FWG

A Painting. A Hat. And Kimsooja.

2011-12-20T00:02:00.001-05:00

I visit my friend Terrence Campagna at his studio on Cass Avenue in Detroit. We catch up over tea and baklava, relaying to each other the large and small changes in our art practices that have grown out of large and small life changes. We go outside for a walk and immediately encounter two paintings laying on the sidewalk next to the street. Heading up Woodward, I bemoan the fact that I left my hat at home-- misled by the two-day thaw and now the wind leads me to regret. Not one minute goes by before a gentleman is walking our way with a small handful of knit hats for a dollar. "This one is your color," he says, glancing down at my dark plum pants as he hands it over. Ten more steps up Woodward and another gentleman who witnessed the exchange approaches, saying "My turn! Wannaseewhatigot!?" We laugh, walking on to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit.

The day before, I'd been up at school for a meeting and stopped by to pick something up at my office, only had forgotten the key. My neighbor Valerie, a professor in Communications, was there in her office and we smalltaked grading and research until she excitedly told me about a video artist named Kimsooja. Now, coincidentally, with Terrence, at MOCAD, I find myself seeing her work for the first time. And I am finding it refreshing.

We walk back to the studio, and the painting of the grasshopper has been taken.

Guitar, Hand, Fox.

2011-11-23T22:30:00.000-05:00

The baby and I are poking around in the closet when we find some of my old business cards from UTSA in an old bag. On the backsides, I draw some pictures of things she knows. Then I remember a scene from the film version of Paul Bowles book, The Sheltering Sky.

After the female protagonist has nursed her husband through a long and drawn out episode of typhoid in the middle of nowhere in the desert, ending in his death, she lets herself drift into a situation where she is a willing detained guest of a fellow with many wives. She has a tiny suitcase of her possessions, including a travel journal that she disassembles, hanging the pages on the rafters to decorate the room of her beatific imprisonment.

The journal is a symbol of a former life, which has given way to chance encounter without a clear path or focused direction any more. I knew that having a baby was going to change my life beyond recognition. And I am grateful for it.

I be cursed and blessed

2011-06-11T00:23:00.004-04:00

with an acute aptitude for synthesis. My mind impulsively infiltrates the elements of any given circumstance. It surrounds, infuses and grows connective tissue in the gaps. Organic and fecund. Solve et coagula.

I now resurrect the best bio I ever had, this one here below, which was bestowed upon me, kindly, by my collaborator Jason Jay Stevens, a decade ago.

"Leslie Raymond does not use recipes. All of her efforts are experiments. She approaches a selection of disparate ingredients with the spirit of a pioneer and an inventor. She is an artist without limitations of medium. Those extracategorical spaces are her territory, bringing together material and data--and often other artists--from far reaches and allowing a culture of relationships to grow. She creates art this way, and she generates grand spectacles this way. Leslie Raymond is, herself, one of these experiments, with a line of Russian Jewish heritage in one direction, and Chinese Taoist off in another. Her father is an architect; her mother is a potter. Where these strands come together is where Leslie Raymond begins, experimenting with process, texture, taste, and presentation." -JJS

5953 Investigation

2010-09-12T14:48:00.013-04:00

This time, I asked the students to pick an artwork from Digital Art chapter 1, "Digital Technologies as Tool," and find a relationship with three non-digital artworks (one contemporary, one 20th century, one pre-20th century) through a concept, form, aesthetic, etc.

So, again, I'll participate in the investigation myself...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I have become sensitive to internal energetic states of the body throughout my two decades of practicing yoga, t'ai chi, and other body disciplines. Seeing the intangible territories of inner space explicitly represented in two- and three- dimensional form is fascinating to me.

Michael Rees

Anja Spine (1998)

I am intrigued by the depiction of the chakra system in this Michael Rees sculpture created with rapid prototyping technology. The visceral and physical presence of this form is powerful and full of information that I can easily map onto my own body. Rees exploration of self-termed "spiritual/psychological anatomy" reminds me of Alex Grey's contemporary Sacred Mirror series.

Alex Grey

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (1986)
21 oil on linen, 84"x46" (frames are polyester resin, fiberglass, wood, illuminated stained glass, 126"x60")

Like the Rees sculpture, Alex Grey's series of 21 paintings serve as a map of various systems of the body, the chakras being one of them. It is my understanding that Grey's intention was for the viewer to stand in front of each life-sized figure and "download" the visual information onto their own body. Systems depicted include muscle, nerve, viscera, lymph, cardiovascular, chakra (as seen above), psychic energy, spiritual energy, universal mind lattice, and others.

Juan Li
Ovarian Kung Fu (c.1980?)

This 20th century artwork by Juan Li is a diagram of the esoteric Taoist alchemical practice of refining female sexual energy for health purposes. Li is an artist and senior instructor in the Universal Healing Tao Center established by Master Mantak Chia. Like the Rees sculpture and many of Grey's paintings, this image makes visible an invisible system within the body. Despite the lack of concrete physical attributes, these systems are experienced on an energetic or mental level and can have a profound relationship with the physical systems of the body.

Neijing Tu (Illustration of the Inner Circulation) (1886)

ink rubbing

52" x 22"

This Taoist image was pulled as an ink rubbing from a carved wooden tablet created during the Qing dynasty. The "inner circulation" here refers to one of the major pathways through which internal energy, or "chi," flows. On one level, it communicates the classical eastern medical philosophy that the body functions organically, like a garden, with complex interrelationships between the various systems (as opposed to the western school of thinking that the body is more like a machine, with separate parts to be swapped out like parts of a car engine). This ancient practice of inner alchemy is still alive today, and can be traced through contemporary Chinese medicine and internal martial arts practice.

5953 Digital Tools - Online/Fall 2010

2010-08-30T17:52:00.004-04:00

First set of questions posed to my graduate students this term:
What is your relationship to digital tools?
What do you hope to get out of the Digital Tools class?
What specific skill or tool do you plan to master this term?

So I thought it a good exercise to answer the questions myself.

* * * * *

Apprehensive though curious, I set out to explore digital tools in my art making practice when, in 1996, the high school students I was teaching showed me that our world was becoming a very different place. As a young artist I felt the imperative to engage these developments, and at the same time felt trepidation about grappling with technology. With a full scholarship to the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, I went off to study under Michael Rodemer in his New Genre program. It was my extreme good fortune to be introduced to digital at an institution that had so fully embraced technology on so many fronts.

My aim had been to get my feet wet in digital, then return to a physically based studio practice to see what would remain relevant; what would change; how would things integrate; what would fall by the wayside? Instead, after completing my MFA, I was invited to teach digital media at the U of M SOA&D. Teaching digital has kept me on a constant learning curve as I've evolved as both teacher and artist, constantly grappling with this super-fluid organically morphing and evolving medium called digital.

This term, I look forward to engaging my students in the exploration of another facet of the digital paradigm-- distance learning. While I have some ideas about leading my students in a meaningful direction, exercising and experiencing the living question is what excites me. What has me most energized is implementing the structure that will support the investigation of relationships between the new digital art and the hundreds/thousands of years old history and dialogue of art. Our text, Digital Art by Christiane Paul, necessarily focuses on its namesake, viewing it from several angles, classifying and sorting in order to find meaning and pattern within the discipline... but because art is always evolving, usurping any new tool in order to engage, explore, and be relevant to its particular zeitgeist, it is important to step back from the medium itself, to take in the whole picture, to see the continuum.

As for digital tools/skills mastery these next several months, a recent Potter-Belmar Labs commission has allowed us to purchase MAX/MSP Jitter, and we are currently shifting our activity in live cinema performance into this new programming environment. Lately, I have been bumping up against the limitations of my current video mixing system fairly often, and the need for a forward step has outweighed my trepidation at overcoming yet another technological hurdle.

PBL field trip to the ITC

2010-06-06T13:22:00.002-04:00

Here's our assistant Leticia Rocha-Zivadinovic and me flanking a photo from the Small Town Texas exhibit at the Institute of Texan Cultures, featuring photos by UTSA president Ricardo Romo. This is the one shot in the show representing Marfa, and also happens to be, coincidentally, the site that PBL has worked out for the fall 2010 presentation of our Panorama Marfa project, for which we were awarded the Idea Fund grant.

The Church is the studios, home, and exhibition space of web designer Buck Johnston and sculptor Camp Bosworth-- an energetic, down-to-earth couple who allegedly bought the property fairly spontaneously about 5 years ago while on an excursion to Chinati Hotsprings, and moved to Marfa from Dallas. I really appreciated their straightforward and unpretentious demeanor, and am excited that we will be showing our project at their place.

Anyhow, back to San Antonio and the ITC. Potter-Belmar was on a scouting outing last week, taking in the exhibitions in consideration of an RFP that Jason is currently responding to. The Institute is a functioning historical relic built for the 1968 Hemisfair international exhibition as a showcase of the cultures of Texas. It happens to also contain a period multimedia dome, one of the only still in existence, showing the original "Faces and Places of Texas" multi-screen film and slideshow from 40+ years ago. Sounds like all of this is up to be refurbished in the near future to better reflect a contemporary outlook on culture and race.

West Coast: PBL plays Hollywood!

2010-05-30T14:27:00.003-04:00

Here's a shot that Adam Hyman took of us just before our Los Angeles Filmforum gig at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. We played the Spielberg Theater on the lower level for a lovely audience and were honored to have present some members from the pioneering live cinema artist group Single Wing Turquoise Bird, known for their liquid light shows in the mid 60's-early 70's. We performed from the front row, with our gear set up on the narrow ledge that divided us from the pit. Our set felt solid, and we concluded with a lively round of discussion.

Another important thing I want to mention is the fantastic tech assistance we had at the Egyptian! We came prepared with our gear & extra cables, but were treated to expert in-house support. Adam can remind me of our guru's name-- he exuded confidence when we decided to set up in front, and had a long run of ethernet cable(!) that we ran the video signal through. Nice to be introduced to new solutions! Let's hear it for the well-adjusted, fully capable, friendly variety of tech support people! YAY!

West Coast

2010-05-29T13:24:00.004-04:00

California Academy of Sciences

The Academy was PACKED to the gills, it being raining and a Monday (when other museums are typically closed). Though I felt oppressed by the crowds, the dioramas were definitely worth it.

Oakland Museum of California

This is me sitting in a bronze replica of the chair from the famous photograph of Huey Newton where he is holding a shotgun in one hand and a tribal spear in the other. The piece is called "Monument to Huey Newton for the Alamada County Courthouse."

With its integration of art, natural and cultural history, and innovative "interactive" elements, the Oakland Museum has the freshest take on exhibitions that I've seen in a loooong while.

PBL and Craig Baldwin outside Pakwan

It's always such a treat to see Craig! Just prior to our outing for a Pakistani meal in the Mission, Craig entertained us in his basement lair with an amazing clip from a 16mm film about avant-garde art from the late 60's-- one of many new reels in his collection rescued from an educational library in the process of decessioning its celluloid.

The excerpt we watched was of Len Lye showing off his sound sculptures! I had no idea that he was making anything like that. The reel looked to be a good 40 minutes... I wonder what other gems lie therein. This one is destined for Craig's special "pink trunk" which contains the few films in his collection to be spared from the editing room.

Jay with Chris Kubick on top of his strange studio building

After many many months of envisioning this place in my mind's eye, we finally visited with Chris at his studio, housed in a nearly vacant research facility that has been undergoing a long process of dissolution. Hallway after hallway of empty laboratories and offices with rooftop greenhouses devoid of life envelop the creative vital force contained within Chris' studio.

Tiebe and Anne

Our trip featured lots of family action, with many new babies making the scene alongside reconnections with old friends who have been building families for a few years now.

Jenna, Oliver, and Jay at an M&A project on the LACMA grounds

After a night of gallery hopping in Culver City, we ended up at the La Brea Tar Pits and were treated to a visit with this recent Materials & Applications project, Promiscuous Production: Breeding is Bittersweet. With bitter melon set to grow up on one side of the structure and sweet melon on the other, the two fruits have been set-up for interbreeding.

Gerry Fialka and me

My friend Vera Burner-Sung shot this one. We drove out to Venice to visit with Gerry and had a great talk about the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the making of art, and the creative impulse. He made us a fruit salad for lunch. Hanging out with Gerry is consistently gratifying, and invariably built around heartfelt, intelligent debate.

Houston

2010-04-15T14:06:00.007-04:00

We went to H-Town for "Co-Existing & Co-Llaborating," an Aurora Picture Show screening featuring the video work of six collaborating couples, and to follow up on Media Archeology biz (we have been invited by Aurora to take part in the 2010 festival, coming up in mid-September). It became apparent that a return trip within the next week or two was going to be inevitable, so heres a mini-report on these goings-on.

Aurora Picture Show director Mary Magsaman introduces the screening to a full house. We had a fun couple days with the McCoys, another collaborating couple with work in the screening, who were there from NYC with their 2 kids.... all of us presenting in Mary's Interdisciplinary Art class at U of H, doing an interview for the KUHF, a lively Q/A session after the screening, and just generally hanging out.

Getting to stay at the Aurora office is always a treat because of the video library! The screening room doubles as a guest room, so we can watch video art projected on the wall across from the bed-- here is the menu screen from a LowVid DVD.

The site we selected for our Media Archeology project is the Heights Theater which was built in 1928 and has some interesting history to it. Functioning as an art gallery nowadays, we worked on securing it as the location for our new piece which will riff off some of that fascinating history-- namely that it was burnt down in the late 60's because it was showing "I am Curious: Yellow."

Here is Jason with Heights Theater owner Gus Kopriva in a storage room at his Redbud Gallery. He is showing us the 35mm film print which looks to be in great condition. For whatever reason, the print was never returned to the distributor and we got to open the cases for he first time since they were closed up over 40 years ago!

The credit goes to our good pal Dr. Tish Stringer for introducing us to the Heights Theater when she took us around Houston months ago on a field trip of potential sites for our project. This picture shows me, Jay, Iris, Tish, and Herb just after a ritual Saturday morning dim-sum session. YUM. Houston has a large Asian population, resulting in awesome dim-sum.

On our way home to San Antonio, we dropped by the Forbidden Gardens, a somewhat forlorn roadside attraction sporting a 1/3 size fiberglass replica of the Xi'an tomb site of Qin Shi Huang-di (along with a few full sized warriors) complete with a park employee in the tedious process of cleaning it; a miniature dilapidated model of the Forbidden City; a rather dusty exhibit of an imperial dinner table complete with imitation foodstuffs; and a room full of traditional weaponry, mostly bolted down to discourage visitors from getting overly interactive.

Chicago again!

2010-03-26T17:37:00.015-04:00

We flew to Detroit to spend a couple days visiting family, then hopped the Amtrak Wolverine for a 6-hour ride to Chicago. After dropping our bags in my colleague Paul Catanese's office in the Interdisciplinary Arts Department of Columbia College, we walked to the south end of Millenium Park where I sat by Lake Michigan next to the observatory on the most beautiful spring day while Jay checked out the Planetarium.

Before we gave our presentation in Paul's graduate sound art class, he did a 1-hour lecture on programming Max/MSP for moving sound through a multiple speaker set-up. He was really excited to use the Pythagorean Theorem to work out the distance from signal to speakers.

The next day was also gorgeous, and we walked to Chicago Filmmakers from our digs in Edgewater, stopping for bagels at a Jewish deli along the way. The bike puppet theater was under full swing, attracting a surprisingly huge plethora of kids who were out and about with adult supervision that morning. This was right next to Alamo Shoes (for all of y'all back home in San Antonio).

The day of our gig, I woke up to snow!! Oh yes, to be treated to the midwestern spring tease was a real joy! It was frigid out there, as we discovered when we trekked 2 blocks to the Ethiopian restaurant for lunch with the chill blowing right down into the bones. I didn't have the foresight to bring any long underwear, but did have a pair of wool socks, a knit hat and a scarf. It won't be long before the wall of 100 degree days hits south Texas, so I relished the cold to its fullest extent.

When I was at school for a little while in Chicago in the late 80's/early 90's I spent many many hours in darkened theaters watching film of all kinds-- in class at school, at the Music Box, at Randolph Street Gallery when the Experimental Film Coalition was active, etc. I saw my first Craig Baldwin film at Chicago Filmmakers, so it was an extra-special treat for me get to perform there.

Despite the nasty weather, we had a big audience that included several old friends and acquaintances from the different pasts of out lives, such as Jay's wild days in Kalamazoo and my time adjunct teaching at University of Michigan. An old pal from my stint in Chicago was joining us on his birthday, conjuring up some curious magic for the PBL DVD door prize give-away. The first DVD went to Sean's wife Michelle, and though I mixed up those ticket stubs like a good air mix lottery machine would, the second went to Sean himself, who turned it down and picked the next winner. Strangely, it turned out he was sitting next to a guy who was also celebrating his birthday that night!

We carried a solid performance and it felt great to spin our craft before this crowd of artists, poets, filmmakers, neighbors, and some who were simply out with friends not knowing what they were getting into. Post-performance Q & A drifted down the street to the bar, as a warm front moved into the area.

Todd Lillethun (programmer at Filmmakers) and his partner Brandon (on a Philosophy of Physics fellowship at U of Chicago) were consummate hosts-- we can't thank them enough for their hospitality, which coalesced with a very early Sunday morning ride downtown to Union Station to catch our train back to Detroit.

We spent a little more time with family, including watching the heath care vote with my folks. On one of the huge monitors at the Detroit Metro Airport, we caught the historic moment of Obama signing the bill just before we got on the plane back to San Antonio.

98th Annual College Art Association Conference, Chicago

2010-02-18T21:54:00.008-05:00

It was a real treat to have a week of good old winter up in Chicago. Over the years, the conference seems more accessible as my interests have become further defined, and my alliance with the New Media Caucus increasingly rewarding as my relationships strengthen therein.

The New Media Caucus, an official affiliate of the College Art Association, was formed in 2003 as a means for people teaching "new media" at the university-level to form connection. I found the caucus at the 2006 CAA conference, just after my arrival at UTSA where I had landed to begin a New Media Program in the Department of Art & Art History. At that time I was trying to name the program... "digital?" "intermedia?" "new genre?" "transmedia?" ... so I was grateful to have that choice practically made for me by deciding to join forces with the caucus.

This year brought a distinct sense that the New Media Caucus is gaining momentum. Our president Paul Cantanese teaches at Columbia College Chicago, has a lot of energy and vision, and was on the ground in the conference city, which simplified the planning and execution of all our events. In addition to the 1-2 panels we have in the official conference every year, we plan a few at an off-site location as well as an exhibition of some kind.

I really went to town this time around in executing my duties as the chair of the NMC exhibition committee with my brainchild: the Live Cinema Summit. This one night only event featured nine back-to-back realtime demos of A/V performance, with lots of discussion and q/a. The lineup featured Barbara Lattanzi, Sabine Gruffat and Bill Brown, Robert Martin, Potter-Belmar Labs, jonCates, DataIRJ, Jon Satrom, Alessandro Imperato, and Noisefold.

Link to Alessandro Imperato's review in Media-N.

A link to Nicholas Sagan's blog posting on the official CAA conference blog.

Other events that I presented during are the NMC Colloquium Meet and Greet, and the New Media Curriculum Development roundtable discussion, chaired by Mike Salamond.

San Antonio Summit at the Poetry Capital of New Hampshire

2009-08-11T01:15:00.005-04:00

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

2009-08-10T23:46:00.007-04:00

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

2009-08-06T00:08:00.010-04:00

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

2009-08-03T17:06:00.013-04:00

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 the gig on saturday night of Jax' band w ((a)) ou w who warmed up the crowd for us.

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

2009-07-08T11:22:00.000-04:00

fireworks!

2009-07-05T00:05:00.008-04:00

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

2009-03-31T12:42:00.021-04:00

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.

Meeting the Mayor: Luminaria

2009-03-30T22:23:00.015-04:00

Sarah Fisch bartending in the CAM VIP Lounge

Here's a link to the super-flattering article that Sarah Fisch wrote on my students' projects for Luminaria, but the story that I want to tell is the one about how I met the San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger the night of Luminaria.

First, some pictures:

my kids installing their "Future Utopias" show

(L to R: Mauricio Gudiño, Derek Brown, Alyosha Burkee, Utah Snyder, Joshua Hurt)

John Mata installing his "Room made mostly of cardboard and masking tape, containing various media relating to the idea of New Media and Future Utopia"

entrance to the "Future Utopias" exhibition

the Deluminators: Utah Snyder and Michael Stoltz

Hyperbubble

Contemporary Art Month occupied the Beauty College building

Randy Wallace's striking and visceral installation in the basement of the Beauty College

Randy is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists in San Antonio

Buttercup playing at the Beauty College

back at "Future Utopias," Derek Brown's "No Borders" projection installation in the background

onlookers looking at Davis James' "Minute-ness" 2-channel video sculpture

Alyosha Burkee's "Get Schooled" video in the foreground, Utah Snyder's table of handmade goods in the background (mostly gone by this time of the night)

Jennings Sheffield "Separation of Power" in the background, and Mauricio Gudiño's 2-channel video installation in the foreground

OK, now for the story.

Roll of gaffers tape in-hand, I was running around all night closing up the seams in the pipe-and-drape that surrounded the "Future Utopias" show. There was an entrance and a flow designed for the space, but the masses wanted to find any gap and make it into an entrance or exit point. There was something interesting about these porous borders (especially within the context of South Texas), but it was more important to uphold the integrity of the space... besides, it could be downright dangerous to have everyone crashing through the walls at any given moment.

For example, around 11:30pm a couple guys came stumbling through the drape into the show, one guy grabbing onto the wavering pipe, which offered no support to counter his off-balance stance. As I rushed over to seal up the breach, I recognized that this was Mayor Hardberger, who was having a rightfully jolly time in the final half-hour of his second annual and majorly successful city-wide arts festival. I took the opportunity to introduce myself, and we chatted for awhile-- he remembered last year's UTSA New Media Studio exhibition on Houston Street, and cited two specific artworks from memory: Mike Stoltz' 2-channel installation, where a woman in a doorway greets the viewer very warmly; and Gary Wise's "Eat." I made sure that he had my card before he left, and wished later that I had taken advantage of this as a photo op, in which case you'd be seeing a picture of me & the mayor here.

Maybe next year...!

A Loose-Knit "Symposium" (mid-february)

2009-03-18T12:54:00.010-04:00

We had a fun few days with some experimental music performances, edgy films and videos, and general cross-culture pollination on the occasion of the Bearded Child Film Festival coming to town (thanks UTSA New Media Program), the No Idea Festival just around the corner in Austin ushering in Jason Kahn (thanks also Swiss Arts Council + UTSA) and Annette Krebs, and the overlap of John Mata's "Sala Diaz Is Open" project.

Dan Anderson introducing his Best of Bearded Child Film Festival program at UTSA

In the same room, the night before the BCFF screening, we held the panel: "DIY and the Avant-Garde." Chris Cogburn (No Idea festival founder & director) imparted the idea that we can all encounter an experimental music set together, but essentially each one of us is also alone in our experience. This reminds me of the similar notion in experimental film, one that Dave Hickey discusses in an essay from Air Guitar about his experience viewing experimental film during his college years. In it he describes the a-ha moment while watching "Haircut," by Andy Warhol. There is the excruciatingly slow activity of the haircut, of nothing seeming to happen... for a long time, of the rise of his self-awareness as a viewer, and the discomfort of the audience. The ongoing internal dialogue in this case, and an important counterpart of the aloneness that Chris talked about, breaks into collective relief and shared joy as the protagonist finally reaches into his shirt-pocket for a cigarette.

Annette Krebs performing at "Sala Diaz Is Open" to a packed room. We all listened intently.

Dan Anderson & Ben Judson in the big red van, transporting chairs to the Beauty College

at the Beauty College, Travis Street, downtown San Antonio

Annette Krebs and Chris Cogburn performing at the Beauty College

Annette and Chris opened for Jason Kahn. A focused quietness filled the room. One guy sipped from a pint bottle of whiskey. We were on the horse-drawn-carriage tourist ride route. The street sound-scape offered up the clomping of horses' hooves, a car alarm, (the absence of the train that we usually hear outside of Salon Mijangos), a skateboard on the sidewalk. Brakes, shoes, a honk, and revving engine. Door creek.

Annette K had her guitar on her lap, rubbing it with a steel scrubby pad. I imagined that she's had that guitar since she was 15, and in a punk band... but that's just my fantasy, she informed me later. Chris C came off as a conjurer, bringing presence to the present, creating that space for us to be by ourselves, together.

7 or 8 men entered into the space, and two of them began to whisper back and forth, sapping the fullness of this poised, riveted moment; pulling from the focal point, not consciously participating. I could keep thinking about these ideas, but after a little while whispered over to them: 'If you guys are going to talk, would you please go in the back?' One guy quips "I was waiting for them to start." I found out later that he is the owner of the Beauty College who had let us hold the event in his place. It was a culture clash with a fellow who may like the attention that art draws to his building, but may not necessarily like, or even care to understand the art itself. I'm not really sure what to do with that, other than to observe.

Conversely, Patrick Zeller and I talked at the intermission, and he divulged that he was really working at "being open, patient, and listening." This music is certainly far outside the mainstream, and demands a different attitude from its audience-- one that Patrick nailed. Being open to an unknown experience may bring risk, but it has potential for great reward, too. It seemed like this music was a new experience for Patrick, but being an artist who travels and photographs outside of his own culture primes him for unique encounters.

Jason Kahn flanked by the Boyd Brothers, after his performance

As for Jason Kahn's set, I was struck by the physicality of the music. He played a drum, modulated by electronic implements. Fine-tuning frequency, manipulating wavelength, modulating the analog hand-signal on the drum by way of the electronic tool/control panel, like a vehicular dashboard. He transfixed the audience through a wall of sound, a physical, spatial, dynamic experience. Sound oscillating, Kahn's rocket-ship blasted the audience into orbit (like the time I saw Susie Ibarra play in the Diego Rivera Courtyard at the Detroit Institute of the Arts)-- a space-time machine. Its best to surrender.

highlights from LA: particularly great moments

2009-03-18T12:21:00.008-04:00

Bree Edwards (Be Johnny) and Roy, Los Angeles in the background

Fat Tuesday dinner at Jenna & Oliver's place (M&A)... with old friends Matt Bakkom and Claire Didier, and new friend Sarah Beetle, who its taken too long to finally meet! Jenna made this awesome gumbo pictured above, and Sarah made the rest of the delicious meal-- some fancy chicken that took a day and a night to cook, only to melt in the mouth like ice cream, but served hot... and an amazing chocolate cake to round it out.

Bree & I went to see Deborah Stratman present her new piece "O'er The Land," along with a couple other short works, at Redcat Theater. This was a real treat! I was at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in experimental film (for a little over a year) when Deborah was there, but I doubt she would remember me. Looking forward to seeing her piece again at the Ann Arbor Film Festival next week!!

Anjali Gupta, Jay, Patricia Olynyk, and Robert Girou... a nightcap at the hotel bar. Awesome to unwind from the week in utter silliness with these great pals.

highlights from LA: new media caucus (late Feb)

2009-03-18T11:11:00.003-04:00

a still from the live mix

"It's going to be hard, but it'll be worth it!" This is the new mantra given to me by my new boss (chair of the UTSA Art & Art History Department) Greg Elliott, at the start of this year. (He says: "I'm not your boss! I'm just the guy you ask for money!") During my time at the conference, I worked my ass off as the New Media Caucus exhibition committee chair! We mounted the exhibition "@" at SCI-Arc, and it was an amalgamation of Second Life and Real World situations/objects. So it was hard, but it was definitely worth it.

The New Media Caucus is a College Art Association affiliated group that formed in order to focus the potential of the academic new media art contingent in one arena. Many of us are the lone voice in our respective departments, are forging the way with new ideas and media into unrecognizable terrain, and benefit from the backing of an organization sanctioned by the larger academic community.

One of the important things that the NMC has done during its short existence (6 years) was to write the guidelines for review of faculty teaching in new media arts-- something that maybe only those of us in academia can appreciate... but it was a relief to me that this CAA-validated document existed, providing some concrete guidelines for my perplexed colleagues when they review my record.

Anyhow, enough of that... Here's a shot of Johnny Dekam, and Jason. Potter-Belmar Labs got to jam with Be Johnny for the NMC reception of the show "@," and it was a blast-- really great to plug my video signal into Johnny's rig & have a buffer between me and the screen for a change. On account of finally making it to Second Life (to attend meetings with my colleagues for the organization of the exhibition, believe it or not), I ended up sampling a bunch of imagery from that virtual world to use in the mix.

highlights from LA: M&A (late February)

2009-03-11T13:11:00.005-04:00

The College Art Association annual conference happened in LA this time around, and what a treat to see so many old friends both living in town and visiting for the conference.

Jay & Jenna

The last Sunday morning brought us to waffle brunch at Materials & Applications. Jenna texted: "this is a BYO-Breakfast meats and Bloody mary mix! The more the merrier!"

here's the Lil' Punisher checking out fish in the fountain

Eddy Sykes' Yakuza Lou robotic garden sculpture was taken down the day before-- sad to see it go! but we were able to set up a big table in the space that it had occupied at the center of the front yard.

clockwise from left side: friend of M&A, Jason, Oliver Hess,

Jenna Didier, Claire Didier, Brian, Anjali Gupta

PBL @ "Sala Diaz Is Open," Feb 13

2009-03-08T18:10:00.007-04:00

As usual, as soon as the semester began, time and energy evaporated for tending to my beloved online journal. With spring break here, I'll attempt a scattershot approach to updating some of my recent activities.

John Mata invited PBL to contribute to "Sala Diaz Is Open." Here is a link to Mark Jones' SA Current coverage on John's project, written at the beginning of of the month-long occupation-- the thing that it does not talk about (because it hadn't happened yet) was the life-blood of live performance that charged the place every weekend. This includes a sound performance by Berlin-based Annette Krebs, local artist Randy Wallace's action (read Sarah Fisch's coverage here), as well as a night of our live cinema improv.

We set up across the street in the red van, pointed 4500 lumens of vjFutureWorkerGirl moving light and image and 900 watts of spokeNine ambient sound collage at Sala Diaz. The Brothers Boyd were inside, mixing dubstep. In the middle of the street was the sweet spot where the soundscape opened into another dimension.

I had spent the day gathering up images from the local environs to mix up with my general library. Beto Gonzales summed it up when he asked, rhetorically: "Is this Southtown dreaming itself?"

A New Year

2009-01-09T10:52:00.015-05:00

The Happy Buddha (2008)

Franco Mondini-Ruiz

Late into the night of Stacey Hill's housewarming party, as we stood in the driveway at her beautiful new dwelling just a mile up the road from my place, Franco and I had talked about a trade. He made it easy for me to ask by complimenting my LANDSCAPES show that was at Blue Star in September, generously saying that it was "world-class," and calling me the "technology diva of San Antonio." Shortly after that, and just prior to a week-long holiday stint in the wintery north, I'd trekked over to Franco's inspired hacienda on the west side with some DVD editions.

It was a gorgeous San Antonio December day. The place was jumping with the activity of his many assistants-- Kurt and Bryson in the studios, and Rosa in the studio kitchen. Over in the main house, we made room in a tiny office that also seemed to be a bedroom, where the tv monitor sat on a desk. As Franco lounged on the chaise, I showed him my videos, sunlight sifting past the trees and into the room through the window. He loved Michigan (Reflecting Pool) that I'd picked out for him, but really fell in love with Comic Bar Scene, saying that the former represented his ideal state of existence, but this one reflected the true energy of his operations there.

