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

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.