Preceded by short: This Is a Dead Boy (Michael J. Collins, 1992). Using wonderful, mysterious tableaux, dolls and masks, Michael Collins fractures a fairy tale, exposing loss of hope, the prevalence of evil, and the inevitability of death. (14 mins). ------------------Where the traditional story of Heidi is smothered in rustic innocence, in Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy's brilliant and truly grotesque retelling, Heidi finds herself in the confines of a mock chalet inhabited by her twisted grandfather and her putative sibling and seducer, Peter. Using life-size dummies, ghoulish masks, wiggy costumes, and a claustrophobic, curiously colored set with haylofts, peepshows and unadorned rooms, the artists depict scenes from the degeneration of a "rural gothic" family. The six tableaux obsess on the disciplinary rituals of childhood and the morbid re-routing of sexual drives. Incest, parodic violence, and a weird fascination with bodily functions serve as the disturbing crux of Heidi , but Kelley and McCarthy go beyond the family plot to dramatize desire and the body as perverse social production. In this compulsive work, nature struggles with nurture in a precipitous land where the cuckoo clock has no hands.-Steve Seid