Collective Notions

December

09

Above: trailer for “The Body Show.” Stop by Portland’s Someday Lounge on Wednesday, December 15th to see the whole thing!

Early in November I flew back to Portland, Oregon after living in Brooklyn for a little under a month. I was excited to be back “home” and see most of my closest friends, family, myriad species of trees, favorite coffee shops, bakeries, fresh air, thai food, food carts, mountains … and perhaps even the rain.

But, I was most excited for the main reason I was flying back — the benefit cabaret and premiere of my latest experimental short “The Body Show” created in collaboration with Nora Robertson.  Our film is based off of Nora’s poem “How to Boil an Egg”  published in Redactions and nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize. “The Body Show” takes the form of a cooking show gone awry, with a Julia Child meets David Lynch sensibility.

We are excited to collaborate in the near future on a series of films based off of other poems from Nora’s Body Making Cookery poetry collection and, if we can ever find the time, producing a performance/video/reading/multimedia version of “How to Boil an Egg.”

— Jason

Below: Nora and Jason thanking their supporters and those who attended the premiere.

This post has 0 notes and tag: # video # poetry # portland .

October

06

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

THERE IS STILL TIME…BROTHER by The Wooster Group

I was looking forward to this piece more than any other at TBA largely because, well, it’s the Wooster Group. Ironically I didn’t know what to expect.

Standing inside The Wooster Group’s first interactive, 360-degree war film the audience is surrounded by an exhilaratingly complex narrative space where the action can only be seen and heard through a virtual “peephole” window that scans the circle, controlled by a member of the audience.

Above, the camera follows the “peephole” perspective whose borders appear like blurred darkness. I spent perhaps an hour and a half in the installation absorbed in the surround and wondering what was going on beyond the focus. It was completely satisfying as a spectator, and I didn’t feel the need to drive until the very end.

How the film introduced itself stands out as a memorable. The narrator says something like ‘the problem with making something interactive for more than one person is that you end up voting’, and therefore they chose to make a piece where everyone watches what one person controls. This wisdom is inseparable from what makes the piece compelling.

The only technical weaknesses related to how the captured-edited-and projected video was stitched together. It wasn’t seamless. Not that this detracted from the experience all that much, but it’s always exciting exciting to dream for an impeccable video experience.

Beyond the technical mediation, it was essentially a really entertaining Wooster Group performance. A little crazy and a lot great. How you watched them was icing on the cake.

—Michael

(originally published on MeAT)

This post has 2 notes and tag: # TBA10 # art # Time-Based Art Festival # Wooster Group # Portland .

May

24

In my video work I like to flirt with ambiguity. My audience members frequently mention that they were infinitely intrigued, but don’t really know why — and surely cannot verbalize their intrigue. I really like that. If my explorations in video could easily be put into words, I would probably have been a writer.

From my experience, a good percentage of the U.S. population has a problem with conceptually and narratively oblique videos. In our life and entertainment (especially in our entertainment) we are used to just being handed what we want — usually in a prepackaged form, wrapped up like a piece of candy. If we don’t get it, we just move on. I am as guilty of this as the next person; I think it’s partially how our brains biologically work, and partially our cultural conditioning.

So, I present you with a video; instigated and inspired by my close friend Gabriel Darling. One day, right as she was about to move far away, Gabriel had the idea to run around in a bamboo forest while I filmed her. It was from a time in Portland I will remember fondly: the days when anything, at anytime, was possible.

This video could go on and on, staying the same but never repeating itself. In that way it isn’t really a loop though formally that is how the technology works. In reality, this video is just a moment. I can’t really say where the girl is running to, or what she is running from. All that matters is that she is free.

“Here and There” 
(video by Jason Bahling, music by American Analog Set)

This post has 0 notes and tag: # dance # bamboo # portland # PDX # eyecandy .