video
this weekend
A piece of mine (probably Plane) is going to be shown this Sunday at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, MA. It is part of a screening of very short film & video works from Women in Film & Video/New England and curated by Rosalie Fay Barnes. The event is part of Harvard Square’s May Fair Street Festival and is free and open to the public. It starts at 2pm.
hey jude
This is my second post of a youtube clip starring a baby, which seems excessive, but I can’t help it. Â Just watch.
5/4
A few months back, we shot another video of Serena’s. I carry a baby and walk down some stairs.
From her website:
“5/4†uses an infinitely rising staircase to demarcate and map a physical continuum. rom a visual stance, each flight of stairs is as nondescript as the next. During the six-minute loop, the central character continuously walks upstairs to imply that the path is infinite. While her uninterrupted motion cuts through this spiraling physical construct, actions around her take place in loops with varying lengths. For example, a man waits next to his fiancée’s door every four flights of stairs on loop. Another woman taking her dog for a walk descends in a five-flight loop, thus intersecting with the man at different points of her descent during each loop. Each character occupies separate temporal continuums like different durations of melodic ostinatos in a musical composition. Their spatial occupation, in turn, become individualized and isolated, despite the sharing of the stairwell. This work visualizes the multi-layered quality of time as defined by actions in space using film and architecture as means of organization into a logical narrative.
We exist in separate layers of reality, prescribed by our own sense of space, time, and thus actions. Resonating the writing of Henri Lefevbre, to say that we perceive our coexistence because we occupy the same physical space is negligent of the social interactions that signify the intersection of our actions. The changing manners of interactions between the protagonist and the surrounding characters most demonstrate the multilayered quality of time and space theoretically discussed above. On a surface level, the loop structure form permutations of intersecting actions. Taking advantage of the spectator’s familiarity of film narrative tropes, these intersections generate escalating expectations, investment in characters, and build an ascending story arc that takes after traditional cinema. From a metaphysical angle, “5/4†questions the social nature of our lifestyles as dictated by routines – a built-in, programmed personal sense of time – our unique metronomes.
International Video-Performance Art Festival
I got a performance/video into INPORT in Tallinn, Estonia!
wow
This lion was raised by humans and then released back into the wild. Here they are checking on him one year later.
the actual
Thanks to Kanarinka for the video!
the best TAs ever
Our fusion kids have a “Dawn til Dusk” design challenge today. We figured that they will probably get a little tired by the end of the day, so the other TAs and I made a dance routine to cheer them up.
punching
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about transformative actions. In the Digital Media Theory class that I took last spring, it was mentioned that people who have experienced heavy blows may walk around differently than those who have not, because they know how much they can handle. I was thinking about that and also considering what it feels like to brace yourself when you know that an emotional blow is coming, versus bracing yourself for a physical blow.
I decided that I wanted to know what it feels like to take a hard hit. Being punched in the face is something that I am very afraid of, but I thought that if I could face my fear and get it over with, then I too could walk around without fear.
So, I had my friends Dawn and Rachelle punch me in the face. Thank you girls! They had a tough time hitting me hard enough, since they weren’t mad at me or anything, which meant that we ended up having to try over and over and over again. Eek. Its been about fifteen hits over three sessions, so far. Until I get it finished, click on the picture below to watch my first ever punch in the face.
film update
I transferred some of the films I have been working on to dv. And wow, it is so nice to be working in Final Cut Pro after editing actual celluloid on a Steenbeck all semester. Some of my work is going to be in this show, next Friday:
