Ah… finally a film that I’m looking forward to seeing in the theater.

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Thanks to a quick trip to the Lake Calhoun beach yesterday, I realized how white I am. No. Really… I am paste colored and amazingly do not tan. It is like the sun resists me… Anyway. It could be way worse… I could be white like these two young gentlemen in the above video. I’m not quite sure what to make of this, but it just seems appropriate for this morning. Thank you Nikki for the link.

Wow. That is an incredibly pompous way of saying I decided to go for a crazy long walk with Curtis yesterday to look at various buildings in the public sphere. We took off on foot… and proceeded to become tourists in our own city. If you have the means (feet) and the time (2hrs +) to do this… I can’t encourage it enough. I feel refreshed and interested… again.

This little adventure is starting to spark some actual art-based experimentation… finally.I find myself going to movies, sitting in the theatre and, at times wishing I could make photographs that are (simply) cinematic. I don’t mean to say that the images I’d like to make are loaded with meaning or symbolic filters. I am much more interested in the… hidden neutral moments that occur when watching a film. There are always those times when you are presented with a beautiful, glowing image on a giant screen… but it is an image that is not really that consequential to the movie.

Back in grad school, I was fascinated by films such as “Our Daily Bread”, “The Passenger” and also certain parts of “Y Tú Mama Tambien” which employ the long shot shaped by static/neutral camera movements. These little bits sparked my interest in the relationship of moving images to my photographs. There is a certain cinematic quality in the empty spaces that I am always drawn to… and… may or may not be able to capture in the perfectly encapsulated form of the photographic print.

Any way… this is somehow work related also… as I have been testing out a JVC HD camcorder for my job. I have to say it is a pretty mean little tool for people who are interested in using video as part of their work/research but don’t want to invest in a professional level camera. This occasion seemed like the perfect chance to try out the camera and also to try to capture more of the presence of certain spaces throughout the city I live in.

Justin Lentz

During the avalanche of work yesterday, my friend in Los Angeles – Justin Lentz, sent me this great photograph from a photo shoot he was conducting. I’m excited to see the actual photographs that will emerge from his working process… but this iPhone image has me captivated right now. This little juicy tidbit reminds me of a recent blog post about photography as a lifestyle vs. photography as a strict, project based discipline. Personally, I love it when artists using photography are able to blend it into their practices as a human being… not simply running through the parameters of a project outline. (I will photograph X in X style until someone pays attention to how great thousands of images of X are)

It is only Wednesday and I feel completely drained. This week has been an energy vampire of unrivaled proportions. (Speaking of vampires, I find this article about fried blood on the menu in Chad really disturbing).

*****

On a separate note: I am finally going to break down and check out the “Quick and the Dead” exhibition at the Walker Art Center this weekend. Perhaps then, I will finally be able to see which ideas in conceptual art are officially DEAD and which ones the Walker has decided are ALIVE. Remember – ideas are just objects.

Happy Birthday Andrew

1. I managed to survive to age 27. Quite the feat considering the way that I love André.
2. Curtis introduced me to the French interview series: En Aparté. Created by Pascale Clark the show takes an incredibly interesting form: an interviewee is sent to an apartment. The apartment is wired with various cameras that move and follow the person being interviewed. A female voice (Pascale) asks questions of the interviewee… but this person is never introduced to us. Throughout the interview, objects, images, and various other random things from the interviewee’s life will be introduced and their reaction documented.

(Tangentially, I wonder if this format has anything to do with the French mastery of apartment living?)

Check this out:
En Aparté

I’m really interested in this idea of the environment as interrgator. Perhaps, if I spoke French, I would be able to make better analysis of this show… but what appeals to me is this demarcation of space as an active agent. Instead of traditional 20/20 style, don’t look at the camera, pure focus on the subject outside of any context, we are offered an environment that surrounds the interviewee and pushes forward encompassing and unexpected situations.

Rather than just looking into two well-lit faces that are opposite each other, the viewer is presented with the minute details of the interview. For example, I love watching the way that Nicola Sirkis pours a cup of tea. The smallest details of the everyday provide a context of identity – of being – that is much more complex and a traditional interview could ever offer.

I love it.

Life is good and I’m enjoying myself. What can I say? I’m completely spellbound by the new wall shelves that my friend Christopher Pole is going to build for me and I’m also salivating at the thought of getting out of MPLS for a while.

On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble, Curtis and I came across the Mystery Science Theater 3000 box sets. Wow. Talk about taking me back to my youth. For a second, I had bad acne and felt like I was back in my family’s basement watching the Sci-Fi Channel. Anyway. As we were watching The Touch of Satan, it occurred to me that there has to be greater critical depth to this program.

In a past post, I remarked that I thought the FOX animated television show Family Guy might be an apex of late Postmodernism. After watching MST3K again, I believe that it represents yet another facet of Postmodernism coming to fruition. Where Family Guy represents the splintering, mish-mashing, and appropriation of aspects of contemporary culture to create a new whole, one could argue that MST3K indicates another core part of postmodernism in visual culture: questions of authorship.

I couldn’t help but notice that the commentary introduced by Mike, Tom Servo, and Crow acts both as a humorous (exceptionally, even) device, and also, as a means of redrawing the narrative of the film as it unfolds. It is fascinating to watch the linear format of a bad film be verbally cut up, digested, and wittily put back together into something better.

Babbling.

My great indulgence for the day has been watching documentaries instead of getting off my ass and photographing the Walker for an architecture blog. I’ll do it tomorrow morning… when the light isn’t so punchy.

If you haven’t seen it already, Our Daily Bread is an amazing documentary/piece of video art. The film follows mechanized food production around Europe – from salmon fishing vessels in Norway to almond trees in Greece and Italy. Mostly consisting of long shots of workers and machines doing their business to make our lunches possible, the repetitive motions of how we get our food is interspersed with workers having their lunch breaks.

Two favorite moments:

-Workers trying to get bulls to mount cows… and then jumping in last second with a beaker to collect the semen.

-Workers endlessly, tirelessly piling soil around asparagus so that it never conducts photosynthesis and stays white. 

The film is available on DVD from NetFlix and here is the trailer: