Johnny Rogers and Shalo P. are San Francisco Art Institute expatriates touring California right now with their video art cabaret act, The New Jedi Order. With the aid of a projector, an olde thyme iBook, a ghetto blaster and a Coby DVD player, these two shifty-eyed geniuses are wreaking havoc on the west coast. I was lucky enough to see their performance in the comfort of my own living room last night.

Like Animal Charm on crack, NJO’s videos are mash-ups of pop culture references strangely familiar and hauntingly foreign. Footage from a buggy video game console flashes on the screen in between clips of news footage and blurry 3-D animations. They draw links between Home Alone and 9/11, Lord of the Rings and “Twin Peaks”, LensCrafters commercials and cultural dissonance.

Johnny and Shalo themselves preform brief sketches while the videos play, as characters like “Professor Post-Morrissey” or “Gandalf bin Laden”. Johnny channels the video for Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” (as seen in the header picture for this post), accompanied by a distorted MIDI version of the song. At one point, a makeshift rave breaks out.

It’s an all around good time! If you get a chance to check them out, they’re preforming at Cinefile tomorrow night, in Santa Cruz on Thursday, and San Francisco this weekend. You can check out the schedule here.