Codes and Modes
I was so pleased to participate in the first ever Hunter College Department of Film and Media Codes and Modes: The Character of Documentary Culture Conference. For our session: Social Practice and/as Documentary I invited Jody Wood to present her fantastic project Beauty in Transition, and especially her process of making a documentary about it. Beauty in Transition, a mobile hair salon that offers beauty services to homeless, is supported by a 2014 A Blade of Grass Fellowship. We shared the session with media producer Mandy Rose, who shared her research on developing a participatory culture of documentary.
What does it mean to make images for others from a project so much about the immediate exchange between participants? How are issues around visibility compounded when working with a population considered to be disenfranchised and often invisible to the culture at large?
Harun Farocki 1944-2014
RIP Harun Farocki, a filmmaker who has been a great inspiration to me and to many people I admire. Still surprised at the loss nearly a month later, and with gratitude for his prolific, insightful, and inscrutable work that is not without humor, I am sharing a PDF of the review I wrote of his exhibition at MoMA, (June 2011-January 2012) for Millennium Film Journal’s Structures and Spaces: Cine-Installation issue: The Territory of Images: Harun Farocki, Images of War (at a Distance).
Re-reading the review, I am struck by how relevant Farocki’s recent installation work is in relation to the shooting of Michael Brown and the apparent militarization of the police force in Ferguson, revealed during the protests that followed. Particularly, Farocki’s highlighting of ideologically inscribed practice simulations that soldiers are trained with speaks to the ways in which pre-conceived notions of race and urban space have been playing out through social media and how, in online video of the protests, the police officers, with all their gifted military equipment, appear to be play-acting in a war-themed video game. Farocki’s I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts feels like an evergreen critique of institutionalized authority. In Ferguson, curfews, armed police and tear gas maintain the town as a space of discipline and containment.
Survivalist Cinema at STREAM
Survivalist Cinema – a solar powered micro-cinema that features 1970s environmental dystopia and survivalist films – was grandly realized at STREAM, an exhibition curated by Cindy Smith and 2 Chairs, that took place over a weekend, August 9th & 10th, 2014, near South Windham, VT. All pieces were super. More images and info to follow.
ARTISTS
Edward Allington (United Kingdom)
Anthea Behm (Australia)
Josef Bull (Sweden)
Jack Carr (US)
Ingela Ihrman (Sweden)
Erin Ikeler (US)
Allan Kaprow (US-Allan Kaprow Estate)
Rachel Stevens (US)
Patricia Thornley (US)
Special thanks to Dave Bonta of Sunnyside Solar
More images of Survivalist Cinema:
Our Nixon review in MFJ
My review/essay on the film Our Nixon, by Penny Lane and Brian Frye, is just out in the latest issue of Millennium Film Journal, part II of the Since ’78 and Beyond anniversary issue. The essay addresses, in depth, Lane and Frye’s use of archival materials to retell the Nixon narrative, including their process of obtaining original super 8 footage and having it scanned at high resolution by Jeff Kreines and his Kinetta machine.
You can subscribe to MFJ and get the issue, watch Our Nixon on Netflix and read the essay à la PDF here.
Ballad of the Lost Photographer
I made a slide performance this weekend at saracrown’s exhibition and event in Chelsea. The slides are from a huge archive of work by, what I guess, is an entertainment photographer, working in NYC in the late 70s and early 80s. From Studio 54 to a hotel Star Trek convention; Chic, Parliament Funkadelic and Sister Sledge; Grace Jones performing with a tiger; rollerskating in the park; Liza Minelli’s wedding aftermath attended by Andy Warhol and Liz Taylor; a Shriner’s parade in Times Square, and Divine. The glory, glamour and excess of the late 70s in NYC is a bit melancholy-inducing to behold in these gentrified times.
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Karl Erickson, Tamar Ettun & The Moving Company (Tyler Patterson, Tina Wang, Lyndsey Eugene, Maia Karo, Adrian Galvin & Guest: Lisa Park), Kimberly Ruth, Rachel Stevens, Jody Wood and No Hope aka Hedonic Treadmill (Elisabeth Smolarz & Jan Wilker)
sarahcrown opens in Chelsea and presents an event of six-minute multi-media performances by Group 6.0 members exploring the temporal duality of eveything and nothing.
opening May 10, 2014
@SPAZIO 522
526 West 26th Street, Suite 522, Chelsea NYOPENING RECEPTION
May 10, 5 – 7 pm
(performances start at 5:30pm)BRUNCH
May 11, 12 – 6pm
(with special performance by Jody Wood at 2:30pm)EXHIBITION
May 10 – June 1 (by appointment only)The exhibition is part of West Chelsea Artists Open Studios.