Cheery about his acquisition, we perambulated back over to the studio house, and there in the studio kitchen I was delighted to find Lisa Wolf-- she was there to show off her special reuben sandwich-- my timing couldn't have been better! I was treated to an exceptional lunch. But before food, I poked around the studios, trying to find the Franco piece for me. We already have a gorgeous large painting, Texas Tea, which Jason traded for one of his magnetic-paint-on-glass paintings... I realized that we should supplement with a sculpture.

Timing a little off here, though-- Franco has been pushing his 3D work over the holiday season, and being the awesome hustler that he is, had sold out! But... there on the tiny table crammed into the corner of the kitchen that he painted at... a cake plate was heaped with some headless figurines and a big buddha. Knowing that we share a fascination with trans-cultural fusion, and that my mom is Chinese, he suggested that he could finish this one for me! And finish it he did, as you can see, dear reader, in the picture at the top of this post.

I love my new Happy Buddha! May it pave the way for a happier, lighter, calmer, and most harmonious 2009.

On that note, I'm in the middle of reading Three Cups of Tea, about the mountain climber Greg Mortenson. It chronicles the saga of his self-made mission to build a school in a tiny, remote village at the foothills of the Himalayas, in Pakistan. It is a remarkable enterprise, and in the passage I read this morning, he describes the great eagerness and impatience he feels to get the job done in a culture that operates on a different sense of time. One morning, the village elder tears Mortenson away from his position as the project's forman, takes him up the mountain for some perspective, and tells him he's got to knock it off.

"That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned in my life. We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their 'shock and awe' campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them." (Greg Mortenson)

I hope to be able to improve myself in this respect, particularly in my project of building the New Media Program at UTSA-- to be able to find ways to disengage from the various pressures of my job, to become a less reactive person. My other new years resolutions are: 1 - to spend more time in the physical world, especially outdoors, and 2 - to take more time just to think about things.

UTSA Commencement

2008-12-30T18:22:00.010-05:00

Up until a couple weeks ago, the last commencement I attended was an intimate and informal rite held at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design in 1999 that I took my dad to while my mom was traveling in China, and after which we shared a bottle of champagne with my teacher Joseph Grigley and his wife Amy outside behind the Art Building, then directly after that my dad dropped me off at my house where I mowed the lawn until Jason came over in his orange van and we went on our first date which was a walk in the woods with our dogs.

On December 20th, I went to the UTSA Commencement, with my third and fourth New Media undergrad students graduating from our program. Neither of them were in attendance, but it was good for me to check it out, and think about the relevance and importance of group ritual. Art students are by nature outsider, status-quo-questioning entities. I relate personally to what I interpret as an aversion to mainstream mass-ritual, and at the same time couldn't help feeling the potential of what their presence could signify-- in a positive way for both them and their peers in the rest of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts, and the Business School.

"If.." is a film by Lindsay Anderson, starring Malcom McDowell, that I watched recently. Depicted in it are traditional, self-important and overbearing customs of British public school. The story takes a turn at the very end, when McDowell's character violently rebels against the oppressive and stifling circumstance of his environs. The sudden turn of events is unexpected in its extremity, is effective because of it, and cuts a deep question into the facade of brainless, empty conventions. Made in 1968, around the time of the Situationist International, the student uprisings in France, race riots in the States, and other incidents of cultural unrest, the film is a clear reflection of its zeitgeist.

In the first chapter of The Audacity of Hope, our President Elect outlines a trajectory of political and cultural energy from that period (the Sixities) to the present day, illustrating a deterioration over time of the climate in which present day politics is practiced. Part of Obama's political platform of change is the modification or reclamation of the political process, in the name of the citizens. I'm not sure why, but I see this moment in relation to my deep-felt belief that its time for artists to take up a more meaningful role in society. When most people don't feel any relationship to the art of our moment, I must question the validity of what we, as artists, are doing. Our currency is creativity, and I hope we can use it to find a way to be more socially responsible and connected to every day people. Fortunately, there are a few artists out there who are pioneering new models.

People need aesthetic experiences-- spaces that allow them to move outside of our mediated environment, an ecology designed to amplify our proclivity to consume. This is a topic for another day...

Only to say, the Mariachi band concluded the ceremony on a most joyful and feisty note:

Seigfried and Roy

2008-12-19T16:05:00.010-05:00

Seigfried is Margaret & Scott's new parrot, who I had the pleasure of meeting at their recent sushi party. (YUM!) Here he is on Michele Monseau's shoulder.

The door to his cage was opened up after dinner, so he hopped onto the table and wandered around saying hello to everyone, eating little scraps, trying to eat the wasabi... we all thought thought it wouldn't be very good for him to eat the wasabi, except for our much-loved animal authority, Montana! She reasoned that, unlike a canine, if Seigfried ate something that disagreed with him, he wouldn't keep eating it.

The very next animal that I met was this beautiful shepherd, Roy. Here he is with my friend Bree in her backyard. She was very involved with dog-training, taking Roy to school just about every morning when I was visiting her in LA, and shooting portraits of other person+dog student teams. I even got to meet their very dignified teacher-trainer, who came over to finish up a little drywall patch-job around a window he'd fixed at their place.

While I was in LA, there were big fires on the north side of the city. Serious enough for evacuation, road closures, and many people to lose their homes. This gentleman dog-trainer has a piece of property up there with two dozen of the meanest dogs living out on it, and he had to make a trip up there to evacuate them. I can only imagine a pickup truck brimming with the baddest of dawgs, carting them into the city... I wonder where he ended up putting them all.

Back in Time: AURORA (late October)

2008-12-19T11:32:00.002-05:00

We made two trips to Houston at the end October. The first was for the Aurora Picture Show 10th Anniversary Gala dinner, for which we completed a new single-channel piece, "Double Thunder." A few other artists were also asked to contribute new works to this celebration for a limited edition special DVD given to the guests... interstingly, half of us were collaborating couples: Magsaman & Hillerbrand (Mary M. and Steve H.); Be Johnny (Bree Edwards and Johnny DeKam); and PBL. John Carrithers, Kara Hearn, and Eileen Maxson are the others.

a Franco Mondini-Ruiz paining occupies a special alcove space at the Fingers' new house

The "Celestial Event" took place at the recently acquired and renovated home of Martha & Richard Finger, backing up into the Buffalo Bayou... and I mean recent--the paint was practically still wet! I know they worked incredibly hard towards completion, and it was a truly lovely setting for this special night.

Lucky us, we got to stay in the guest room at the Aurora Library! Super-awesome to have access to all of the videos there, with two built-in screening spaces. It reminded me of when I was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I'd spend my spare time in the Video Data Bank stacks watching everything that seemed remotely interesting! At Aurora I watched documentation from past Media Archeology events like TV Sheriff, Wet Gate, Paper Rad and Cory Arcangel, and single channel works of Takeshi Murata, Joel Schlemowitz, Jackie Goss, and others.

The night after the gala we had the pleasure of seeing Bill Morrision and his work at the Aurora Theater. Bill was in town working on the "Lightning at our Feet" production, in collaboration with the University of Houston Mitchell Center. Best known for his feature-length avant-garde film "Decasia," we were fortunate to see this rare collection of works he had created over the years in cooperation with various of theatrical projects.

We made our return to Houston on Halloween to present Fortune at the Aurora Picture Show Theater, and lots of people came in costume. Aurora Picture Show fickr pix. After the show, we ended up at some nondescript-on-the-outside bar, notorious as a place bosses take their secretaries for a little undercover nookie. The upstairs was a room filled with vinyl couch-booths. Ew. We hung out downstairs in costume. Matt Coolidge was in town, and having him in the mix was the cherry on the sundae.

The next day, we tooled around Houston bit, and were pleasantly surprised to run into our friend James Craig, who had recently relocated to Houston from San Antonio to work for Deborah Colton at her new gallery space... he eventually sent us over to the project space (where the prior incarnation of her gallery had been) and we were treated to David Adickes presidential busts-- another truly wonderful surprise! The recent hurricane had blown Beatle Paul McCartney over-- somewhat apparent in the picture above.

here's Jay next to one of his favorite presidents

The rest of our visit passed quickly by way of brunch with cousins, meeting Meg Poissant and her dogs at her gallery space and showing her some of my video work, breakfast with our good friend Tish Stringer and her chip-off-the-old-block daughter (sharp as her mom!), dinner with Patrick Kwaitikowski and his beautiful family, and generally paying witness to hurricane damage in the physical realm and through everyone's stories.

Back In Time: ANTIMATTER (September 26)

2008-12-18T13:30:00.014-05:00

It took two days to travel to the Antimatter Film Festival. We flew to Seattle, stayed overnight in the Moore Hotel downtown, then walked down to the pier early in the morning to catch the Victoria Clipper high-speed ferry to the island of Victoria, British Columbia, where we performed Fortune and participated in a panel discussion on Live Cinema.

Autumn weather in charming downtown Victoria was a real treat. 10,000 thank-yous go to festival director Todd Eacrett and curator Deborah De Boer, who ensured that our stay was fantastic. We were put up at Paul's Motor Inn, in a room off the secret courtyard in the back, a very cozy hideout. We could and did walk everywhere. We visited the Victoria Bug Zoo, where I held all kinds of large bugs, from the most regal and sentient praying mantis to the gigantic exotic cockroach, and saw a colony of the amazing leaf-cutter ants. We imbibed at Big Bad John's, where you can throw your peanut shells on the ground, and be startled by phony tarantulas lowered down on your table by the staff. We ate lots of awesome asian food, and generally just celebrated with the festival folks, including lots of other visiting and local filmmakers and artists.

photo by Steven Masuch

Here we are with artist/panel moderator John Boehme, and San Francisco filmmaker Kerry Laitala, after the Live Cinema panel. John led us through a lively discussion about filmmaking, performance with the moving image, and art making in contemporary times. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

We saw some great work including Craig Baldwin's new film "Mock Up on Mu," which incorporates a lot more original film into his signature found-footage montage style, solidifying the narrative undercurrent in a positive way. It was also a treat to see "We will live to see these things, or, five pictures of what may come to pass," by Julian Metzer and David Thorne. Our friend Chris Kubick has been working on the soundtrack for many months-- what a nice surprise to see/hear this experimental documentary shot in Syria, in its finished state. "Frank & Cindy" by G.J. Echternkamp is also a very worthwhile feature-length personal documentary about the filmmaker's mother and stepfather, and active relations amongst the three of them influenced by and during the making of the film.

Antimatter is a highly respected and well funded festival due to outstanding programming. The British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts are just two of their many sponsors. I admit that I was surprised at the size of the audience. Quality trumped quantity, however, with the small crowds comprised of many video and film makers, professors, and students. This could be due to the smallness of Victoria, and/or the fact that there was a student-worker strike going on that took down one of the two venues with Antimatter programming, forcing lots of grueling, last-second rescheduling. Another reason may be the tiny festival staff-- it's amazing to witness how much can actually accomplished by such a small group. If they operate like I do, though, publicity is the last hat that I can manage to put on after all of the other important responsibilities. Whatever the case may be, I wish we had been able to afford (both financially and temporally) to stay for the duration of this exceptional 10-day episode, honoring the cream of the experimental moving-image crop.

Back In Time: LANDSCAPES (September 4)

2008-12-18T12:57:00.007-05:00

Whenever school starts, time magically evaporates, and I push to find some even keel for teaching and producing work. Intense involvement in a project followed by some down-time to recuperate is typical, but I'd gladly trade for a more steady kind of progress. This writing is a way for me to digest the events of my life, and it typically gets put on hold until the tranquil moment comes.

These images are from way back at the beginning of the term-- Blue Star Contemporary, September First Thursday, at my opening of new video works: LANDSCAPES.

From my press release:

Leslie Raymond's new show LANDSCAPES puts the focus on the tired and true theme of the landscape. A primary genre in painting, landscapes generally depict views from nature. Here, Raymond presents a contemporary take on the subject. Broadening the vocabulary of the picture-plane through the use of the moving image, she incorporates video's inevitable language of time. This group of landscape images embodies artifacts of the passage of time (including lapsed time, movement through time and space, and time pressure) while simultaneously considering composition, color, shape and form. Each video loop composition in this series is displayed on its own flat-panel monitor, and each is an edition of four.

Emily Morrison expanded on these thoughts beautifully in an essay that she wrote for the show, published as a short-run brochure by Blue Star. If you want one, get in touch with me & I'll happily pass it on.

Back In Time: Collaborating With My Mom (September)

2008-12-17T11:11:00.005-05:00

Many months ago, my mom told me about a dream she'd had. In it, I was projecting video images onto a wall of clay. More than a few years ago she described another dream in which I was coming to her, trying to balance a big, wet slab of clay. How fascinating for an artist mother to dream about her artist daughter in relation to her medium.

When she relayed her more recent dream, my mom invited me to collaborate on a something for her upcoming retrospective at the Birmingham Art Center. She is pictured below, in the middle of the extremely well-attended reception of her show, practically dead-center... though its hard to see her in this small image. My brother took these snapshots. He's the one in the family who did not pursue any kind of career in the arts, and at the same time has an amazing eye for composition. Must be the genes from our architect dad and potter mom. Could also have to do with growing up within an environment that expressed their quintessential modernist sensibilities.

So when I was up in Michigan over the summer, I made a video component for this large wall-piece (approx 55" x 68"). It was a projection of digitally manipulated, somewhat abstracted footage of my mom throwing at the wheel.

An installation-shot.

chocolate and teamwork

2008-12-10T11:11:00.002-05:00

It's been such a busy semester. I put up the previous post while working on my materials for the Chocolate Alice fundraiser project at San Antonio Museum of Art. This was a vjFutureWorkerGirl gig, although I can't find any mention of this online or in print, including the announcement cards. Maybe I'm some kind of egomaniac, but my own identity as an artist apart from my work in Potter-Belmar Labs is so important to me. Collaborating is wonderfully rewarding, and also incredibly challenging at times. Compromise is key. Its enables one to transcend the bounds of the ego. And, as in an any relationship, growth comes out a commitment to the Third Thing-- that thing that is the alchemical combination of the Two.

And still, my creative drive requires unfettered access to the Flow. Sometimes this can be achieved in collaboration, but I find that the negotiating process interrupts it more often than not. And I also find myself more willing more often to concede than to wage war for my ideas, but its part of the reality of our creative enterprise, and something I struggle to overcome.

Chocolate Alice was a lot of fun. When I find some images from the outdoor installations I'll post them and make some more comments. Also looking forward to updating this blog on the myriad of other gigs from these past few months...

the chocolate

2008-11-07T17:48:00.001-05:00

Art Guys Talk at UTSA

2008-09-13T16:57:00.000-04:00

The Art Guys visited from Houston earlier this week to talk about their work, currently on exhibit in the UTSA Art Gallery at the 1604 campus. This nationally recognized duo has their game down, and they got it down good-- a complex sense of humor, an admirable DIY attitude, ability to effortlessly talk the talk, and they admitted that socializing in the moneyed branch of the art scene comes easily to them. Their broad creative skill-set and refined sense of craft coupled with strong ability in the conceptual arena make this team an effective art force to be reckoned with.

But my question is: effective to what end?

The 20th century showed us two things, generally speaking, concerning art. First, anything can be art, beginning with Duchamp's urinal. And second, that and the individual, self-absorbed artist can be a godlike figure, beholden to nobody but himself. The Art Guys are a pinnacle of this lineage.

The Art Guys take pride in the public nature of much their work, a pride derived from the act of simply putting themselves on display in public space. During the Q&A, I asked what their hope was for the public audience-- for someone who didn't know who the Art Guys were, or who may not look at art at all. They answered that their aim is to challenge the sense of what is normal or allowed. Bravo, let's move on to the 21st century now.

This is the kind of work (and attitude) that has led to a public that is alienated from contemporary art. The last instance, that comes to my mind, of a kind of pride in citizenship amongst artists in the States is the WPA. Somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, artists turned inward and focused on making art for other artists (in addition to that cultured elite with a growing sophistication in trophy-collecting). Is it any wonder that the National Endowment for the Arts went away? Why is everyone so surprised?

