shelflife by visitor

There’s this weird, union-oriented, bullshit rule that’s enforced at a lot of venues in New York. It wasn’t always as pervasive as it is now and essentially amounts to extortion. Basically, many larger venues in the city forbid artists from documenting their own shows in film or video. Many offer permission (i.e. extortion) for around a thousand dollars per camera–sometimes more. They claim that allowing one to document one’s own intellectual property is “a service”. I claim they’re thuggish money-grubbers.

There are a few non-conglomeratized venues here that have the decency to permit at least a single handheld camera for archival use as long as a waiver is signed. A couple of venues, providing you request permission sufficiently in advance, even still have anything goes policies. In general, the whole thing’s a bit of a head-scratcher. The venues are, by and large, nothing to write home about. They’re magnificently mundane spaces. Friday, though, we got permission to do a single handheld camera up at a gorgeous theater in Harlem. Hospitality’s alive and well up on Sugar Hill.

Here’s what I cranked out of my solitary, forearm supported moving-picture-making machine.
Thanks, Harlem. Thanks, Sonic Youth. The lighting design for this tour is sensational.

higher bandwidth | lower bandwidth

I was asked on a Thursday to contribute designs to a sticker-sheet for the soon-to-be-released ltd edition lee ranaldo and thurston moore jazz blaster/jazz master guitars. It was suggested that the designs be submitted by the following Monday–on a weekend rich with NYC springtime hectic. In the interest of time and submitting work I knew I’d be happy with, I reheated a couple of things I’d drawn recently that weren’t used, hadn’t been used yet or were used previously in some very limited capacity. This is what I submitted:

Ultimately, one design was selected and paired with designs from the likes of Savage Pencil, Dennis Tyfus, Cameron Jamie, Matthew Ritchie and Kim Gordon. (seen here along with a zine that SY and their road crew pulled together)

Anyway, the reheating process got me to thinking about intellectual waste. I decided to dig up 12 sketch scraps I had laying around the studio, write a story tying them together and then design the collected elements into a conceptual book all inside of a 3-hour window. I did it. A month later, I finally figured out how to present and execute the edition. Look for more info on WASTE here soon.

The time that Sensational Fix curator, Roland Groenenboom, has spent with the work of Sonic Youth and their friends seems to have been superbly digested. Something that many of the artists involved in the show share widely in common is an involvement in the production of accessible, serial ephemera. Most are still generating print editions, publishing or writing zines, books, broadsides, chapbooks or pamphlets, printing tshirts, making records… Regardless of perceived value as artists, most everyone in the show is still actively making collectible works available to admirers of their creativity via channels beyond the hyper-inflated fantasy-priceland of galleries.

Having completed an exhibition catalog potentially priced beyond the reach of many young exhibition attendees, Roland decided to tap the over-arching communal belief in democratic content distribution and enlist exhibiting artists to contribute new work to a series of cheap, numbered, thematic, xeroxed zines. I contributed the piece below to the first issue, SILENCE. I can’t wait to stuff a sliver of my shelves with the entire series.

When the Sonic Youth studio still sat hovering in the chasm of Echo Canyon and the band collectively exploited it as a well-worn sonic workshop, I was there at least a couple of times a week filming.

A lot of that material is now in the Sensational Fix exhibition as it tours museums peppered about the globe. I actually still need to edit a couple of new films for that. Apparently, aspects of the show will evolve and change in each museum anyway, so I’m excited to contribute to its dynamic nature thru my tardiness.

One of my favorite pieces in the show–an utterly failed exercise in improvisation and cogent filmmaking…and stupid as sin–is ECHOSCAM. We used to have this 24/7 webcam installed at the studio. It was accessible from the homepage of sonicyouth.com and people watched it compulsively. It was this creepy stalker destination that was A-OK to frequent–so frequented, it was.

One afternoon in 2002, Thurston was working on some overdubs with Jim and Aaron. While I was documenting that, I got to thinking about stalking, obsession and the stereotypical Sonic Youth fan. Somehow that train of thought detoured and I began pondering petty theft and wondering how frequently criminals used the internet for research. Would engaging in online communities to research a heist leave the well-read criminal touched by any sort of fandom or tainted by residual trivia–to be mnemonically unleashed when presented with the appropriate stimulation?

