10/08/2010

Last minute preparations and presentations. I spent the day mostly shooting some extra footage that I could not get that day as well as helping Jennida get different stations and elements set up. We have several places where TV screens are looping visuals taken from the different places hidden within Elsewhere and different places where amps, microphones and recorders have been places for tomorrow’s event. We have to be content that most of the elements of our outreach will be fulfilled by number of facilitators we have contacted and let the rest play out though word of mouth and passerbyers.
We met Clement Mallory yesterday who is a really interesting character. Very enthusiastic and talented. Through talking to him he put us in touch with Invisible, another Greensboro product whom we had tried to contact but to no avail. It turns out he is friends with them and had their telephone numbers. The only contact I could find on the web apparently was incorrect. Again, this web of interconnectivity draws tight.
Tonight’s meal was homemade pizza with an assortment of vegetarian option…as always, but was really good. After dinner we had a group photo and began our presentations. It was really interesting to hear what everyone had been involved in the past. The only inconvenient issue was that it took so long to get started that everyone was tired by the time it started. It wasn’t clear just how informal this presentation was supposed to be and I think in the end there was not much discussion because of this. Some people from the Greensboro community joined us and again it was an issue of the formality. I don’t think it was presented as a talk that community members would attend and therefore such preparations were not made. Not that many guests showed up but I think that happenings such as this could have the occasion to bring in many more guests and treat it as such the formal presentation that would have been taken more seriously and inspired more conversation. For us the conversation took place during other times, the talk served as a communal time to share images.

10/07/2010

Thursday and another few residents are rolling in and we cannot pay too much attention as we are knee deep in the almost thereness of our event. I have spent all day shooting my footage, which is to say that I have been exploring. I started on Wednesday but only began in the evening. I noticed a really beautiful phenomenon out the back windows at sunset and vowed today to take advantage of it-, which I have. I have gotten lost all day in the minutia of this building. Spending much time up on the third floor really looking at what’s up there. I have been switching back and forth between macro and 60mm functions on lens to capture what I find. I am teaching myself about my lens and about what I am seeing at the same time, which is really really one of those points where I feel free. To be absorbed in the moment and having all receptors open and on full. It is a beautifully warm and sunny day that blends into evening and allows an interestingly slow and calm view of the landscape out back of Elsewhere. Things are occurring without my personal involvement, waiting for my involvement in some way, and in some ways not caring for that moment’s readiness.

10/06/2010

Wednesday rolls around and its time for another clean. Wednesday mornings are always clean days at elsewhere. Every thing gets cleaned, from kitchen to bathroom to hallways and stairs, the whole shebang. I somehow got sucked back into the clothing room where all the clothes are stored, hung and arranged according to a system I still do not understand. I do understand that it houses a lot of dust however.
We followed up the clean with a trip to Beef Burger on W Lee Street before heading over to Belinda’s for a shower and shave, and a little bit if quiet.
It has been very interesting getting to know our newest artist in residence. I find it refreshing yet odd how in this sort of place like other residencies are a cross roads for artist coming and going to wherever, full of stories of where they have been and where they are off to next. Often times the wear and tear of such a lifestyle shows though as some individuals have not seen home (as it were) for upwards of six and seven months if not more. It is truly as I have described to others: A working vacation for artists (emphasis on working).
It seems that the latest crop as a group seem to be the oldest. Brandon is the youngest and perhaps Michelle is the oldest, if not then I take the prize. Michelle is the funniest of our group as I was sitting there at my desk doing work; I kept hearing these electronic chirps and whistles, droning sounds no longer heard in this century. It sounded fantastic! I was quite aware that with the obvious exception of Jennida I was the only person that might be even remotely interested in remarking and further investigating such noises. We were all gathering info for an informal artist talk we will be giving on Friday and she was unearthing things she had been involved with which included a birthday gift from Corey Archangel, a portrait of her computers hard drive on her birthday that year. Smooth criminal! I think Jennida is basking in the light that comes with chance in counters of your idols. I say that in jest, but still the chance to encounter other artist that contribute, make and inspire work that seem hard to embrace by the mainstream is a wonderful event in itself.

10/05/2010

I arrived back at Elsewhere to meet with several people whom have agreed to be docents if you will for our sound workshop. We are assembling more than a few people interested from visual art, music, sound/noise and social backgrounds, which is really exciting!
We’ve been also begun working with Molly one of the interns in attempt to start gathering physical elements that might be interesting sonic candidates. It was quite interesting to describe to molly what an ideal candidate might look like. This exercise is in effect a small-scale version of the workshop we have planned. The search might include looking for things that might seem like they might sound interesting, things that seem similar to one another as to compare and contrast their sonic possibilities, items that reference common instruments or no longer fulfill their former instrumental qualities, items that might be used in conjunction with others and items possessing differing exterior textures. The ensuing experience is to investigate objects with an imagination and curiosity that might spark and challenge someone else’s interrogation of the same objects, but keeping in mind that any other individual may go about it in a wholly different manner and conclusion about every item assembled.
The other problem was trying to delegate these tasks to Molly so I could do other things, when all I wanted to do was go find toys!

