San Antonio Summit at the Poetry Capital of New Hampshire

Guess who we rustled up in Bethlehem during our visit with George Manupelli? None other than Bunnyphonic and Ian, recent transplants from San Antonio to Concord, New Hampshire.

The Colonial Theater, where we saw the Alloy Orchestra accompany Von Sternberg's film "Underworld." This would be a great room to play! Maybe next time we get to Bethlehem.

me & George

archives and facilities

At Syracuse University, Department of Transmedia chair, Heath Hanlin, begins our tour in the conference room.

the right half of a Ben Shahn mosaic of Sacco & Vanzetti at Syracuse University

Todd Gustavson, technology curator, shows us a kinetoscope in the Eastman House Technology Collection.

Joseph Struble, photo curator of the Eastman House Photography Collection, brought out the glass magic lantern slides with moving parts.

We wandered into the Visual Studies Workshop in search of Afterimage offices, and met Tate Shaw, VSW director, who is holding an all-cyanotype personal photo album from the school's library.

a few cool things at Alfred University Division of Expanded Media

Division of Expanded Media

Jason with prof. Barbara Lattanzi who is showing us a flip camera kit in her 5-walled office. (Tripod not included.)

compact flourescent lighting-rig

reading list of Barbara's colleague Peer Bode

Devon in the EIA with luscious Joseph Scheer moth print (background) and Ann Hamilton mouth series (foreground)

a Sandin Analog Image Processor!!!!

Buffalo

The Burns Building

We stayed in Jax DeLuca's studio in downtown Buffalo with a bird named Jules. The door to his cage was always open, and the cage was next to a huge open window (on the 4th floor-- upper right corner of this photo).

UB Department of Media Study

We went to the famed hotbed of media arts culture straightaway. SUNY Buffalo is the place that Dr. Gerry O'Grady started the Center for Media Study in the mid-70's. He brought Paul Sharits, Hollis Frampton, Steina, Woody Vasulka, James Blue, and others together to teach in his center, which is now a "department."

How or why did Dr. O'Grady, a medieval scholar, build such a powerful center for the exploration of contemporary moving image art, and why in Buffalo? Media artist Barbara Lattanzi (UB graduate now teaching at Alfred University) informed us that he had lived in NYC for some time and was socially hooked into Warhol's Factory, and was a close follower of McLuhan, who also happened to be a medieval specialist, and who's legacy lives on in nearby Toronto, where he taught.

Here is Carl Lee, who showed us all around. Carl supports the technical infrastructure of the Department, and is a video installation artist himself. He came to Buffalo when his wife, Dorthea Braemer, took a job as the director of Squeaky Wheel.

Here's one corner of the equipment check-out room. The Department of Media Study is housed in the Center for the Arts building, along with the Department of Visual Arts. The size of Media Study is very similar to the University of Texas at San Antonio Department of Art & Art History (where I teach), only the whole place is focused on media arts, with about 350 undergrads and 40 grad students at any given time.

Squeaky Wheel

PBL with Jax DeLuca, Programming Director of Squeaky Wheel. I met her a couple years ago when the NAMAC conference was in Austin.

Dr. O'Grady's chair in the Squeaky microcinema room!! It's got his name on the back. When he founded the Center for Media Study at UB, he also started Media Study Buffalo-- a community media center with equipment access, classes, screenings, etc. In the early '80's a boiler blew in the building that housed it, and forced its closing. Squeaky Wheel was founded out of energy that had been generated from MSB.

The Samma Solo (on the right) is a state-of-the-art media conversion machine, hooked up to the U-matic 3/4" video deck (left). One of the major Squeaky Wheel projects is media conversion, and they are in the process of converting their archives, as well as the Hallwalls archives (which include things like Larie Anderson's first Hallwalls performance). One of the tricky parts of the process is only being able to play these old video tapes one time, because they are so delicate from age that they decompose as they are running through the system.

Jax and Jason in the media conversion room.

Finally, some pictures from our gig on saturday night-- pix of Jax' band

w ((a)) ou w

Brian Milbrand on the images

Tristan Trump on noise guitar

Jax DeLuca on the knobs.

Jim Abramson is not pictured, but played drums.

research with the niece

fireworks!

New Year's Eve in San Antonio (OK, I know this is 6 months late! but on the occasion of July 4th anyways!)

Rode my bike with Jason, Justin, and Jessica downtown-- there were actually many others when we began our trek out of Southtown, but their names must not have started with "J" so they couldn't keep up with me!

We watched from behind the tower, sitting on a small grassy hill. We could see the people shooting these off in the parking lot across the street from our spot.

Ann Arbor Film Festival: Programming

Before I launch into my rant, I must first commend the special programs at this years festival: Mark Hosler; George Manupelli's talk; Michele Silva presenting the Bruce Connor retrospective; Pat Oleszko's performance; Remixing the Rules panel; Gerry Fialka's Ann Arbor Pioneers lecture; and the Canyon Cinema screening. As for the competition screenings, this year's opening night is a decent example of mixing up a range of styles-- my only critique there is to add something challenging. An example of problematic programming is the last half of the 'Shadows of the Night Sea,' where the works suffer from being stylistically and temporally too similar.