The Art Guys are old-fashioned not only because they don't have any sense of commitment to a public audience, but also because they say that the work is fundamentally about the relationship of the two of them. Multiplying the individual artist-as-god premise resonates with an attitude of gross conceit. It is my hope that this stance will die out as artists step up more and more to the challenge of actualizing a better world through a positive evolution of our physical, psychological, and social environments. Look to Beuys for the root of this ideology.

Bearded Child Film Festival, Minneapolis

2008-08-21T22:03:00.015-04:00

The good life. Six blocks away from the bike trail system is where we landed in Minneapolis. Our friend David Pitman, a man with many bikes, hosted us at his place in the Seward neighborhood, HQ of the Monoplex and K-ICE. It rained several times, but was mostly cool (compared to San Antonio) and sunny (though not oppressively so, as in south Texas). I biked around a lot. Riding on the Midtown Greenway was like Utopia.

My bike gang, me (not pictured) David and Jay, riding through the Seward neighborhood to breakfast on Sunday morning.

It was a real treat to attend and perform at The Bearded Child Film Festival. After eight years, director Dan Anderson took his Grand Rapids MN experimental film festival for a run in Minneapolis, at the Bedlam Theater. I'm glad he did-- it's time to share the bounty of his unique vision somewhere with the potential for a larger audience.

I was super impressed with the programming-- lots of new talent I'd never seen before, high-quality work selected with a keen eye for the absurd, odd, and/or personal film that challenges the norm. The Bearded Child was awarded an Arrowhead Regional Arts Council grant this year (which is McKnight Foundation money), allowing them to bring in several special guest artists (including PBL), and this was a major component that enriched the wonderful time I was already having.

I had the pleasure of VJ-ing at the opening night after-party just across the light-rail tracks at Medusa with DJ Danny Seligman. We hit a good groove, and it was a lot of fun improvising to his mix of reggae and film soundtrack samples. Before we went on as the closing act, however, I was treated to some really interesting solo acts that combined the hardcore punk energy of my younger days with digital tools. This is a logical evolution, as computers are so integrated with our daily existence nowadays.

Lepercaves, for example, billed as a "spastic blast from Boulder," screached menacingly into a mic over a heavy, grounded beat that was emanating from his laptop. When he started tossing chairs around the room, in traditional combative male rocker style, there was a real tension created (for me) by the fact that his 2000$ laptop was sitting nearby. At one point, his software crashed and he called out to the audience "Ya gotta' love computers-- raise your hand if you have a computer!" Everyone raised their hand and cheered, as he scoffed while waiting for the thing to reboot. I enjoyed his performance, and experiencing the perilousness of his testosterone flailings in such close proximity to that delicate and vulnerable piece of machinery.

Here is the dynamic Matthew Silver (New Jersey) during the performance before a screening of his videos, which are nearly as high-energy as he is in person. He was frantically relaying a bizarre story about being in a plane-crash due to a chicken getting sucked into the engine. He is a doctor, and he discovers a cure for cancer (which both of his parents are afflicted with) while stranded on a tropical island. The whole time, he's running around the room, vigorously flinging his body in dynamic contortions that reflect the absurdity of the story he was telling. He pulled if off brilliantly.

It was a real treat to take in Brent Coughenour's (Milwaukee) live cinema performance "The Indomitable Human Spirit." Over the course of the piece, stunning, pulsating, abstract images that were like a moving painting, very, very slowly shed the extremity of their pixilization and became recognizable forms. Brent manipulated his digital files with what appeared to be a Guitar Hero video game controller. It was a satisfying descent into a zone of relaxed ambience.

Other stand-outs from the week include:

Jodie Mack (Chicago) - "Yard Work is Hard Work," and earlier works

Andrew Wilson (San Francisco) - Spider House

Nate Callahan (St. Louis) - i!

Eric Patrick (Evanston) - Ablution in the "Best Of" screening

Judith Zdesar (Austria) - Images of a Diary of Waiting

Check out this preview article that Minneapolis writer Cindy Collins wrote about our show.

PBL goes to NYC

2008-08-21T21:10:00.011-04:00

It's always fantasitc to be in The City. Last year when we did the Lab at the Roger Smith Hotel gig, Eric Dunlap of Forward Motion Theater came by and hung out with us one night. We met Eric several years ago in Detroit when he was in town with some dance gig. He knew the Disassembler, AKA Deon Foster who, along with Jim Ryan, is of one of my all-time favorite AV acts: the Shenanigans and we were there together to play the JOMAS DVD release party at Gallery 555.

When we saw Eric last year, he invited us to play Eyewash, a highly respected showcase for AV artists booked by he and his creative partner, the awesome Holly Daggers. The series is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. I have nothing but high praise for Eric and Holly. These two are serious Do-ers who are not only excelling at their own art, but are producing a comprehensive and legitimate context for its consideration.

photo by Noelia Santos

Eyewash goes down once a month at Monkeytown in Brooklyn. There's a room in the back which has a big projection screen on each wall, low couches against the walls around the whole room, with low coffee tables so that people can order and eat the excellent food prepared in the Monkeytown kitchen. The artists set up in the middle, playing in-the-round act by act. This is one of the mosts exceptional rooms that we have ever played, and we were in good company with Wetcircuit, Luke DuBois (pictured below), and Guiaumetrix.

I met Sean LaFleur of djnyc after the early set, and he enthusiastically commented about the organic, human feel of our work in comparision with the cool-technological quality of the other acts. "It was like slipping on a pair of worn jeans," he said. And I like that.

SHARE NYC
This was the first time we got in on Share, the regular meet-up and jam session of AV geeks who produce music, visuals, and code. I was the only female participant, although there was another woman with a laptop, she was checking her email.

The picture above looks like it could have been shot at the library, but I had fun playing with my images and talking with others about what they were doing, the hardware and software they were using, and projects they were developing.

special guests from Europe: Alex Gunia, Knut Sævik, Tore Brevik

Dignowity Pushcart Revelry

2008-07-28T20:42:00.006-04:00

Here's me with the svelte Ed Saavedra, pushcart driver of the "Lil’ General y La Familia" for 1906. I was a little under-the-weather and had to depart early, but I knew this was the only photo I had to get-- the allegedly "First to Finish" team was first again this year.

You can see it in their form-- Regan with their dark-horse pusher (who joined on only hours before the race) are perfectly in-sync. They could slaughter any 3-legged race team in a heartbeat.

These guys mean business. It's no contest.

And speaking of contest-- a lot of fun was missing this year without a round of all of the pushcarts racing the track together, all at the same time, in a dangerous mix of mayhem and ambition. I imagine the organizers are going for safety... but I say to those who aspire to compete in this punk-ass sport: if you can't deal with the rigor, get off the track.

check out the emvergeoning reportage

Arctic Blast From The North!

2008-07-28T02:03:00.014-04:00

David Pitman and Stephen Rife rose to the challenge of the San Antonio summer climate of CAM. The two Northerners set off from the Twin Cities (St.Paul/Minneapolis), pointing their car south on I-35, and after a couple days, pulled up at PBL headquarters in San Antonio to join in the fun of Contemporary Art Month.

Rife, Pitman, and Jay checking out the wall for the second night of the Monoplex, beneath Josephine Street.

David Pitman is the director of the Art Shanty Project, a Northern counterpart to our Contemporary Art Month, only it happens in January and February on a frozen lake in Minnesota. Dozens of artists create small structures, inhabited by art projects for a 6-week stint, attracting thousands of visitors.

Steve Rife is a pyrotechnic artist and filmmaker. Also intensely DIY, like Pitman, these two are unstoppable-- in art-making and the construction biz both. We came to know each other in the early '90s when we all had studios in the infamous Rossmor Building in St.Paul MN.

In addition to an assortment of artists' videos they had in tow, our local community was invited to contribute to the two nights of screenings.

David collects some video by Michele Monseau at her shady abode....

while Michele's cat puts it's scent on Steve:

Mark Jones delivers the goods at PBL HQ, and shows us the broken part of his computer screen.

Rife, Justin Parr, and Pitman

AN ASIDE: The Northerners and PBL were having lunch at the Liberty Bar when Pitman noticed a wooden ketchup bottle affixed to the back of the crosswalk sign out the window on the corner of Josephine and Avenue A, and at that precise moment, Justin Parr called. This photo was taken right after lunch, as Justin let David select an artwork to hang somewhere up north.

the Monoplex lineup

K-ICE Monoplex renegade performance recap by Justin Parr

Big big thanks to Anjali Gupta and Michele Monseau for their assistance with preparations for the Saturday night show!

And to that person who atttended the Friday night show at PBL HQ & took all of our forks: you can keep them, but I just want the one brass fork with my Dad's name on it back.

Steve Rife, Mike Casey, and David Pitman after the show.

Mike Casey made sure that our guests were shown a really swell San Antonio time, making arrangements for us all to head over to the Compound where Chuck Ramirez' hospitality was in full swing. Thanks Mike!

Lyle and Me at Artpace 2 to Watch

2008-07-28T02:02:00.013-04:00

photos by Kimberly Aubuchon

Artpace invited me to talk about my work as part of the "2 to Watch" bi-annual series in conjunction with Gemini Ink, San Antonio's premier center for the literary arts. I was honored and fortunate to be paired up with writer Lyle Rosdahl, who started the evening by reading from his in-progress and very engaging mystery novel.

Parameters of his writing process involve drawing from the tarot deck to inspire the evolution of the story. His project and the Potter-Belmar Labs Fortune project both borrow from this divination device as central components in the course of creating the form.

I talked about some large-scale site specific projections I had done, some of the Potter-Belmar Labs projects (the collaboration with my husband), my recent installation at Cactus Bra - "In The Garden," and showed a little preview of some of the work in my upcoming show at Blue Star Contemporary Arts Center in September.

The first question after the talk: Are people collecting video art?

Happily, I reported: Yes they are.

There are people in the States who collect, but Europe seems to be the hotbed for now. Last spring my eyes were opened when I attended the LOOP Barcelona Festival and Fair. LOOP claims to be "The place for video art lovers," and that they are. I was impressed by the high quality of the work in the fair, a three-day event involving 40+ gallerists from Europe, Canada, and the US, each occupying a room in the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas, each representing one or two video artists.

One very memorable event of the festival was a screening from the collection of Marc & Josée Gensollen at the Fundació Suñol. Seeing what these collectors loved enough to own was truly interesting, and this particular selection focused on the body in action, with a documentary-based subset of the long-take of a live subject within a live setting (a church, a cafeteria).

My blog entries from last year: LOOP Fair, LOOP Festival

As for me, I've begun to dispense with my purist ways. Having avidly avoided the art marketplace in my own art practice for 20 years, believing that money is not a very good motivating factor for me to make art, I've finally come around to seeing that money and art do not necessarily have to be at odds. Over this past year I have developed my approach for video editions in DVD, and have had some success at selling! Time will tell whether this can be a thriving enterprise for me.

And finally, a link to Lyle's blog.

Allied Media Conference

2008-07-22T09:49:00.009-04:00

DOING BY NOT DOING

There was smooth, balanced, and ongoing momentum to everybody's studio activities at my folks' place. Things were so mellow over there that it seemed as though nothing at all was happening. I wondered what I'd been up to, then was surprised at the effortlessness involved in accomplishing so much in two weeks. I'd helped my mom lay out her catalog, completed a new video loop to be projected on one of her giant wall-hanging pieces, and prepared for & delivered a talk at the Allied Media Conference at Wayne State University in Detroit.

ALLIED MEDIA CONFERENCE

My talk was called "Conversations: Appropriation in 20th Century Western Art." I defined various legal terms essential for a discussion of art, copyright and fair use, then illustrated an overall development of sampling in visual art from Duchamp to Shepard Fairey.

me with fellow presenter Sterling Toles

Artist Sterling Toles played portions of an audio collage artwork of his creation. His sound compositions were woven with audio samples from newscasts to describe his father's personal history as integrated with the history of Detroit from the time of the riots/revolution of the summer of 1967. Detroit has a story to tell, and the world needs to hear it. I envision amazing potential for community media to be broadcast out of Detroit.

The Allied Media crowd is sharp, eager, and feisty. We had a great discussion afterwards, with the audience contributing critical points such as the importance of teaching the other side of copyright law, that is copyright as protection for the artist; and that not only money can cause copyright lawsuits, but also political dissent.

It is such a relief to see so many young people learning about and engaged in independent media production. I love the Allied Media Conference.

Floating In The Timeless

2008-07-21T21:25:00.006-04:00

I was in hiding up in the Northern Woods for about a month. Each morning, I secured myself in the discipline of framing two different time-lapse shots (one on the dcr-pc300, the other on the gl2). Then I would set about to help my mom on a couple projects for her upcoming show, a retrospective of her ceramic work.

One afternoon, my littlest niece was drawn to the nuvj mixer. I hooked it up and the three of us (littlest niece, biggest niece, and I) had all six hands on that thing, grooving to Dabrye! We cut a video called "The Mix-Up Disk." That was pretty rad.

Every day brought, without fail, exclamations of surprise about the time. (i.e. "It's 4:00!! ... Already!? ... Jeez!! ... ") The bird-clock plays a different birdsong every hour but the wrong bird was singing on the specified hour. We finally figured out it was off by 4, and fixed it. Birds come to eat seed at particular times of day. The littlest niece named the squirrels who clean up underneath the feeder Peanut and Coconut.

Weather. The history and stories of my folks' travels to foreign lands over the last sixty years. Shadows travel across the decking, across the gravel of the driveway, across the trees and the whole house. In residence in a timeless collaboration, a witnessing and shaping of the flow.

TOUR: California (Southbound Leg)

2008-07-21T12:36:00.016-04:00

BAY AREA, Second Pass

Jymn, Ruby, Jay, Jeph

We enjoyed a solid couple days of down-time, powwowing with Jay's old clan from Kalamazoo, who have almost all relocated to the Bay Area over the years. We were a slow-moving, cheery organism, relaxing with only a few cultural objectives in our sights as we partook of awesome meals, went for various drives and walks, and hung-out with the amazing Ruby child.

We hit the SFMOMA for In Collaboration: Early Works from the Media Arts Collection. Highlights were: Steina's "Violin Power," Chris Burden's "Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74," Vito Acconci's "Home Movies," and a Doug Hall closed-circuit installation.

Kubick in his studio with Jay

a subject of Kubick's steady research

Keith Evans, Chris Kubick, Jay, and Anne Walsh

Keith Evans joined us and Chris Kubick for our gig at 21 Grand. He laid out a hybrid contraption of moving objects and small film projections, aimed a video camera at them and projected that image large, on the walls, while conjuring ambient sounds, captivating the audience deeply in his enchanted spell. I experienced that same magic a few years back when his collaborative, silt, came to the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor Film Festival for their last performances and exhibition project before one of their members moved to Europe. Sounds like he and the other California-based member Jeff Warrin may try something out together again soon. I hope so.

LA, Second Pass

Robert Martin, Donna, Jay, and elray at the Getty

We spent a morning at the Getty with fellow displaced-Detroiters Robert Martin and his wife Donna, checking out the California Video exhibition. Robert left Wayne State University to be the chair of the California State University/LA Department of Art around the same time I left Ann Arbor for San Antonio, and he also works with moving image and sound in performance. I met him through my old comrade Julie Meitz, who had been his student, when she invited the both of us to vj with her at Movement/the Detroit Electronic Music Fesitval in 2005. It was a real treat to get to spend a little time together again.

Memorable work from the California Video show includes early B/W Tony Oursler; a 5-channel Diana Thater digital video installation and a Bruce Nauman closed-circuit installation.

Our Materials & Applications show was great close out to the tour.

view from atop the module, the mobile cinema on the sidewalk below.

Giacomo Castagnola brought his mobile cinema, the ABCmobile, from Tijuana. We had fun making new friends and seeing old ones.

The Lady Didier in charge at M&A, with the Lil' Piunisher at her side.

Claire Didier and Jay inside Jimenez Lai's Phalanstery Module

THE RIDE HOME

The longest delay of our entire train journey was pulling into the station in San Antonio. We waited for over an hour sitting about 100 yards from the platform. I didn’t mind.

