shelflife by visitor

Things sometimes sprout mysteriously at the whim of serendipity, dissolving just as fast. Others seem they’ve always been. Tectonic. True. These collaborations each peppered a path borne perhaps, of both of these possibilities.

The thing about paths is that nobody reflects fondly on those strung efficiently between two points. We’re sculpted by our travels across the tines of gnarled and broken forks.

When we slide dusty into the bellies of ravines or catch a ghosted glimpse of the undeniable traces of a bramble’s lipstick upon us–puffy pink ribbons of flesh draping limbs in unreasonable ways–we’re reminded we’ve wandered well.

We’ll recall these travels and remember the breadcrumbs scattered to allow us our return when the urge to claw our way back percolates up thru whatever fog it is that convinces us Back can’t afford us the mantle of progression to a fresher Forward.

A day after tumbling from a very concrete path, both of my arms essentially broken, I met Sarah Lipstate. Slings and braces damned, her music inspired me to pick my camera up and begin making art again. Her work continued offering unexpected forms of healing and her friendship’s been a catalyst in my continued growth as both a maker and a be-er.

Beyond the physical work below are the concepts, song and album titles, compositional rearrangements, debates, psychic healing and loose-ends we’ve shared–aether that weathers a path in ways far less photogenic than material work borne along the way. I could paint it all in pigment of poetry and prose, but such scribbling somehow only transmutes the sacred profane. In an annual rite of reflection here’s a little bit of what I’ve made with Noveller.

Ends by Noveller from visitor design on Vimeo.

NOVELLER LIVE AT PS1 from visitor design on Vimeo.

RANALDO/LIPSTATE LIVE AT ROULETTE NYC from visitor design on Vimeo.

THE HEART’S A WILD WIND : Study for an Unfinished Film from visitor design on Vimeo.

Noveller, “Almost Alright” from Impose on Vimeo.

NOVELLER – BIRDS WITH BEARDS – LIVE – THE CAVERN, DALLAS TX from visitor design on Vimeo.

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

Classic Olsen, Young, Dilloway lineup right at the height of their Ayler moment–free-noise on a sensible grid. For a minute, Wolf Eyes was rummaging around in the smoldering foundations of everything they’d gotten so good at annihilating–piecing the ruins back together again into something more elegant–cross-legged but panty-free, draped in noxious layers of soot and dust. Drop-dead visionary.

Shotgun Rorschach’s a glimpse at that. I shot the footage one night at Tonic. They had all of the lights out, which always makes for super-watchable video. The sound, however, was entirely other and compelled me to use it. I picked all of the moments where flashes, flashlights, flickers and lamps flowed into frame and dragged them out forever. This is an excerpt of the final collection of those frames. Insomnia? Try this. It’s an oxycontin lullaby.

note: There’s a possibility that the full-length DVD, some bonus objects and a special packaging concept may be forthcoming via a collaboration with Nate and Alivia at Aryan Asshole Records.