After Sherman's March

Director Ross McElwee


Some stills from Sherman's March: A Mediation to the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

Some new ideas

I realized that if the piece is about the option to start a war, the person who starts it should "fire the first shot". So what if we wired a switch into one of the plastic muskets, so that when you fire it the program is triggered?

Also, I have some great ideas for photos we should take on our road-trip. Hopefully we'll have an extra day to go to Antietam, because the best ones I have in mind need to be taken there.

Click the image below to see some new footage. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet...

cell phone drum kit

Do you think there would be a way to have the ringtones of a bunch of cheap phones be a part of a drum kit. One is the snare, one is the high hat etc, and get them to play out some kind of weird beat by calling them? Or they are all on the same #. You could walk into the space and call the number on the wall to interact with it and then the beat, or even score would be performed.
Somehow the music could be conceptualy linked to the idea of this interaction, or it would require other users to call the other numbers to complete the music. You could kind of DJ it.

Slowcore...

...in action.
Seriously, could the drummer do any less? (and yet, he still manages to rock somehow...!?!)

You forget about them....

... and then one day you remember that Pelican is one of the greatest bands ever.

Space Invaders

HLH at Platform2's "Failure Support Group" event

On Friday, February 29th, Matthew Nash of HLH presented at Platform2's "Failure Support Group" event, held at the Democracy Center at Harvard University. From my post over at Our Daily RED:

Tonight Platform2 hosted an event dubbed the Failure Support Group for a crowded hall of artists and friends. The event featured a series of artists presenting various failures from their lives. I am proud to admit that I presented a failure of my own.

The event, like many Platform2 events, was a loose and open discussion of a topic that many people confront in their daily lives. Each presentation was limited to 5 minutes, and speakers were shooo-ed off stage by Andi Sutton's accordion (Sutton learned to play accordion 3 days ago). I was struck by the wide variety of types of failure presented, from "I am a failure because I am perceived to be successful but I'm not" to "Every time I become really good at something I hate it" to "My project did not meet its goals, even though others thought it was a success" to "I had a great idea that failed as a business venture." Each person talked about failure as a part of their life, but most people also seemed to find hope, or growth, or opportunity in their failures. Overall it was a really interesting conversation that lasted for quite a while.

Platform2 is a collective comprised of Catherine (kanarinka) and Sasha (pirun) of iKatun, Jane D. Marsching, and Andi Sutton of The National Bitter Melon Council. Previous Platform2 events include a discussion about Art & Activism, and an exploration of Risk: Race, Class, Geography, and Art (pictures here)

Find out more about Platform2 events, and how you can become a part of future projects, at their website.

For the event, I recreated an older Harvey piece: "Control #8: Feel The Same Emotions". In this version, I gave everyone in the room a card and asked them not to show it to anyone else. Each card had a word describing an emotion on it -- some people got "indignation" and others got "contentment". I asked everyone in the room to sit silently for one minute and try to feel that emotion. After the minute was over, we talked about whether they were able to keep that emotion, and if they believed that they had felt the same emotions as others in the room. Of course, we also talked about the failure inherent in the whole proposition.

The images are by Rob Coshow, and show me talking to the group and the minute of silence.