TOUR: Pacific NW

2008-07-09T16:24:00.017-04:00

Jay looking at the announcement for our show in the DIVA window

EUGENE
Eugene was peaceful. We stayed downtown. I took baths at the hotel. It was gray and rainy. Flowers were busting out. We walked everywhere, to the natural foods store, to dinner, to the train station to look for Jason's lost phone, to our gig at the Downtown Initiative for the Arts.

PORTLAND

Something about Portland had Jay floating on a cloud of most genial enchantment. His temperament was of unsurpassed conviviality, most likely due to nostalgia brought on by his having lived there for a couple years, and it put him in the sweetest mood.

Portland was a marvelous convergence of people from different times and places in both our lives. We stayed with the 2 Gyrlz, Llewyn Maire and Lisa Newman, who I met during a residency at Hotel Pupik last year.

Llewyn and Lisa flank their comrade Noah Mickins, who set up our gig at Rotture.

We got to see Vihn Nguyen, our old friend from Ann Arbor who masterminded the av-battles that we were a part of back in 2005.

Me and Vihn

noteNdo (Jeff Donaldson) came out to play with us, as he'd been traveling around the west coast with Portland-based Carl Diehl, and so did Chris Kubick who was impelled to make the Portland journey to visit an old friend from high school. The sound system was awesome, and noteNdo's set was forceful and tough-- what had been difficult to hear at the ATA show now unfurled in true form. (This youtube clip from a different noteNdo gig gives an indication of his sound.)

Kubick's set evolves significantly each time. His piece renders many recorded sounds of clapping both audibly as well as visually. Chris' live claps into a microphone trigger audio and video samples. As far as I know, the piece was first performed as a work-in-progress when he was our Visiting Artist for the spring 2007 term at UTSA.

Mike, Jay, Noah

A local VJ (Mark?) who accompanied the DJ between the acts had some really striking black-and-white interludes that I found to be quite beautiful. Dancing with Vihn and Kubick was superb. It was truly satisfying to get such a deep dose of Llewyn's DJ groove, and we carried on until they kicked us out.

SEATTLE

The weather was amazing. One day grey, and the next one uncharacteristically sunny. Everybody seemed to be taking advantage, hanging around outside by the water... or, at least I was, and there were many others there too.

Central Cinema is special cozy neighborhood microcinema sporting a small but excellent menu of food, beer, wine, and movies. We enjoyed the program the night before our gig, STORY by the Seattle Neutrino Society, which alternated between live storytellers and videos of storytellers (sometimes a straight head-shot, but often expanded beyond this), a live cinema experience very different from what we've seen before.

On the way back down the coast, the Cascades made a 35-minute stopover in Portland. We de-boarded and ran through the market under the Burnside Bridge and Chinatown shops, managing to find a little embroidered pouch for the fortune cards and get back on the train before it pulled out of the station. This ride through the Pacific Northwest was stunning.

TOUR: Northern California (Northbound Leg)

2008-07-04T14:36:00.016-04:00

Catching the 1:30am bus to Bakersfield for the 4am Coast Starlight saddled with an illness that I'm all-too-happy to forget about was fairly challenging. Jymn and his 20-month-old daughter were at the station when our train pulled up to Oakland in the morning. Mr. Mom, long-longtime friend of Jay, was our perfect facilitator, carting us around town wherever we needed to go in his GPS-enhanced hybrid with the amazing baby Ruby in the back. For me this meant a trip to the health-food store for medicine, dropping me and our luggage at Chris and Anne's open and airy apartment where I promptly laid down on the couch, and a specially delivered steaming-hot phó from the best Vietnamese joint in OK-Town.

OAKLAND:

Chris Kubick performing at the Fractal Mind Hut

After sleeping all day, we went to Ben's place for our gig. Ben sometimes hosts events at his uber-excellent industrial live-work space, known as The Totally Intense Fractal Mind Gaze Hut. I know him from a couple years back when Chris Kubick set up a show at 21 Grand with a bunch of electronic music improvisers from Mills, with whom I mixed set after set on my Videonics MX-1. It's hard to imagine traveling with that old analog set-up, now that my new digital rig fits entirely in one backpack.

Alfonso manning his projector array.

This gig felt like coming home because the audience was already speaking our language. Also on the bill with us were a team made up of electronically modified flute and a custom suitcase-bound electronics array; Chris Kubick; and Alfonso Alvarez (Ann Arbor School) with Suki O'Kane (Ill Corral).

I imagine that experiencing experimental music is easier for more people than taking in experimental film. If so, why? Music is abstract by nature, and there is a willingness to experience and accept that sound can create an emotional and dynamic experience without having to deconstruct it. On the other hand, mainstream moving image media is everywhere (movies, television, internet), filling our field of vision with a very specific visual language that we deeply and intuitively accept. When we are challenged with moving images that diverge from this standard, we become confused and caught up in looking for the "meaning." This is similar to representational vs. abstract painting. Whereas most people can accept a traditional landscape painting as art, faced with a Jackson Pollack they might say: "My two-year old can do that." Or, in response to Barnett Newman's "Be I (second version)," at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, I actually heard: "Someone hangs a ping-pong table on the wall and calls it art."

THE MISSION:

Our good friend Julian Stark carted Jay and our gear over to the other side of the bay to set up at the ATA while me and my virus remained horizontal for the better part of the day. I was sorry to have to miss an afternoon with Craig Baldwin and his whirlwind of energies. My feeble state was accentuated climbing out of the BART station onto 16th Street, as I leaned for a few minutes to regain some breath and strength before embarking on a slow-motion hike over to 992 Valencia Street.

The gig was cooked up by Carl Diehl from Portland to showcase Fortian and similar scientific anomalies in relation to the glitch of the circuit-bender. Craig Baldwin says it was "my best show pic of [the] 08 calendar."

Filmmaker Sam Green engrossed in show-and-tell about a plaster cast of Bigfoot's foot that he'd mail-ordered as a kid (and still possessed).

News from home by way of this powerpoint presentation on UFO current events.

Here's a rare appearance by Son of Sasquatch, who is about to jump up on the table with our laptops and mixers. Notice the lit candelabra with 7 dripping hot-wax generators. We became tense and disturbed for a few moments until he got down.

Circuit-bender Jeff Donaldson, known as noteNdo, in from Brooklyn.

It was a real honor to be live on the Other Cinema bill, with an audience hooked into the deep experimental cinema and culture-jamming traditions of the Bay Area. If our show at the Mind Hut felt like coming home, this was more like connecting back up to the Mothership.

TOUR: Southern California (Northbound Leg)

2008-07-04T13:03:00.019-04:00

Nina took us to the train station after we got rid of the rental car, and hung out long enough to absorb the depot vibe before we said our goodbyes. I love the relaxed atmosphere of train travel. We settled into our sleeperette on the Southwest Chief and soon were off. In this first moment of the 108+ hours we would be spending on the train over the next few weeks, I did a little dance in the small space between our seats.

elray on the train

Our train pulled in an hour early the next morning at LA Union Station. It wasn't long before Vera Bruner-Sung, another comrade from the Ann Arbor Film Festival (from now on referred to as "The Ann Arbor School"), scooped us up. Vera is one thesis film away from her masters at Cal Arts, was just completing a review of James Benning's new book, doing lots of yoga, and glowing in the swoon of young love.

It was gray and rainy, and Vera took excellent care of us for the day, helping us to laundry, naps, a ride to the movies (Errol Morris' "Standard Operating Proceedure"), good dialogue, and more.

VENICE:

We made our way out to Venice beach by way of a ride to the Center for Land Use Interpretation (where we said hello to Matt Coolidge, albeit briefly as he was ensconced in tax forms), then bus, then foot. It was one of those gorgeous sunny and mild southern California days. We walked up the boardwalk to Dudley Street and found the 7Dudley Cinema in the middle of the first block in from the beach. Gerry Fialka, also of the Ann Arbor School, was arranging chairs and setting up the projector.

The space was cozy, and our audience an intimate one. Quintessential Venice Beach, there were at least two people present with bare feet.

Deep Venice - Gerry generously offered us the futon-couch at his & Suzy's cozy bungalow, a home-cooked gourmet breakfast, and a ride out to Silver Lake the next day. It was a real treat. Neighborhood locales are essential to life in LA, and Gerry prepared for what seemed to be a major excursion by gathering up a big stack of trash-picked LPs to haul inland to Amoeba Records.

This embroidery on felt is one of the many treasures discovered inside at Gerry & Suzy's place.

Gerry interviewing Jay

one of the many treasures discovered outside at Gerry & Suzy's place

ECHO PARK:

The next thing I remember is going on a bike ride to downtown LA, then a rapid decline into illness just before and during a great meal prepared by my old friend Jenna. I spent the next several days in bed, making my way to and performing at whichever next gig.

After months in flat Texas, I'm excited about the verticality of the LA cityscape.

The Echo Park Film Center was hopping with the energy of numerous kids in tight quarters editing videos when we walked in. This wonderful little community film center, lovingly run by the beautiful couple Lisa and Paolo, is an oasis of real and effective hands-on grass-roots media making. Although I was fairly wiped out from the viral occupation, we truly enjoyed the audience and our show there. Much respect and love to those folks! And long-live the EPFC!

TOUR: New Mexico

2008-06-22T13:58:00.018-04:00

We set out in a rental car and drove for half a day to reach Roswell from San Antonio.

ROSWELL

Mimi Kato made sure that this first stop on our tour was a success, hosting us at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program where she's been living and working since January. Mimi took superb care of us, treated us to her scrumptious home-style Japanese cooking, toured us downtown to the RAIR and UFO Museums, and resourcefully ensured that we had everything we needed for our performance.

Our audience was a wonderful group of artists-in-residence and Roswell townies who were connected to the arts, including a curator and former curator from the Roswell Museum of Art, and a farmer. This sincere and lively group was wholly engaging in an invigorating post-performance Q&A.

TAOS

Skipping up to Taos overnight, I was surprised at how little things have changed in 15 years. We found the old adobe that I'd lived in on Upper Ranchitos Road. It had been recently restored and was for sale. For a moment, we entertained the fantasy of dropping out of everyday civilization for the charmed eternity of Taos. We walked along a stream filled with melted mountain snow in the Sangre de Christos, and found a horse skeleton.

Most Beautiful Steel Bridge, Long Span, designated by the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1966.

(photo from www.redriver.org/cumbres-toltec-railroad)
Where we took the ashes of Hambone.
It seemed fitting to bring him back to where he came from.

SANTA FE

The Steina Vasulka retrospective at Site Santa Fe has given me a much richer understanding of and respect for the grand matron of video art. I am inspired by her practice as she continues to produce relevant and profound work from the arid geography of Northern New Mexico.

ALBUQUERQUE

The good folks in Albuquerque bestowed upon us good times, and a most positive experience.

Basement Films peeps Bryan Konefsky, who I know from his frequent visits to the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and hardworking Keif Henley made it happen at the Verb Collective venue, run by the gallant and dependable Blake Driver.

Here we are after the gig. (Elray, Keif, Jay, Bryan, Patty, Blake)

Film artist Nina Fonoroff, Associate Professor of Cinematic Studies at UNM, kindly allowed us to stay with her in the little corner of paradise that she occupies. I met Nina at the NAMAC conference in Austin last October and was captivated immediately upon hearing of her work with the optical printer. We pried our way into her studio and were treated to a look at parts of a longtime work-in-progress.

The fallout from the digital explosion upon artists fascinates me-- particularly those who have worked with celluloid for a long time. While many of us have taken up the digital tools (willingly or reluctantly), Nina's approach reinforces the physicality of film, moving each single frame into full-out printmaking processes. Awesome.

better late than never - CAA Dallas

2008-06-18T11:29:00.010-04:00

Here's Yoko doing the Onochord at the College Art Association conference back in February.

It's standing room only, and I'm standing all the way in the back of one of the larger rooms of the Dallas Convention Center. There must be over 500 academics there for art/rock star Yoko's talk, but the power of her charisma reaches every corner of the room. She showed pictures of herself as a very young girl, and talked autobiography into her early days in NYC. It seemed fitting that she reinforce her public persona of childlike innocence through these images. An uncomplicated purity is the best ground for her message of peace. Overall, I think: keep it simple and accept Yoko straight-up as an icon of peace-- its been the focus of her art since early on. The strength of her presence is enough to assuage the small part of me that sees her as a privileged rebel, defying the strict social traditions of her upper-class Japanese milieu.

Yoko's presence was solid, but the receiving environment seemed incongruous. There was something strange about her flashing the I--LOVE--YOU Onochord message from her flashlight on stage to a room-full of academics, as they flashed back. I wasn't able to break through the setting to feel her message-- but that might say more about me than academia or Yoko.

And here is Artlies editor (now acting director) Anjali Gupta on a panel of art critics.

She's answering a question from the audience, saying that the grads from a particular (here unnamed) masters program in art theory/criticism have "had so much smoke blown up their ass" during their time in the program that she requests that they wait at least a year after getting out before asking to write for her publication. Smart, feisty, and not afraid to tell it like it is-- I like that lady!

check out the paper she presented, 'Is Blogging Criticism?' here on Glasstire

And finally, here's Justin Boyd (in shadow on the left) DJing and me VJing (silhouetted on the right), representing for the UTSA New Media Program at the reception for the New Media Caucus at The Dallas Contemporary. For my video mix, I've borrowed all of the cellphone videos from the computers in the current exhibition there. These videos, which have been uploaded on a daily basis by seven different artists and projected into the space, make up the Real Time show. CAA attendees have also been invited to contribute video images for my mix.

My friend Patricia Olynyk showed up and asked if I had received the animated gif she'd emailed. It was easy to retrieve via the wireless internet access, plug it into my VJ software, and throw it up on the screen in no time. This was a terrific moment, opening up a world of possibility for future a performance.

Media Archeology

2008-04-26T15:53:00.012-04:00

Here's Andrea Grover, Aurora Picture Show Artistic Director, introducing Negativland at Rice University. What's that super-fashionable headband thing on her head? Its a special blindfold handed out to everyone at the door in order to block out all of that distracting knob-twiddling to enable full surrender to the aural cut-and-paste extravaganza of Negativland's 2-hour live-broadcast set.

Found sound montage on God and religion punctuated by regular radio-announcer-style interruptions, reminding listeners that we were tuned in to "Its All in Your Head Radio." The highlight of the show was getting to see Mark Hosler behave like a monkey.

Brent Green performing at the Orange Show, a historical folk art treasure obsessively built by a man who worshipped the orange. The space is just right for the flavor of Brent's story-telling alongside his animations, backed up by his band-- charming, coarse around the edges, spontaneous, and full of humor and poetry.

Brent being interviewed after his show by someone sporting one of those flip video cameras. Talking with the camerawoman a little later, she raved about the ease of use and surprisingly good quality of the video image.

The top-notch gaffer job laid by Guy, #1 Volunteer Worker Bee of the Aurora Picture Show. Notice the precise parallel of the cables running across the brickwork, then up the side of the performance ring, held spot on by three perfect tape strips. Once inside the ring, the cables turn to spaghetti.

Last visit to the EAI library in NYC, I had the good folks there pull a respectably long list of material for my viewing mission, most memorable were the episodes from Shana Moulton's 'Whispering Pines' series. Her live performance, 'Cynthia's Moment,' at black box theater Diverseworks, expanded the strangely unique digital kitch of that single channel work into the present moment.

And finally, 'Putting the Balls Away' is a meticulously executed tennis match by Tara Mateik in which s/he reenacts parts of the infamous Billy Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs match to the original audio of the sports broadcast coverage of the 1973 Houston game. Mateik's smart and impressively implemented performance brings into play contemporary aspects of gender struggle.

An awesome and much appreciated showcase of contemporary moving image practice curated by Nick Hallett and Andrea Grover-- I can't wait until next year's Media Archeology installment!

