tEYEgrrr film feats (On a youtube channel near you)

In my brief excursion to Maine - yes, the fetus crawling back into the womb - I have occupied some serious hours with a pair of corduroy shorts (that happened to contain one of my favorite corn-haired boy-lettes). We stoop-hopped, hookah-ed, and eventually fell into a 'nostalgiconversation' about our days of intense online roleplaying.

Throughout his excursions, he keeps a diminutive white camcorder (the Ultra Flip, I think); A means of documenting the Portland epic. After I dragged my soggy-self home (New York and Maine both have a tempest-tendency, lately) & caught up on the AC360 podcasts, he spent the early hours with his footage.

eye.

Stan Brakhage & Dziga Vertov - though I admit to harboring resentment for them both when forced to sit through the entirety of Man with a Movie Camera and Dog Star Man - pioneered new definitions of the function & purpose of the movie camera. Soviet documentary film maker Vertov developed a style of "truthful" film -making, which paved the way for the Cinéma Vérité. His films adamantly rejected the narrative structures in film, instead utilizing the camera as a device by which to capture the honest truth of perception; "life caught unawares.

Brakhage pioneered the lyrical film. Critic P. Adams Sitney writes of the genre:

"[it] postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film. The images of the film are what he sees, filmed in such a way that we never forget his presence and we know how he is reacting to his vision. In the lyrical form there is no longer a hero; instead the screen is filled with movement, and that movement, both of the camera and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a man looking. As viewers we see this man's intense experience of seeing."

While Brakhage's film made me severely nauseous (& left me craving some sort of potent substance), Brakhage - by both rejecting and creating a sort of synthesis of the previous models of American experimental film - paved a road toward the tender, honest documentation of contemporary experimental film (at least those that harbor the lyrics edge.)

eye was particularly reminiscent of the films of Nathaniel Dorsky, at least on the level of visual style. Dorsky's films celebrated the beauty of the natural, sensual world through a meditative exploration of solitude, landscapes, motion, time, and consciousness. eye utilized a similar exploration of a surrounding sphere, (not simply documenting but) delicately capturing the wonderment within a specific day-to-day existence.

Unlike Dorsky's films, eye incorporates a contemporary soundtrack, not unlike the films of Kenneth Anger. Though stylistically dissimilar to Anger's work, the concept of setting a film to contemporary music places it chronologically, making it less a ubiquitous piece, but a portrayal of a specific generation and subculture.

Like Brakhage, the hand-held camera allows the viewer to slip into the skin of a first-person protagonist, observing the streets of Portland as one of the inhabitants, rather than from an omniscient perspective.

eye. contemporary lyricism.

&, you know, there is some fine footage of me looking beat. (or just homeless).

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Northstar Cafe: Open Mic/SlamPoetry, 7:30PM

Soul-Sailing (but not for sale)

"All ye stumbling sleepwalkers, you were not misinformed. But in these tongue-tied times, this is for the homeless hearts and anxious fingers"
- Know Hope.

NO SOUL FOR SALE

("A Festival of Independents will bring together 40 independent forces from around the world that uniquely animate contemporary art (not-for-profit organizations, alternative institutions, artists' collectives and independent enterprises). From June 24–28, all floors of X Initiative will be utilized by the groups to simultaneously present art, music, performances, and publications." )

Four floors. No swiveling, but I have adopted the head-tilt that comes with intense observation. I went sifting back through my Experimental Film History course, finding many of the video installations harkened back to Harry Smith's Heaven & Earth Magic, the Structurist movement, or maybe some sort of Nouveau Surrealism.

Marwood spray painted his shirt on the third floor.

On the fourth floor, I stumbled across the work of Know Hope, an Israeli street artist. I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of his mini-paper "The Anytimes," which - prior to NY - was cleverly slipped into local papers in LA.

His work has a certain earnest quality, an innocence, that I have found lacking recently. The avant-garde sometimes seems to be rebelling against prior movements simply for the sake of doing so - our young voices often rejecting everything we can with our own desperation for the ironic. We all have soft little rabbit-souls somewhere, but a lot of us are wearing flippant masks.

Know Hope has been illustrating the narrative of a (darling) nameless figure - a representation of the conflicted, vulnerable, hopeful human condition - for a year. This combination of illustration , poetry, and iconography lend his work a multi-layered narrative quality - a delicate, poignant epic of humanity's struggle. Hearts, tree stumps, birds, and semi-functional manifestations of technology (telephone poles, broken televisions...) are prevalent symbols throughout his work.

