The performance event… occurring at the new museum is a deadpan reading of Gibson’s reading, not a theatre piece.’

The performance or reading or whatever it is also boasts Sasha Grey as Molly. Besides acting in various adult films, Grey crossed over to act in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and she is part of the music group ATelicine.

You’ve gotta love the idea of faux virtual reality (it’s simulacra all the way down)… but I’m tired of Neuromancer being described as dystopian.

In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me:"I think my world looks dystopian if you’re a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993. But if you’re crouching in a basement in Sarejevo being shelled by ethnic separatists you can read Neuromancer as a real escape. There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I’m writing about. I think my work is hardly dystopian… I don’t worry about the dystopian label too much because I think the world we now live in is already sufficiently dire and chaotic that really straight people can’t enjoy themselves anymore…. I get the postmodern sublime in the worst possible way… mingled ecstasy and dread."