3 final things worth mentioning about the A2F2

2008-04-06T22:41:00.009-04:00

1. Uneven Programming

For the first time, the festival folks programmed the competition work into themed shows. The screenings that worked the best incorporated a good variety of genres. For example, "The Orbits Inside" screening that our piece was in (Pandora's Bike by Potter-Belmar Labs) included a short animation, a longer documentary as well as a couple of non-traditional documentaries, an abstract experimental, a found footage remix poem, and an experimental family portrait.

"Cracking the Space/Time Continuum," on the other hand, contained a lot of excellent, hardcore experimental work that explored various perceptual phenomena. It was just too much, though, and the work suffered from being next to so many other intense and abstract visuals.

2. Technology Ups & Downs

I think its fair to say that the technological glitch dates back to the beginning of technology. Up until about 2002, the technical difficulties suffered by the A2F2 included things like:
- films breaking
- films being tails-out (backwards)
- films getting stuck in the gate and melting
- projector bulbs burning out
- a projector falling through the projection window (this really did happen)

Call me a nerd, but I just had to check out the gear in the projector booth when I heard that Tom Bray was set up to run the videos as digital files off a hard drive this year!

Tom Bray in the screening room booth.
An identical system was in place in the main theater booth as well.

I got the tour, along with a few of Tom's colleagues from University of Michigan's Duderstat Center/Digital Media Commons. As usual, things coming out of U of M are at the technological cutting edge-- I did not realize this until I came to San Antonio. According to Tom, he was not able in his research to find any other festival working in this manner... yet!

When we found out that our video was accepted, I was surprised that we were not instructed to bit-torrent our file to some big server at the University... one step at a time! Everyone was asked to send the highest quality digital video file on a data dvd, hard drive or jump drive. All of the work was then downloaded to a 2TB firewire drive, organized by screening, and imported to FCP. This year the signal that went out of the computer was converted to analog (next year will probably step up to digital), and pumped through 8000-lumen HD projectors onto the screens. Everything seemed to be running smoothly for the first couple of days.

But then...

While not entirely certain about what was going on, I think the problems stemmed from the variety of digital formats. Judging from all of the possible output settings that I saw listed in the menu-- easily over 30-- navigating the parity on this was a nightmare waiting to happen. And it actually wasn't so bad-- sitting in the dark waiting for the glitches to be worked out allowed me lots of time to digest what I had been seeing, and just generally clear and calm my brain. I also was able to exercise uber-patience, knowing what they were dealing with in the booth.

A most wonderful glitch-moment happened during mk12's "The History of America." This piece is a story about the cowboys vs. the astronauts, and so technically savvy that many of us in the audience entertained the idea and even believed that the amazingly harsh digital sounds that interrupted the musical soundtrack (about half-way through) were intentional. On a conceptual level, it made sense-- the technology was taking over and winning-- the astronauts were conquering humanity! Some official from the festival who came in to apologize for the technical problem said: "I can't believe you guys sat through ten minutes of this!" and someone in the audience shouted back: "This is the Ann Arbor Film Festival! We thought it was part of the piece!"

3. Light on the Supercinematics

"Supercinematics" is a term I found in Ruth Bradley's 1985 cultural studies dissertation on the Ann Arbor Film Festival. It refers to those extra artworks that go beyond straight-up projection on the screen. In the rich tradition of the festival lobby installations, this year included Esther Kirshenbaum's giant keys hung from the lobby ceiling, Rich Pell's "Body of Evidence" in the back lobby, and one of Frank Pahl's automated sound sculptures on display.

The main stage has hosted some great Friday and Saturday night opening acts, including Pat Oleszko and silt. Breaking from tradition, there was only one specially programmed act, and it was planned for the small screening room. And to make it worse, Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson's live cinema performance was called off due to bad weather in NY (where their flight was canceled).

People commented on how un-special the after-parties were. "I thought you guys knew how to party," and "I really expected more," were the kinds of things people said to me. Well, its true... finding rooms at various venues in which festival folks could convene post-screenings was the bare minimum. Something was better than nothing anyhow. I think the organizers were busy raising $75,000 and winning the first-amendment case against the state of Michigan.

It is no secret where my bias lays. Anyone who knows me through the festival has seen how much love I have put into supercinematics for the Ann Arbor Film Festival over the past decade. Planning and taking part in parades, lobby art, satellite exhibitions of hybrid art that incorporate the moving image, booking live cinema acts into the theater, bringing in artists to create immersive after-party environments in sound an image, storefront window displays, and etc.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival originated in the University of Michigan Art Department. It was something that grew naturally out of fine arts practice. From the beginning, there was lots of room for hybrid expression. And this is something I have strived to be attuned to in all of the contributions I have made to the festival. Of course I am sorry to see this wither in the name of a singular focus on the films.

Bottom 3 at the AA Film Festival

2008-04-04T19:42:00.013-04:00

A shot from the balcony during the 9 Questions rehearsal in 2003 for the 41st, with my vj rig and a video projector set up on the ledge (at this time the festival was still strictly celluloid!) This was a 13-person multimedia performance that included music, dance, live video, and shadow puppets that was produced by Jason Jay Stevens.

1. Moving the majority of the competition screenings out of the main theater = A MAJOR BUMMER.

every seat in the 200-seat screening room was filled for many screenings--
people were turned away!

It was a major disappointment to have the competition screenings SQUEEZED into the small 200-seat screening room. MANY people who came out to see films were TURNED AWAY!! I don't buy the argument that any filmmaker would rather have their audience, if it were only 200 people, crowded into a small room rather than dispersed throughout the main room of the beautiful Michigan Theater 1927 movie palace.

My film "Rife w/ Fire" played on that screen in 1998 during the 36th Ann Arbor Film Festival. And it was GLORIOUS. As a maker, to have my creation glowing on the alter of the Temple of Cinema is always a major honor. The brightness of image, clarity of sound(!), and overall scale of the experience is breathtaking when it's your work up on that screen! I won best Michigan Filmmaker that year. My video "Pandora's Bike" was projected on that same screen this year-- ten years later! I was lucky that it was programmed on a Wednesday night when they weren't as concerned about the weekend audience filling seats!

Seeing the festival mutate in this way brings the tentacles of corporate lust into sharper focus. I know that there have been longtime forces in Ann Arbor pushing hard to develop the festival into something more commercial. I am saddened that these forces are gaining control, and angry that these people do not realize &/or respect the fact that the Ann Arbor Film Festival is a living treasure of international experimental film. The people currently running the festival are not allies of the avant garde. Though some may pay lip service, I am not convinced.

"Characters," 2005, for the 43rd festival-- you can see Potter-Belmar Labs (me & Jason) camped out in the pit with our gear. We did a live a/v mix this time around.

2. Michigan Filmmakers relegated to the one single screening on Sunday afternoon : (

I had to miss seeing the work of many old friends, as I had to fly back to San Antonio on Sunday. This was another programming decision that makes me sad. The festival director explained to me that she struggled with this, but went with it as an attempt to "get butts into seats" on the difficult-to-program Sunday afternoon, even going so far as to say that the decision was "experimental." Maybe putting one of the big documentaries on Sunday afternoon would be better. I think it is incredibly important to keep the local work interwoven with the national and international scope of the whole event.

3. Obnoxious students at the Joost Rekveld presentation!

Joost presented on Thursday afternoon, as part of the ongoing weekly Penny Stamps Distinguished Visitors Series of lectures presented by the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. The majority of attendees were certainly the A&D student body, who are required to attend the lecture series. Many of them talked loudly during his "#11, Marey <-> Moiré" and "#23.2 Book of Mirrors," two visually stunning abstract films with equally entrancing soundtracks. An incredibly disrespectful bunch of spoiled brats, if you ask me... or at least the rotten ones are making the whole bushel seem bad!

A2F2 TOP 3, #3

2008-04-01T13:44:00.008-04:00

B E I N G _ B A C K

Jeremy Rigsby and Oona Mosna of the excellent Media City Film Festival (Windsor, Ontairio)

Mike Woodruff's backyard, which is a house in which I rented a room in the summer of 1991, after which at some point an old high school acquaintance bought the house, from whom Mike acquired it after that.

outdoor, winter ping-pong

DJ Bobby Moir showing off a job

Michigan Theater Back Entrance

A2F2 TOP 3, #2

2008-04-01T00:19:00.015-04:00

A2F2 archivist Gerry Fialka intends to publish
"History of the Ann Arbor Film Festival"
in time for 5oth in 2012!!

The sessions he delivered were a real treat: Kick Out the Jams & AAFF Innovators. I found them both to be a great way to start out my day. Fialka presided (while claiming to not be a teacher, rather a moderator of an open-ended discussion) at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design Work Gallery, just around the corner from the Michigan Theater, posing many slippery, open-ended questions. The one which bent my mind the most:

If we were to begin the a2f2 today, should we be inclusive or exclusive?

The tip of a deeeep iceberg for me right now-- now being a moment of massive change in terms of the way capitialism has taken hold at the global level, the evolution of communications technologies, the myth of the starving artist and the breakdown of Modernism's ideals. But we artists must evolve in tandem with the evolution of our world. We deal our trade in creativity, and ought to be imagining our best reality... and building it.

"We must be guided only by what the situation requires."
(Beuys)

McLuhan's Tetrad
1) What does it enhance or intensify?
2) What does it render obsolete or replace?
3) What does it bring back that was previously obsolete?
4) What does it become when pressed to an extreme, what does it flip into?

Fialka led us through the McLuhan Tetrad on various subjects such as the use of compositing within the moving image, and the long take (Warhol, Snow, Tarkovsky). The resulting interactive brainstorms verged on a freeflow of associations rooted within our collective knowledge of film, causing our knowledge base to reform in new and interesting constellations.

McLuhan's Tetrad as applied to compositing
(answers offered up that I can remember):
1) What does it enhance or intensify?
multiplication of reality
2) What does it render obsolete or replace?
representational imagery
3) What does it bring back that was previously obsolete?
the Surrealist films of makers such as Buñuel and Cocteau
4) What does it become when pressed to an extreme, what does it flip into?
MTV, commercialization of moving image

McLuhan's Tetrad as applied to the long take
(answers offered up that I can remember):
1) What does it enhance or intensify?
inner dialogue, observation
2) What does it render obsolete or replace?
editing
3) What does it bring back that was previously obsolete?
early cinema
4) What does it become when pressed to an extreme, what does it flip into?
possibly enlightenment

"The user is the content."
(McLuhan quoted by Fialka)

This diagram popped into my mind in thinking about this idea. Where the artist produces the film (a), which is projected onto a screen (b), and the viewer (c) observes it, but the reality of what s/he experiences is a projection of her/his own mind. (Can we ever be truly objective?)

It is truly wonderful to know that a record of the Ann Arbor Film Festival is in the making, and it is being guided by someone who is deeply dedicated to the exploration of knowledge, holds an affinity for the A2F2, and is intimate with the language of experimental cinema and media philosophy. Thanks Gerry!

Ann Arbor Film Festival TOP 3, #1

2008-03-31T13:36:00.010-04:00

Just back from the Northern Woods of Ann Arbor, where I spent the last week taking in over 100 new experimental films from all over the world, panels, presentations, discussions, and more.... this is the first of a several-part series of reflections on the 46th incarnation of the nearly 1/2-century old beloved experimental film festival (the oldest in the county!)

TOP 3, #1

1. Major kudos go to Christin McArdle for her leadership.

Over the past couple years Christin has guided the festival through the censorship controversy in which a group of Michigan legislators ignited a smear campaign against the festival. Though ugly, it instigated the majorly successful A2F2 Endangered Species fund-raiser ($75,000!), as well as bringing and winning a first-amendment lawsuit against the state. Congratulations! Thank you for the commitment to these core political values of the festival, reinvigorating our right to freedom of speech. And thank you for celebrating the core spirit of the festival by way of the Acts of Audacity performed with each fund-raising goal achieved.

"It's Time to Watch" was the festival's slogan this year, and on the note of the spirit of the festival, how about the presence of "Timeflux" as a festival sponsor? The trappings of corporate sponsorship were apparent with their logo featured prominently in the festival program and trailer, but my eyebrow raised when a Timeflux rep came out on stage to say a few words before one of the screenings. He reminded me of the all-wiley and super-smart artist Matthew Bakkom-- an amazing idea-man with enough enthusiasm, charm and conviction to be a successful snake-oil salesman. Though the Timeflux website leads to a dead-end, the jury is still out on this one... real or not, the idea of said corporation sling-shotting several 50th A2F2 t-shirts out into the audience that night was definitely entertaining, and made me think along some interesting lines:

Options for opposing the forces of capitalism become fewer as our culture becomes more and more dominated by it. Our best strategy as artists is to figure out how to work within this system while, at the same time, maintaining the truth of our art-making practice. I think that the Ann Arbor Film Festival is working to figure this out right now by trying out various models and approaches. This does not have to be an "either-or" situation-- its time for a paradigm shift, for the "either MONEY or TRUTH" attitude to give way. The politics of "either-or" is up for discussion (and hopefully, though maybe only a fantasy, annihilation) right now as Barack Obama aims for the Democratic presidential nomination; as the Astronauts vs. the Cowboys in MK12's History of America wind up making a baby that saves the world; and the Ann Arbor Film Festival director is half Vietnamese and half Irish.

Over the past half-dozen years, I have been noticing the growth of professional practices amongst artists. Creative Capital is probably the most obvious champion of applying business models to art practice, but others have been involved as well-- I took a workshop with painter Jackie Battenfield on this topic at the College Art Association conference in Atlanta in 2005. Jackie's own success story serves as the basis for her teachings (go to the link on her name to find our more). I think that the film/video experimentalists need to understand this trend in the world of contemporary fine arts practice (and independent film), learn from it, and bolster their own self-sufficiency through adopting/adapting these methods.

We are in the middle of an explosion of new technologies for art-making, distribution, and communication. Chaos time. And in chaos there is opportunity. The Ann Arbor Film Festival is boldly stepping up to the plate, and I wish the best success to Christin, her staff, and all of the volunteers who continue to lovingly care for the 46-year-old Ann Arbor Film Festival!

Either-Or: a statement about my race and my art

2008-02-19T20:13:00.002-05:00

Found it-- the piece I wrote to go with my submission package for the Dallas Contemporary Mix! Series back in October (programming for these exhibitions focuses on artists whose race/ethnicity plays a role in their work):

The Black-White-Asian-Hispanic divide is not simple. As long as there are people having sex-- whether love or power be the basis-- the races will mix and match. Either-Or? I am Neither-Nor-- not reducible to that one check box. My personal experience with race is beyond multiculturalism, beyond pluralism, beyond any racial or other cultural ghetto, and demonstrates the future of race-- the Post Race Condition. And it is reflected in my work. There is no hierarchy of sources, no one medium or material that is better than the rest. Mixing and matching images to make new meanings is my way. It's as fluid and natural as any two human beings being in love with each other. Hello World, don't you know yet? The enemy is no longer the other race-- the new enemy is corporate greed and its consolidation of power. But that's a whole other story.

I'm half Chinese and half Jew, but you wouldn't know it by my name-- at 20 I claimed Raymond-- the first name of my grandfather who died before I was born.

The Execution of Hills Snyder and Foot Patrol at the White Swan

2008-01-21T15:30:00.002-05:00

I stowed away in the back seat of Michele Monseau's Honda Civic to get up to Austin. By the time she & I and Anjali finished a round of hearty El Camino-burgers and made our way to Gallery 68 for the execution, there was quite a mob. This is what the crowd looked like:

Chris Sauter had apparently just shooed everyone out of the gallery-- something that his cop outfit must have enabled him to do, as I can't imagine him forcefully raising his voice or acting in any other loud authoritative manner... he was standing in for Elaine Wolff, who was down for the count with some virus (no problem envisioning her in the role). Everyone was jockeying for a position at the window. The only thing I could see was Nate Cassie with a paint-roller as he blacked out the window from the inside.

