Terry Shusta

Forty-year-old misanthrope, Guy Trilby, enters the National Golden Quill Spelling Bee through a loophole in the rules.

Day Is Done is a carnivalesque opus, a genre-smashing epic in which vampires, dancing goths, hillbillies, mimes and demons come together in a kind of subversive musical theater/variety revue. Running over two-and-a-half hours, this riotous theatrical spectacle unfolds as a series of episodes that form a loose, fractured narrative. The video comprises parts 2 through 32 of Kelley's multi-faceted project Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions, in which trauma, abuse and repressed memory are refracted through personal and mass-cultural experience. The source material is a series of high school yearbook photographs of "extracurricular activities," specifically those that represent what Kelley has termed "socially accepted rituals of deviance." Kelley then stages video narratives around these found images.

When a famous star is found dead at an exclusive Christmas Eve party filled with A-list Hollywood types, the police must hold for questioning a group of powerful entertainment industry players who are eager to leave the scene. As they reflect upon the death of their friend, apparently from a drug overdose, the witnesses begin to reflect upon their own life choices, triggering a profound discussion about life and spirituality.