Harmony Korine’s Bushwick Film Screening Dissolved Into An Unhinged DJ Set

It seems like, in 2024, everyone has a creative side project: a zine, a podcast, a Substack. For Harmony Korine, the indie director behind films like Spring Breakers and Gummo, it’s a budding DJ career. As part of the world tour for his latest film, AGGRO DR1FT, a private screening at Elsewhere in Bushwick became an all-night party with Korine getting into the booth around 1 a.m.

Korine’s movies are full of eclectic fashion choices, and his April 16 event did not disappoint. The guest list leaned more arthouse than EDM, and, suitably, partygoers came in everything from camouflage hats and metal-band tees to cowboy boots and coonskin caps. Women wore oversized Carhartt jackets, men wore fanny packs. Everyone had a can of Modelo in their hand. The room was one part cyberpunk, one part Thrasher Magazine, one part horny college dorm. If that sounds like a bad combination, then AGGRO DR1FT is not the film for you.

What AGGRO DR1FT is, though, is unlike any of Korine’s other movies — or any movie at all. Korine has said before how the future of film is to merge with the gaming world, and AGGRO DR1FT — which was shot entirely in infrared — delivers on that philosophy with visuals stripped from games like Call of Duty and Halo, set to ultraviolet hues. (This paired nicely in the large venue with laser lights being beamed across the ceiling.) While the movie is more art than narrative, the story follows BO, an assassin preparing to kill a demon crime lord, amidst plenty of scenes with BO’s wife twerking for him or BO partying with strippers on a superyacht alongside his friend Zion, played by Travis Scott. The film itself is full of knife fights, little people wielding machetes, and other violent moments, but rendered in infrared, it looks like a heavily stylized video game more than anything else. If the crowd didn’t love the story, they were all in for the visual treatment Korine delivered, and that unhinged vibe underlined the rest of the party.

Before long, the night went from mild CBD gummy to full-fledged fever dream. Duck Mobb, Korine, and AGGRO DR1FT composer AraabMuzik all got behind the DJ booth. With each new performer, the vibe shifted from laser light displays to dancers dressed in all white with neon hair, horned demons, little people with nerf guns, and a woman wearing a gimp suit and sunglasses portraying one of the film’s characters. The crowd of dancers all bounced to either Metallica or deep house music. The constrictive rules of what things are supposed to be — a movie, a fashion sense, a DJ set — all fell away. Whatever happens, happens. And overall, what did happen was probably exactly what Korine had in mind to deliver the film to his audience.