There are clear Justin Parr photos and a good account of the event on the Emvergeoning blog, given by Karen Mahaffey. Plenty of San Antonio faces in the crowd. Heres a shot with a couple of the photos in the gallery barely visible, and Utah Snyder in the reflection of the glass (upper left), also outside the gallery with the rest of us.

The premise of the show goes something like this: Hills is guilty of slaying ten critics, patrons, and otherwise champions of his work/career. There are portraits of each enabler as a dead person including Mike Casey, Catherine Walworth, Laurence Miller, and Anjali Gupta. There is an electric chair sculpture from his "Book of the Dead" installation (produced during his Artpace residency) in which he is to sit and be metaphorically executed.

Jason was going to bring a sign that said "Hell is too sweet for Hills Snyder!" Mine would have read "Save Hills!" Indicative of the squirrely nature of Snyder's work, there are dual (at least) principles at work here that resist resolution. On the one hand we have the artist as a straight-up psychopath, supposedly killing off those who are aiding and abetting the success of his art career. Not only is murder illegal and morally wrong (according to the majority), but why slaughter the hand that feeds you? Hell is too sweet for Hills Snyder.

On the other hand, why not wipe out the art parasites who suck off vital juices inherent to creative practice? Destroy those who would generate competitive power structures that artists fall prey to, becoming distracted from creative beatitude in their quest for success, fame, riches, sex, glory, and so on. "Save Hills" is a sentiment lodged in the über-idealism of a possibility of purity in art practice, in allegiance with the notion that creative energy is the only regenerative energy (Beuys). In 1995, I gave a talk to a lecture-hall full of Chinese art students in Shi-Jia-Zhaung about my installation art-work. When someone asked about making a living, I responded that I didn't believe that money was a good motivating factor for making art. Well, OK, that was 13 years ago. What do I know?

And to counter that notion, while pretend-killing-off said pimps of the art-world, Hills is simultaneously capitalizing on the ass-kissing potential of displaying their portraits in the first place. Needless to say, Hills showed up at his own wake (at Art Palace) in a brand new orange pimp-suit, the master of his own prostitution, the artist as grand trickster, gleeful and satisfied with another slippery, definition-defying caper. It is in this labyrinth of possibilities that one might glimpse the rich treasure of meaning unbound.

Speaking of labyrinth... a guy (I wont name any names) comes up to me on the porch at the wake as I'm loudly proclaiming my enthusiasm for this conglomerate of possibilities. He says: I coudn't help but hear you talking and I wanted to tell you about when I went to see Hills' "Book of the Dead"... Inside of the piece was this now infamous maze, a pitch-black physical conundrum designed to disorient the participant in preparation for their rebirth. The guy goes on to say: I was there with my girlfriend... well, she wasn't really my girlfriend, but she started to get really hot in the dark there... it was pitch black, the sensory deprivation was just amazing... he went on from there, and the reader can guess how it ended without me spelling it out. Just an interesting curiosity.

Onward.

We got a hot tip about a band called Foot Patrol and headed over to a joint called the White Swan. I have no idea where we were, just happy to be along for the ride. According to Anjali, we were in a crack neighborhood undergoing gentrification. I found it refreshing to be surrounded by black faces as I walked up the street and into the club. That feeling gave way to incredulity as I stepped into the back half of the venue, where all of the white people were. And then I remembered that self-segregation is normal, and felt annoyed. I actually believe that most our race problems are really class problems in disguise, but somehow class falls by the wayside, becoming the invisible elephant standing in the middle of the room.

Eventually, Foot Patrol came on and rocked it with a funky house sound, each song another elaboration on the foot fetish. Its been a looong time since my music reviewing days, so I'm going to stick to my topic of race. The singer for the band was a light-skinned African-American-looking guy, the guitarist a Latino/Chicano/Hispanic-looking guy, the bass player an Asian-looking guy, one of the dancers also Asian-looking. The rest of the crew looked white. A three-piece horn section, drummer, and second dancer brought the overall equation to 50% white, 50% other.

I understand that the singer is blind, and right now the metaphor strikes me as an interesting one.

Again, I think that class distinctions are overlooked in favor of the old fallback on race. Barack Obama is considered an African-American man. His sister Maya Soetoro-Ng says, in answer to a question, that she thinks of him as black "because that is how he has named himself" (NY Times Magazine, 20/01/08). I think it is so interesting that historically and, I believe legally, a person has been considered black no matter how much other blood is in their system. For a person who is half-Chinese, there is no way in hell that a Chinese mainlander would consider you Chinese. Period.

Obama stands for unity across the political divide. For me, this is embodied in the fact that he is half black and half white. This position is one in which the racial divide is physically broken down, alchemically transformed within the offspring of two separate entities of differing racial origins. Obama is just a few years older than I am, and I know that my parents were ahead of the multicultural curve, being the not-Chinese, not-Jewish, strange minority crossbreed that I am.

I'll elaborate on this some other time after I dig up my "Post-Race Manifesto." Suffice it to say that Foot Patrol kicked out a brilliant vibe woven from the multicultural sweat of of its ten-member crew.

PBL - ALA

2008-01-11T23:37:00.000-05:00

Potter
Belmar
Labs

Artists
Looking at
Art

photos by Roger Stephens
thank you Roger!

A fine fifty-degree evening for projecting "Characters" and "Settings" outdoors on the McNay,
a big bunch of friendly faces to watch with,
a few thoughts of thinkings to say,
but so much more interesting to entertain questions from the audience.

Big Thank You to Rene Barilleaux for inviting us!

new years eve at PBL

2008-01-07T12:04:00.000-05:00

Pulled out some Old School A/V, dusting off the ancient VCRs with a 4-projector installation for the dance floor. David Rubin said it reminded him of James Rosenquist, who deserves to be revisited and who's work should have been at least as recognized as Warhol and Rauchenberg.

Roger Stephens took these shots:

Exquisite Corpse AFSA Fundraiser

2007-12-20T18:34:00.000-05:00

Patricia Prachett of the ASFA and PBL in Bettie Ward's studio with the framed corpses

PBL in Gallery 118

Justin Parr of Flight Gallery

Justin with flowers

We invited 37 artists to draw with us at our home in small groups during a 4-month time span, hosting shifts of draw-ers during day-long "banquets" in their honor. Its true that the outcome was an exhibition-fundraiser for the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, but the real meat of the project is in the energy of the artists kicking back over waffles, sandwiches, and whatnot, then expanding into a liminal zone of creative energy together.

Over the course of the project, which, by the way, is an activity that Jason and I have been doing with artist friends for about a decade now, we learned that San Antonio has seen another exquisite corpse project that featured drawing activity as solo practice, in which each artist worked on their part of the drawing alone, on their own time.

For me the beauty of the game is in its communal and social nature. Engaging as a group creates a dynamic unparalleled by solitary drawing. Inexplicable connections turn up among the parts of the drawings. For those not familiar with the game, it goes like this: everyone draws a head on a piece of paper then folds the paper so that the head can not be seen-- only some small cues that indicate where to attach the mid-section of the body. The papers are redistributed and everyone then draws mid-sections, and so-on. Nobody looks at what anyone else has drawn until all of the drawings are finished.

Inevitably, the whole becomes much greater than the sum of the parts. When time permits, we play round after round. The coincidences tend to become more prevalent. Similarities may be in shape, color, mark-making technique, subject, etc. I don't have a scientific explanation for this, but quantum physics might be the right field to look to for elucidation.

death and time

color

theme (words in the mid-section spell "Middle Earth")

color/shapes in upper right and lower left, history/time motif

spirals

Big big thanks to all of the participating artists:

Oscar Alvarado
Ricky Armendariz
Kimberly Aubuchon
Nate Cassie
Judith Cottrell
Margaret Craig
Meredith Dean
Joan Fabian
Rick Frederick
Christopher French
Beto Gonzales
Mark Hogensen
Mimi Kato
Jimmy Kuehnle
Rhonda Kuhlman
Claire Little
Ken Little
Mark Little
Connie Lowe
Karen Mahaffey
Rick Martinez
John Mason
Jon Mata
Franco Mondini-Ruiz
Michele Monseau
Janette Morales
Dennis Olsen
Justin Parr
Chuck Ramirez
Leslie Raymond
David Rubin
Chris Sauter
S. T. Shimi
Ethel Shipton
Jason Jay Stevens
Michelle Valdez
Anne Wallace
Bettie Ward
George Zupp

We truly enjoyed the honor of your company!

Jason won the bowling trophy!

2007-11-12T11:50:00.000-05:00

Rick Fredrick, official announcer

The Sala Bowl/Sala Diaz fundraiser was a very fun evening at Hermann and Sons. The place was fully activated with artists and art-lovers having a great time bowling. Wish I had shot some pictures of the bowling pins up for silent auction--
some notables:
Chris Sauter built a mini-satellite dish out of plastic pieces carved from the surface of the pin, then re-attached it on the side of the pin. Precious and clever.
Jesse Amado's pin wore a few layers of beaded fringe-- very sexy.
And Riley Robinson embedded a video i-pod inside his pin, displaying an image of a bowling ball rolling down the lane. There were two pages of bids on his piece by the end of the night-- Video art is selling in San Antonio.

All bowling-pin artists were given half the proceeds of the sale, with the rest going to Sala Diaz. (YAY)

Check out the award-winning style that stole the Sala Bowl bowling prize!

In The Garden - opening

2007-11-04T10:05:00.000-05:00

A huge thank you to Leigh Anne Lester & Jane Lawrence for giving me the opportunity to show this new work in San Antonino!
And to Jason Jay Stevens for his expert and professional assistance in installing the show!

The show runs through November 21 and will be open for viewing at these times:
Friday 9 November, 2-5pm
Saturday 17 November, 2-5pm
You may also see it by appointment by calling Cactus Bra 210-226-6688

The Fly of Ken Little

2007-11-01T11:54:00.000-04:00

photo: the fly of Ken Little and the worn knee of Hills Snyder

The work of Yoko Ono has been in the spotlight around here lately with her recent exhibition at the UTSA Art Gallery, and some satellite events have unfolded since the show opened on September 26. Imagine Peace (in Espanol) billboards have appeared around town; curator Kevin Concannon lectured on the collaborative work of Yoko and John, identifying the deep roots of Yoko's conceptual work with Fluxus; I screened the FluxFilm Program compiled by George Macunias himself for the Filmmakeers Co-op in NYC; and last Friday night Ken Little performed Yoko Ono's Cut Piece.

The Aula Canaria lecture hall at the UTSA downtown campus was awash with the anticipation of a group of students, artists, professors, and a couple kids. Eventually, UTSA's gallery director and art history professor Scott Sherer introduced the piece and Ken, with the instructions for us to come up one at a time to cut off a piece of Ken's clothing. "The piece is over when Ken says it is." Ken came out in a pin-striped wool suit and sat down on a tiny chair in front of us.

We hesitated, but soon got into full swing. Fairly early on in the cutting was a tribute to Nam June Paik, who cut the necktie of John Cage just below the knot the first time the two met. The fifth cutter, notably the first female cutter, was the first to expose some flesh. UTSA professor of art Meredith Dean cut out the piece of shirt behind where Ken's tie had been. Cut after cut, Ken remained stoic and unperturbed-- it turned out to be a rather solemn event.

On my first cut I made sure to take a fairly decent-sized piece, with intentions to embroider a diagram on it (check it out in my show at Cactus Bra, opening tomorrow night). At one point, Hills Snyder cut off the leg of his own pants and placed it onto Ken's naked thigh. Being next in the cutting line, I naturally cut a piece of Hills' denim. The cuts continued. Ken's clothing disappeared little by little. Eventually, one man retreated from his cutting stance before making the cut, saying he just couldn't. Ken's clothes continued to shrink as people snipped smaller and smaller pieces away.

Who knew how long this could go on? I jumped up and cut off what was left of Ken's suit, leaving him sitting in his briefs. The next cutter paid homage to Yayoi Kusama by dotting Ken's shoulders and head with circles cut from the suit. Then Ken said thank you and it was over.

When I first heard that Ken was going to do the piece, I wondered how the gender dynamic would play out. During the performance, it actually didn't seem relevant. People responded to the human being with reverence for his vulnerability. The next day, however, we were doing exquisite corpse drawings with Ken, Justin Parr, and Bettie Ward (upcoming AFSA fundraiser). When asked about how the piece ended, Ken said "They pussied out." In other words, nobody had the balls to cut off his underwear. I was kinda' surprised by his attitude, but not really, and just couldn't imagine Yoko saying such a thing.

I will take this moment to get on my soapbox to say: PUSSY IS POWERFUL. Let me know if I need to expound on this.

Thank you x 10,000 to Ken Little for performing the Cut Piece, and to Scott Sherer for bringing the energy of Yoko Ono to San Antonio! And remember, as Yoko says, you are either in the business of war or in the business of peace. It's that simple.

11/6/07 - I would like to extend my apology to Ken Little for misquoting him, as he is fairly certain that he used the term 'wussed out' instead of the P-word. Sorry Ken!

Sandy Loam Rides Again

2007-10-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

Artpace invited me to participate in their annual "Chalk It Up" street fair event. Time for me to reveal some of my secret identity in a community where everyone knows me as the New Media Gal. How I enjoyed the attention of passers-by! Regular ol' people able to relate to a regular ol' drawing... well, it's not stricly representational, but it sure ain't abstract. It didn't just catch peoples' eye, but made them wonder what was up with this crazy eye here in the midst of this 'normal' face!? Whenever that funny question "What is the meaning?" came up, I'd just turn it back on the asker... and it turns out that its not really that complicated to uncover a metaphor upon which to extrapolate.

Well, I'm just happy to draw. To be inside of drawing with no advanced technological equipment standing between me and the process, no explanations to a perplexed audience necessary... that is a beautiful freedom.

A few years ago... well, actually over a dacade ago, there was the Speedboat art gallery on Selby Avenue in St. Paul, MN. Paul Dickensen who ran the joint claimed that it was a cover for the the basement rock club... or maybe vice-versa. Its been so long now that I forget the real story. But needless to say, Paul D was a very down-to-earth kind of guy, the opposite of the type of folks you run into over in the Chelsea scene, for example.

He had a regular "Cheap Art Sale" and one time I put up a bunch of "Sandy Loam's" drawings for $10 apiece-- they were all in these cheap gold-colored frames, but framed nonetheless. A regular ol' guy from the Selby neighborhood came on in and ended up walking out of there with one of my/Sandy's drawings! That was the greatest! I think I earned a lot of respect from Paul that day.

Hotel Pupik

2007-07-17T15:33:00.000-04:00

noising with the residents

biking on the mountain

animation stand and animating

the drama of snails, bees, and cows

made a new series of loops that premiered on my last night at Hotel Pupik,
accompaniment to Heimo Wallner on trumpet, Llewyn Máire on sampler, and Lisa Newman chiming in occasionally with spoken word

Passau Gigs

2007-07-15T13:03:00.000-04:00

1. Josh Amrhein directs McSweeney's Readers Theater with students at the University of Passau
Images and sounds accompany short stories adapted for reader's theater in this production that is the brainchild of Josh Amrhein. I contributed a series of images for 'The Ceiling,' by Kevin Brockmeier.

Josh Amrhein at the door of the Ambulante Gallery

2. Freestate Freestyle: Texas meets Bavaria
an A/V performance improvisation by me and Albert Dambeck

Ambulante Gallery and Joshua Amrhein present an audio-visual evening with the electronic sounds of Albert Dambeck and video images of Leslie Raymond.

Imagine a DJ with a video mixer instead of two turntables. With two crates full of moving pictures instead of records.

What you get: moving tapestries.
And every musician Leslie Raymond works with adds a new soundrack.
And every performance is the first and last of its kind.

Albert Dambeck is a composer and musician. His main theme is music in Just Intonation. That is the creation of sounds and tones according to the overtone series. His instruments are contrabass, guitars, voice and electronics.

Leslie Raymond is an artist from San Antonio, Texas working in live cinema and video installation forms. She is one-half of the A-V group Potter-Belmar Labs, whose video work screened during Kunstnacht in Passau in 2005.