I asked Thurston to bring a ski mask to the studio the following day. I’d bring two flashlights. “What’s my motivation?” Thurston asked, curiously. “You saw the place on the EchoCam. You’re a criminal, but you also kind of get the fan thing. We break in thru the fire escape and case the place. We’re pretty clueless. We comment on shit that we see, but the comments are absurd. Before we get to steal anything, Jim chases us out.” As evidenced by the video, neither staying in character nor any sort of planning were part of either of our motivation. Also…I can’t act–let alone act and film simultaneously.

I’m warning you–this is ridiculous. Your 12 minutes will not be refunded. No re-entry. No returns.

I’ve mentioned before that I was asked to create and gather work from material in my archive for the upcoming Sensational Fix touring Sonic Youth exhibition. Something I’d been meaning to make for a long time, but never got around to–until last week–was an impressionistic audio/video collage about the making of Harmony Korine’s Sunday.

I shot 3 hours of material the day Harmony made the video. That was over 11 years ago, and re-visiting such old footage is difficult. Different equipment, shooting styles, subject-focus… I get this one thing I want to make–it’s done in my head–been done for years–ready to encode, burn and rip–but I jog thru the footage and the fragments I’ve edited in my memory don’t exist on the tapes. I experienced them, but never recorded them. Maybe I misremembered them over time.

So, a simple 8-minute edit becomes this painful exercise in compromising memory while trying to convey some sense of the experience to a viewer. All the while, I don’t really want to convey the experience–at all. I never really do. I just want to frustrate people, so I’m not so isolated in my perplexed recollection. This is why I’ll never be a real filmmaker.

I’ve got no stories to tell. I’ve just got this compulsion to document things and these thoughts I reflect on while I re-examine footage. I lack a fundamental interest in structure and basically want a viewer to vicariously experience my high blood pressure, confusion and angina more than anything else. Always Seems To Move So Slow is representative of that process–but somehow, the jarring sound edit, lack of anchors and surreal, sensual and sensational subject matter make a looming aneurysm slightly endearing.

Maybe I’ll stream it after the opening on June 17th. For now, I leave you with stills.

Kim’s a compulsive omni-maker. A lot of people know her band. Some remember X-Girl. A few remember her role in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days. Fewer know of the books, columns and articles she’s written. Then there are the exhibits she’s curated, the theater actions she’s directed, the films she’s made and that dancing she did for our film in the pink wig and school girl skirt. There’s also the point of this post–the portraits she’s painted.

I think the first time I noticed her paintings was during a mind-numbing afternoon of troubleshooting an old Apple Performa she had in the Gordon/Moore apartment in NYC. I had this non-functional, artifact of prehistoric computing dismantled on the floor of her office and stood up to refocus my eyes thru the window to Crosby St. Looking back down at the dust-bunny ravaged components on the floor, I caught a glimpse of a basket boiling over with canvases.

“Oh shit. So this is where the cover for Sentimental Education came from.” I guess I hadn’t realized she’d painted that image. I flipped thru the paintings in the basket and shouted across the living room to ask Kim about them. “They’re just something I’m working on. I’m not sure what’ll happen with them. I’ve been giving ‘em to people as gifts. You want some more tea? Hey, Thurston–you want to order some Indian? Chris, you want Indian?” It was like that–just this one-more-thing she was doing.  

I dug back into the eviscerated machine, repaired the power supply and got it all back together and running. The three of us sat down for some Baluchi’s and pondered the direction the internet would ultimately take. It was ‘96 or ‘97, so it was anybody’s guess. Turns out we were all right in our theories of meta-expansion/collapse, content-as-king entertainment hub and advertising-dense wasteland. We finished our meal. I packed up my tools and laptop and headed out to the elevator. Kim popped open their door with a painting in her hands. “Here. You liked this one, right? Take it. Thanks, Chris.” A kiss on the cheek, a salutory wave from Thurston and the elevator dinged.  

Since then, my little collection of Kimstuff’s expanded substantially. Here’s that first painting, side-by- side with one of the others she painted on vinyl a couple of years later.