I have noted that, in all of these illustrations of the nameless figure, there is a blank silhouette where the heart would be, upon the sleeve the heart has been sewn on (save in one of my favorite pictures in which this character is releasing his heart, like a bird, into the air). Of hearts, he writes:

“I hope to move heavy hearts at least one inch to the side by confessing that I'm petrified and secretly in love with the world.”

In the face of all the lofty irony we've stock piled, it is refreshing to encounter something poignant and sincere with the intent to illuminate the current human condition and to inspire hope in trying times. I don't think I have felt so delicately rubbed raw since The Giving Tree.

This Is Limbo

Prolong vs. Prologue: Cold Feet & Wet Ears

Despite my faux-nee (but well-meaning) attempts at affluence/at aptitude/to talk like I am all up in (& about) the sleek, glass-swiveling circles of art criticism - a pseudo-foreign world where one stands on the pillar of his own art-prowess & can perhaps gaze down a bit condescendingly, if he has built his corinthian high enough. I have always felt the divide between my swollen tongue and the silver-cast ones of the 'intellectually sharp 'n savvy'. (This is the term I am best able to apply. It's a matter of poise - not status- if anything: plain, hella conviction ).

I have never even so much as mustered the ballz to knock the abstract expressionists - which I hear is not too hard to do. Still, without having my roots firmly embedded in the philosophy of Pollock, how could I feel entirely sound commenting?

So. Tuesday at the Chelsea Arts Tower found me rigid, chewing my swollen tongue into a further state of ineloquence; beached sealife/longing to return to my embryonic fluid.

A couple of months back I was inclined to: manifest a little fruition out of my infa(n)tuation with the idea of being in the 'NYC art scene,' using my madd skillz to artfully penetrate "the great minds & talents of our generation"

Hmmm:
1. What does that even mean?
2. Our generation still feels fresh out of the womb, like our figureheads are learning to toddle. Not that we are not prolific and innovative, but the backwash of whatever life's-milk we were fat-fed on left a strong sense of irony on our tongues. Thus, our ironic tastes.*
3. Though it is intriguing to observe how styles are embraced or rejected from generation to generation, that had little do with anything when it came to this exhibition that I was going to in Chelsea.

I made my way to the Chelsea Arts Tower, smoking heavily and trying to bite down that feeling that I needed: notes scribbled up and down my limbs, a tele-prompter, a "plus one" in order to not feel awkward, a better knowledge of social propriety at such events, and a handkerchief to de-glisten my face flesh.

I was pseudo-relieved to see the managing editor of the magazine. (We'll call him Marwood. I firmly believe in blog-pseudonyms.)

I was glad that I would be not be playing the symbolism version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey the entire evening, aimlessly hoping to wind up in the right place and say the right thing. However, my precious pride didn't allow me much in terms of entreating him for guidance, either. But, cowboy up, etc.

Re-Accession: For Sale By Owner
Curated by Philae Knight and Amanda Steck

There is a considerable degree of empowerment in grasping two fistfuls of the current situational fabric & making collaborative quilts, regardless. Our economic times couldeasily be enough to douse spirits, but the FLAG Art Foundation embraced the circumstance, exploring the results of the economic pitfall & featuring artists undoubtedly influenced by it.

As Marwood and I circulated around the space - & I briefly told myself not to scuff the wood floors - I (not quite) fondly recalled transporting Devon Dikeou's What's Love Got To Do With It? pieces from SoHo to Chelsea in the most impressive down-pour I have seen since moving to New York. We might have taken a canoe, really. Anyway, I became momentarily religious when running the packaged pieces from the car to the Chelsea Arts Tower. (I am a stubby, clumsy critter: a hindrance & danger to the installation of art everywhere).

Now the pieces were perfectly arranged on the wall beside the elevators, a collection of replicas of lobby informational boards from various exhibitions. Those little cases, black felt and white plastic letters, now struck me as the manifestation of nostalgia and preservation - an appropriate emblem to mount in the face of an artistic re-accession.


So. Here it is: I am some slippery critter, wet behind the ears, polishing off my years at Sarah Lawrence College and gnawing my way through...quite the fine-dine-vinyl-wine-cookie. I sleep in Brooklyn & spend some fair hours as an intern (embryo) for an art publication.

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*generation "HIPSTER"?


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@ Chelsea Arts Tower: I should add that my wine glass, once in hand, was never empty. & there were many guests. Diligence personified. Snaps to those who make the 'swivel&circulate' possible.