Preceded by short: the (Mass) (John Orentlicher, 1987): At a county fair competition in upstate New York, parents costume and pose their children to recreate their favorite Hummel figurines. A dizzying display of child development. (11 mins, 3/4" Video, From the Kitchen) The traditional story of Heidi is smothered in rustic innocence-the alpine air, the resilient pines, the cloud-capped peaks carry purity and redemption. In Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy's brilliant and truly grotesque re-telling, 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, playing off their dummy doubles, 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. Not for the squeamish.-Steve Seid