10/04/2010

On the long way back from NYC we stopped in Richmond to drop Nathan off at home and in the process forgot my laptop at the apartment. We had stopped there to grab a bite at Tarrant’s and make sure we grabbed all the necessities we might need for the rest of our stay at elsewhere…except my laptop so now I have to drive six hours round trip to get it.
This is the week where everything gets done. Jennida has been shooting stop motion footage all over Elsewhere finding textures and other hidden treasures. Soon it will be my turn. I just have to finish all of my contacting. Over the weekend I Facebooked Clement Mallory and began a discussion. Jennida and I have begun to discuss contingency plans in case things don’t fall into place. The A&T home coming this weekend is really putting a damper on things. I had a lead for a woman that runs a dance school for girls running from age four on up to eighteen and who would have been a wonderful partner in our plans. However she and the girls are participating in the A&T festivities, as are many many people. I guess it is too much to hope for anyone from A&T Marching Machine being on hand for our program. ‘Tis a great lesson in dreaming large so you still have cards to play as things fall through.
After dinner I left out for Richmond and my laptop. I made good time and made myself a quick oven pizza and watched a movie called Repo Men based off of Repo: the Genetic Opera. It starred Forrest Whitaker and Jude Law. It was an interesting movie that I’m not sure which type of movie it wanted to be but attempted them all. I mean I wasn’t expecting very much, Repo was pretty trashy, but I’m always interested in what Forest chooses to do just to see what he does with it. He obviously can do The Last King of Scotland and obviously he did Species II. I think he gets it. You get yourself to the big jobs by doing the small jobs- and some times the big ones are small and sometimes the small ones are big- just keep working.

10/01/2010-10/03/2010

There isn’t much to say about the trip up and back to NYC other than it was long. Almost 12 hours from Greensboro to Brooklyn and another AIRB&B crash pad. This one was not as lush as the last but did have three beds in three rooms and not much else. But then again when your sole reason for being is a place to rest and store your things…. at least there is total privacy, if not TOTAL quiet. Actually I think Belinda and Nathan heard some commotion throughout the night but I slept like a rock. On Saturday we were off and going first stopping at a little brunch place and then we walked around a little as we had time to kill before going over to Green point. Check in started at noon but in all reality it wasn’t going to take us all that long to set up-especially because the sun would not set until sometime after seven or eight in the evening.
When we got to the general location for the festival we immediately found a really nice parking place right across the street from our appointed performance space.
We would be bringing our Future Past performance to the festival with a slight variation. We invited Nathan Halverson to join us in this iteration of the performance. Nathan is a friend and colleague from the VCU graduate program currently doing his second year stint focusing in sound. He had previously accompanied us up to the Staten Island festival Lumen several months ago in which he performed a piece that he and another artist had put together combining video and sound.
The second component that is new is the addition of the Greensboro massacre walking tour 88 seconds that refuse to end. For the past several performances I have been incorporating an app that I have on my iphone that pipes in police, fire and ems broadcasts from a multitude of location across the united states. The use of police bands is slightly morose, however it piques my interest in this idea of listening to the airwaves and waiting for a transmission. With police scanners it seems that the fascination with monitoring them brings a different sort of news to the listener. It has a sense of immediacy that the broadcast news and papers cannot afford. This immediacy also marks a sort of “now” and chance occurrence in being here much like shortwave and crystal radio enthusiast. The randomness and chance meeting of another voice in space, an as of yet unpinpointable or expected location, yielding an equally uncertain quantity of information or quality of exchange.
Using the walking tour plays very nicely into our concept of location/dislocation as we are bringing elements from the recording, no longer a broadcast (and in reality never was) but being brought to a new location in order to talk about a very real location and a very real event and trying to convey it though this new meta language of remixing and recombining with video and live performative elements.
Everything was set up in a timely fashion and without much fuss. Our arena consisted of a handball court with the wall as our screen of which we filled. The court then formed a space in which people filtered in and out as the wished. We decided to perform for the entirety of the festival as a sort of exercise. Normally our sets have been short, and for this piece the agreed upon time limit was fifteen minutes, five more than normal. For this version we performed for five hours.
The reaction was nothing short of fantastic. As an exercise in longevity and existing within a dynamic environment for which in all in tense purposes no social or performative walls existed the public invariably interacted with our work and us as we performed it. There were many people who simply wanted to confirm their suspicions of what kind of hardware/software we were using, while others wanted to know what we were actually doing- or even if we were doing anything at all. There was much interest in almost all aspects of the piece, visually, audibly and conceptually.
While it was really nerve racking at times to try and answer questions while attending to the piece it allowed for the attempt to do so. Overall it reinforced the initial impulse for our group to be an improvisational effort. After a while I brought out the whole recording of the walking tour as an experiment. I was uneasy about using the whole recording for the performance for a variety of reasons. One most notably is its understandably graphic depiction of the actual shoot out itself and the broadcasting of such in a very public space with a variety of ages of children. Also I was afraid that it might make the piece too didactic or too specific. After all our performance is not about Greensboro even though it persists in our psyche quite heavily. But in the end there were many people who despite the other hundreds of sights and sensations to experience in the festival decided to sit down and listen. During the walking tour the video still played, as did I and Nathan and the others in a rotating fashion providing a subtext and cushion for the rather stark narration.