Larry Jordan (lawyer, not the filmmaker), Mark Hosler, and Craig Baldwin

Last year, I wrote about the success of screenings that included multiple genres, and the failure of the programs that grouped like works together. The attitude of the leadership seems to be that change is necessary, and that the "old-timers" are adverse to it. Ruffled feathers aside, the programming of the competition screenings over the past couple years at the festival has generated a heated discussion. It was the subject of Gerry Fialka's McLuhan Tetrad this year during his workshop, and I'm going to add my new thoughts here. 

I have nothing against curators-- these folks really work at delineating meaning from a glob of undifferentiated matter, and there are some extremely talented people out there, many of whom were at the festival (Craig Baldwin, Gerry Fialka, David Dinnell, and Adam Hyman, to name a few). I believe there is a place for specialized, themed programming, but it's not at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

The festival leadership currently professes the need to "get butts into seats." This is a bit of an awkward issue because the chair of the board, Bruce Baker, is also on the board of the Michigan Theater. (see note below) Russ Collins, Michigan Theater Director, is also on the film festival board. Setting this small "conflict of interest" aside, though, the new style of programming is geared to the specialist, so I see this in direct opposition to the stated goal of gaining a larger audience.

One other aside here-- as I have been attending more and more "experimental" festivals over the years, I am constantly surprised at two things: the Michigan Theater as a venue has no equal; and the audience numbers can't be touched-- other festivals are lucky to see 10% of the crowd that comes to the AAFF.

George Manupelli on the Michigan Theater stage

As festival founder George Manupelli stated during his talk as the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker (a special weekly lecture series hosted by the U of M School of Art & Design at the Michigan Theater) on Thursday afternoon: Who does the festival belong to? It doesn't belong to the board of directors-- it belongs to the filmmakers and to the audience. I got teary eyed before he, himself, got choked up on the stage. George expressed later that when they started the festival, they had no idea how it would grow and become something so much larger than themselves.

Pat Oleszko's Saturday night performance on the main stage

Again, the current trend in programming the competition works at the AAFF is geared towards the specialist-- what does this mean?  When putting like films together, an audience well-versed in distinguishing the subtleties between similar tempos, textures, and themes could benefit from comparing them in close proximity to each other. This strategy, however, tries the patience of the generalist; someone who does not make "experimental" moving image art a central life interest becomes bored and restless. I admit that many of us who do love experimental work also get bored and restless. Trying to help the audience "get it" becomes a moot point because people are getting impatient. 

Let's not alienate our potential converts, who likely constitute the majority of our audience! If the goal is to lure in and convert the generalists, the formula that worked so well in the past (and yes, of course change is inevitable, but please don't throw out the baby with the bath water!) was to mix it up. (e.g. "Freeform"-- it's no accident that AAFF programming echos Ann Arbor radio WCBN's infamous programming style). This kind of programming must come from a deep familiarity with the work, and a willingness to set aside the curator's prerogative in favor of the needs of a larger, generalist audience. Leave room for the audience to find and make the connections. This is what the brain does automatically, anyhow. "Let the people have the power" goes beyond the politics of the 1960's... I believe that its infiltrated the very root of the AAFF, and is one of the reasons for its success.

I ran into Ann Arbor artist Helen Gotleib at a going away BBQ for old friends in Ann Arbor during the festival. She reminded me that, in the past, artists contributing work to the silent auction (yet another casualty to the recent changes) would be given a festival pass. She told me how much she loved being able to jump into any screening and be confronted with the unexpected at all times-- to see things she would never have seen anywhere. This year, she and her partner were reduced to trying to navigate the categories and pick something that might be worthwhile. She reported that she missed the variety, the randomness, and the surprises.

One way to find out what the audiences like and want would be to do a survey. And one way to take advantage of the curatorial talent associated with the festival would be to focus it on serving the audience.

Finally, I must affirm my desire for the competition works to be on the main screen-- the "Silver Screen" as George put it. Many of us were disappointed last year, and this is George's one strongly stated wish for the festival: to prioritize the filmmakers and the continued creation of new work by featuring it on the "Silver Screen." This kind of appreciation can only be demonstrated by concrete action, as we have just witnessed with the Obama administration paying its respects to the arts by including it in the stimulus package.

George Manupelli

The Ann Arbor Film Festival is a part of who I am, and I am a small part of what it has been and is. Over the course of the last 17 years I have watched hundreds of moving image works, been an intern, shown my films in the competition, been on the screening committee, organized and programmed sidebar screenings and special events, won an award, fought in the front lines for opening the festival to digital, led parades, made work for the lobby, hung out in the green room and the back alley, had the honor of calling filmmaker friends when their films screened or were awarded...I could go on...  I am all for change, but feel very deeply that this change must serve the integrity and the best interests of the festival.