Ambulante Galerie
Große Messergasse 2/Residenzplatz, D - 94032 Passau
Tel.: 0851/85 164 165, Mobil: 0160/843 1662
ambulante gallery
4-in-1

Documenta FILMS

2007-07-13T15:33:00.003-04:00

There is an excellent film program-- I saw work by Kubelka, Connor, an early Breer, Debord (I've been wanting to see for years now!) and a Burroughs-Gysin-Balch cut-up that had the audience super-charged. In another screening, I was able to take in the classic "The Sun Shines Bright" by John Ford--WOW.

DOCUMENTA

2007-07-13T15:33:00.001-04:00

Documenta was really swell. The BBB hostel where I stayed made the experience really special. A hard-working young woman named Wina has creatd this just for Documenta this one time. She is using her father's house to host 20 people a night-- everyone there for the exhibition. 20 E per night includes a solid breakfast to get you off on the right foot each day.

my picks:

the beautifully shot and editied video from the Simon Wachsmuth installation "Where We Were Then, Where We Are Now," documenting what appears to be a trainnig session for the whirling dervishes

the placement of the Paul Klee painting "Angelus Novus" on the first landing of the main stairs into the main exhibition

Tanaka Atsuko's Electric Dress

the photograph of Dobromierz sitting in the toilet from the series "Activities with Dobromierz" by KwieKulik, Thseng Yu-Chin's "Who's Listening" video, and the dialogue created by situating these works across from each other

Guy Tilliam's "Congo Democratic" series

the Lu Hao scroll of Chang'An Street, which brough to mind Ruscha's "Every Building on the Sunset Strip"

Yang Fudong at the Venice BIENNALE

2007-07-11T18:30:00.001-04:00

My favorite work by far came from China: "Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest" by Yang Fudong (Shanghai). Interspersed throughout the show curated by Robert Storr in the Arsenale exhibition hall were 5 small screening rooms, each showing one of five parts of the film. The series of black-and-white films were originally shot on 35mm film, but projected from DVD.

"Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest" comes from a traditional theme in Chinese art about a group of seven Taoist sages taking respite in the forest as they pursue anti-Confucian ideals such as individualism and personal liberty. Yang substitutes the word 'intellectuals' for the traditional terms 'sages' and 'worthies,' perhaps a comment on the evolution of the idea of wisdom in China in the 20th century.

Each part of the film is situated in a different location, and each of these five visually rich backdrops has a complex relationship with the mental and emotional climate of the characters-- both impacting as well as reflecting their inner states. And, like Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, Yang uses these settings to wordlessly transport the viewer into various aesthetically charged netherworlds. Unlike Barney, however, the work goes beyond an expression of the artist's ego, depicting a representation of the history of intellectualism in China in the 20th century.

Because of the way these films were presented at the exhibition, the viewer could enter and exit at any point. Although there were beginning and end titles, the structure of the films worked well with this presentation format. Time seemed endless, unchanging, and uniform throughout the film, imbued with a sense of waiting and drifting in a manner not unlike the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.

other picks from the Biennale:
Joshua Mosley's (NY) video "Dread" and the rapid-prototypes sculptures that inhabit the video as 3D-animated characters.

El Anatsui's (Ghana) magnificant and gigantic tapestries crafted from the foil on wine bottles.

Also noteworthy: David Altmejd in the Canadian Pavilion (installation) and Emily Prince (SF) in the Arsenale

The Loop FAIR

2007-07-09T17:53:00.000-04:00

The quality of the work in the fair was excellent, with overall production values very high, and the work generally strong even if I didn't particularly like it myself. The fair took place in the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas over a three-day period, and featured over 40 international galleries, each representing one (or two) video artist(s). It was a great atmosphere in which to see the work, with projection screens and projectors, flat-panel monitors and dvd players in the hotel rooms. The batallion of presenters and organizers became chummier, and more relaxed over the course of the fair. I won't name any names, but on the last "morning" (noon) that the rooms opend up as exhibition spaces, there was one that needed a real airing out-- an overwhelming hormonal scent of sex lingered there, causing me to cut short my viewing time.

My picks for Loop FAIR:

Janet Biggs (USA) "Airs Above the Ground" and Stephanie Lempert "Read My Lips" - represented by Claire Oliver Gallery (NYC)

Javier Téllez (Venezuela) "Oedipus Marshall" - represented by Figge Von Rosen Galerie (Cologne)

McCallum & Tarry (USA) "Exchange" - represented by Caren Golden Fine Art (NYC)

Now that video art has been accepted as a valid medium in the privledged world of the art market and museum, issues of ownership are being sorted out. One newer convention is that of the edition. Like printmakers, many videomakers are now creating editions of their works for sale. This raises the issue of the copy in the digital age. Copying a digital file is a very different enterprise than being able to make an infinite number of exact copies of a lithograph or an oil painting. MOMA curator Barbara London spoke of the sale of a video artwork as embodying the sale of a bundle of rights-- the right to own, exhibit, copy, archive, etc., each contract specific to that particular artist &/or video.

Also of longstanding interest to me is the history of moving-image art, with its rich tradition of screening-room and theater-based exhibtions. The type of social dynamic that grows out of this context makes it more than a simple back-drop for the viewing of art-film and art-video. There is also a political premise that runs through the history of (especially) video art, in that it has been used as a means to take control of the dominant storytelling medium in order to tell the stories not told by the establishment (whether they be network news or Hollywood). How these issues do or do not jive with the current developments of video in the art world is telling.

The Loop FESTIVAL

2007-05-28T12:14:00.000-04:00

Loop Barcelona was divided into two sections: the festival and the fair.

The FESTIVAL was a massive, sprawling, chaotic organism.

Time and time again, I set out with high hopes, but low expectations. Oftentimes the venue was closed, other times it was open but had no video art, and when the advertised time and place came together in an actual event, the presentation was mediocre to poor. I kept dreaming about Peter Kubelka's Invisible Cinema.

Nevertheless, there were jewels to be had:

1. Monserrat Soto "Lugar de Silencios"(Barcelona) at Centre D'Art Santa Mónica:
The exterior setting of several rooms of an old concrete structure going to ruin is rear-projected onto an array of 7 or 8 large screens. This is a place being reclaimed by the foliage, a place receeding from the physical upkeep, and thus consciousness, of mankind. The poet Dionisio Cañas is heard and/or seen wandering from room to room, screen to screen, depicted in a process of ruminating and composing outloud, to himself.
This ground-floor installation by Barcelona artist Monserrat Soto blew away the other work on view at the art center-- other work brought in from the states and the UK. This is an interesting phenomenon I have noticed back at San Antonio's Art Pace, where cycles of three residents create new work for exhibition. One is always regional (from Texas), one national (from the States), and one international. Whenever the regional artist is from San Antonio, you can be sure that they are going to labor 10 times harder than anyone else, creating work that will give the work of the visitors a run for its money.

2. A Breif History of the Video Data Bank (Chicago) at the MACBA auditorium:
Brigid Reagan, VDB distribution manager, presented an overview of the history of the Video Data Bank with a focus on the main themes and genres in the collection. The VDB is a resource close to my heart. I took great advantage of my privledge to browse and screen work at the VDB when I was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, home to the collection. This program positively affirmed the foundations of my education in experimental moving image practice.

Early Interviews with Underrepresented Female Artists visiting SAIC (Lee Krasner interview)
Early Video and the Womens' Movement (Martha Rossler - Semiotics of the Kitchen)
Video as Activism (Videofreex)
Filmmakers Who Made the Move to Video (John Smith - Girl Chewing Gum)
Mastering the Technology (Paul Garrin - Free Society)
the 1990's (Miranda July - The Amaturist)
Diary Video (George Kuchar - Weather Diary)
Scratch/Found-Footage (Animal Charm - Stuffing)
Tributes and Remakes of Earlier Video (Anne McGuire - After Wegman)
Remix of Classic Films (Nicholas Provost - Papillion d'Amour)
New Work from Europe & the Middle East (Hester Scheurwater - Mama)

Visit the VDB website to see samples of all of these videos, and more!

3. STRIP Film Festival (Paris) presentation
Though riddled with severe technical difficulties, the presentation by Marc Audí and Marianne of STRIP Film Festival featured some work that I was really happy to see: "Money" by Henry Hills (NYC), and "Descent" and "Mi Casa, Su Casa" by Pierre Reimer.

4. Jeremy Shaw "Best Minds" (Vancouver) at Galeria Dels Ángels
On exhibit were two sublime video projections of imagery shot at punk shows. The super slow-motion made it possible to observe each scene in great detail. The first was of group of young men in the mosh pit, thrashing their bodies around with facial expressions full of rage. The second documented an altercation between three young women which evolves into a fist fight. I was transported beyond simple observation, though the warp of time and into the projected psyches of the individuals in the work.

5. Interancia Videobrasil 2006-2007 at El Mercado Del Borne

6. Videotape Hong Kong at Red03

7. "Vive la Mort"at the Fundació Suñol, video art from the collection of Marc & Josée Gensollen.
The perspective of the private collector is what interested me most. The theme of the body is what distinguished this group of videos. Some of them were documents of the body in action, such as Carlos Amorales' (Mexico) "Interim," a tight close-up of two masked wrestlers head-to-head against a white backdrop, and João Onofre's (Portugal) "Sin Titulo" which used digital tools to reorient two falling bodies to work against gravity and fall against the sides of the frame, repetitively, making a strong rhythm.
Though not documentary in the traditional sense, there were some videos that could be categorized as documentary for their use of straight recordings of small events in the world. "Uomo Duomi" by Anri Sala (Albania) was recorded in a church frequented by tour groups and featured a tripod shot of an old man sitting in a pew, alternately praying and sleeping. "Coffee" by Hand Op de Beck (Belgium) used the same technique to observe and capture the scene of an elderly couple having coffee at a restaurant.

8. Johanna Billing at Galeria Joan Prats

9. China Vision - Yang Zhenshong at Holmes Place Balmes Fitness Club, and Miao Xiaochun at Keihl's Since 1851

LOOP Barcelona: Buried Treasure

2007-05-26T09:26:00.000-04:00

The city has become the backdrop for a giant scavenger hunt. Each day I follow clues in search of precious booty. Somtimes the signs lead to genuine gold, sometimes to costume jewelry, and sometimes to a dead end. Three ingredients contribute to the enigmatic nature of this undertaking. First, major portions of Barcelona are simply inscrutable, such as the old city. Its a maze of small and crooked streets leading to even smaller and crooked-er ones, which are often depicted on the map with the wrong name or without any name at all. Second, the Spaniards are not known for punctuality, or for necessarily holding to any time-frame, published or otherwise. And finally, the printed LOOP program, besides being 60 pages long with no index or all-encompassing organizing principle, is all in Castilian, which I have studied for one semester only.

Moored in a state of disorderly pursuit, at least I have an anchor!

Tune in for more about the video art soon!

Films at Caíxa Forum, and an Excursion to the Hospital Sant Pau

2007-05-20T11:40:00.000-04:00

Last Tuesday night, I took in a program of films at Caíxa Forum by the Montjuïc park "Documento y Ciudad," curated and presented by David Reznak. All in all a good selection of experimental documentary that anchored itself in images of "the city." For me, each piece presented a different vantage point from which to focus and process the visual information absorbed in various urban environments. For example, "Sea Change" by Joe King and Rosie Pedlow (2004) interwove various times of day into a very long tracking shot of a manicured trailer-home neighborhood. "Din 16538/39 (Paris)" by Augustin Gimel (1999) based the organization of its documents on color, beginning in reds, moving into oranges, and making its way through the rest of the rainbow. And "Blight" by John Smith (1994-6) hung itself on a structure of fragmented storis and rememberances relating to the destruction of homes in a particular neigborhood in East London.

Woke up the next morning feverish with a sore throat and spent the next 3 days in bed, riding the dreamstate to regions father and farther from consciousness. Around the time my system should have been kicking the virus, I had a night of fitful sleep complicated by breathing difficulties. I thought: tomorrow is the day to go to the clinic, and while waiting for Dr. Sobre to rise on Saturday morning, decided to look up my symptoms on the internet-- the worst possible place to go for any kind of medical consultation. Googling "flu-like symptoms, difficulty breathing" brought up SARS!

Well, Dr. Sobre, fluent in both Catalan and Castillian, looked over the listing of Barcelona hospitals and clinics from the American Consulate webpage. Leave it to her to pick out the great Modernista Hospital de Sant Pau, designed by Domènech i Montaner! We hopped a cab by the bus station & were off.

Still fairly hazy from the illness, but not too out-of-it to notice the fantastic structures and tilework, we jumped out at the emergency entrance. Shortly after signing in we were led to a small office where a young and very kind doctor asked a few questions, then sent us up the block to the emergency room that handled lesser-emergencies, where I could be attended to rather quickly. He was practically beaming as he lead us to the street, pointing the way with directions in Catalan.

I recommend travelers' health insurance for anyone taking a trip out of the county-- I didn't get it, but since this incident have learned that is it really cheap-- like $30. Thinking that I'm still young and invincible along with a strong disdain for the traditional US health system factored into my "overlooking" this detail. All things considered, though, I fared well. The emergency room consultation, an x-ray, 3 medications and cab ride only set me back about $165 USD-- can you imagine what this would have co$t in the States without insurance?

Well, the infection had turned to bronchitis which in turn had triggered an asthmatic episode (not that I normally have asthma). All of the doctors and technicians who worked with me were were quite personable yet professional, seemed to have the time to hear about my illness, talk to me (one in fairly good english, another who slowed his Castillian w-a-y down, and the other spoke Catalan while Dr. Sobre was present), and examine or perform labwork (in this case an x-ray). The paperwork took almost more time than the one-on-one, and the waiting was about equivalent.

Medicine is socialized here in Spain, so eveyone has access to decent healthcare any time. One other thing I appreciated was not seeing any clocks with the name of a phamaceutical drug company on its face. We ambled back over to the Modernista complex for a look around. Dr. Sobre may be small, but is she fast! That woman can walk! In my condition, I couldn't keep up, and so we agreed to come back another day and caught the metro back home.

Dr. Sobre said gee, you could probably do a pretty cool video with x-rays!
This pleasantly brought to mind Barbara Hammer's 1990 16mm film "Sanctus."

Wandering the Barcelona Night

2007-05-14T23:49:00.000-04:00

In this barely affordable apartment here in Barcelona, amidst the many dozen turtle nicknacks, lives a most unstable internet connection, non-functional since our arrival at the end of the business-week. Sit with the rental agency's pro-IT practitioner for 3 hours as he resets the settings a million times while Dr. Sobre tours the students around old Roman Barcelona-- a real shame to miss the first class session.

Spend the next 6 hours playing catch-up on my contribution for the class, honing in on all of the video-art coming down the pipeline due to Loop Barcelona. Dr. Sobre returns, and after a typical meal of salad, cheeses, meats, fresh bread, and wine, we put the finishing touches on the syllabus and I set out looking for a copy-shop, though it's really too late for such business.

Hoof it up Carres Ribes intending to walk it to a dead-end, but see the Sagrada Familia off to the west-- no way to get out from under its spell. It beckons. And after another little while it pops out from behind the many city blocks I had traversed. For reasons beyond mentioning in the scope of this blog, I was prepared for disappointment. But the Sagrada Familia IS glorious-- if you've ever seen it, you know. For me it is an outrageous display of the glory glory glory of a contemporary (20th c.) expression on a scale of immense grandeur. Why the world I generally live in doesn't seem interested in high craftsmanship infused with a deep articulation of the living moment is beyond me.

And so I meander back to Ribes 13, zigzagging through the Eixample, daring myself to get really lost. But then there's that old redbrick Arc de Triomf that Dr. Sobre practically spits at for its ugliness every time we pass it by. I cut around some sidestreets gambling on one last shot at dematerialization, see the 'copiteria' I had originally set out in search of, then 3 blocks later am back on Ribes, and "home."

It'll be an early one tomorrow, with a stop at the newfound copy-shop on the way to meet the students at their dorm on the other side of the Gothic Quarter.