Below is the entire performance with video portions (which were projected during the run), here edited into this documentation.
Category Archives: Music
My Year in Instagram
My second Instagram movie. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with viewing one’s life through various lenses. Such as the ephemeral snapshots of a cell phone. Here we have a slice of my year (2013) from highlights of my Instagram feed. It seems that my life is crammed full of bicycle rides, enchilada plates, imprudent selfies, and oh so many pretty people. Life could be a lot worse. Music by my favorite Austin space rock ensemble, ST 37 (“Stack Collision with Heap”).
Suzy Says….
Suzy Bravo (a veteran of the San Antonio music scene) was in the band Hogbitch when I shot this. This tiny clip was taken from their music video I shot (directed by Pete Barnstrom). I usually don’t slow down video (unless I shot it for slow motion), because it almost always looks like shit. However, when you push the contrast up against the wall, and when you are working with an image of someone as beautiful and intense as Suzy, it sometimes works. I added some “music” I created and placed this attention-grabbing short on my FaceBook, accompanied with a link to a crowdfunding website that the band was using to fund-raise for their debut album.
Fever Chart
Morton Subotnick at URBAN-15
The legendary Morton Subotnick visited the URBAN-15 Studio in February of 2013. Here is the encore of his performance. Earlier in the day he gave a workshop, touching on his workflow (such as using his Buchla synthesizer in conjunction with Ableton Live software), as well as a wonderful presentation of his life in electronic music.
Ordinary Windows
Ordinary Windows was a collaboration between Ordinary Spaces and Jump-Start Performance Co. The free event happened on Friday, December 7, 2012, with two performances at 8 p.m., and 8:30 p.m. This unique site-specific work was a fashioned by performance artists Andrew Coronado, Sandra Dunn, Dino Foxx and Fabiola Torralba. My video is a little promotional teaser I shot during the Thursday night rehearsal. It gives something of a sense of what the piece was like. I particularly like how the camera takes on such a voyeuristic aspect. And though I have gotten soooo lax about using music I don’t have the rights to for these little ephemeral offerings, I just love how this odd track from Trans Am melds so well a sense of agitation with resigned languor.
The Man You’ve Become
This is another video I provided for Aaron Richmond-Havel’s peripatetic performance art birthday event at Hampshire College back in 2012. He asked if I could get our friend Pamela Dean-Kenny to lip-sync this somewhat saccharine song as though Pam was a drunken mother at her son’s wedding. Here is a lengthy (and partial) video documentation of Aaron’s grand event, “Penny’s Big 21: Rites of Passage and Pleasure.”
Instagram: The Movie
Instagram quickly became my favorite toy when I loaded it onto my iPhone a few years back. It took me a while to jump aboard the trend. I had spent so many years lusting after higher and higher resolution for digital images, that the thought of working smaller seemed so retrograde. But when some of my photographer friends showed me what they were doing on this platform–creating breathtaking images in miniature, with a cellphone, no less–I had to get in as well. This video is the first of several fast-moving slideshows I’ve made of some of my Instagram images.
Penny’s Big 21
This cries out for some context, doesn’t it? A friend of mine, Aaron Richmond-Havel, was heading back to college after a summer break at home in San Antonio. He wanted to make a film with me to commemorate his upcoming 21st birthday. But he also wanted this short film to be used in a multi-venue evening-long performance art collaboration planned for his return to his Hampshire College campus. He wanted something in drag, along the San Antonio River Walk, and all very messy with cake and poorly-applied makeup. I decided to shoot both slow motion and regular speed. I like how this turned out. I did go a bit heavy-handed on the Magic Bullet color and vignette effects, but really, who’s looking at the post-production work? (For more Aaron, here’s a YouTube link to his commencement at Hampshire 2013 doing a dance number at the podium–I do hope that the wonderful Amy Goodman, who was the Keynote Speaker, was not only still in attendance, but seated on stage.)
Rolando Briseño’s Spinning San Antonio Fiesta at the Alamo
Rolando Briseño is a San Antonio-based public artist. He proudly embraces the designation of Cultural Adjustor (I believe it’s printed on his business cards). There have been several events over the years (sometimes at the Alamo, sometimes in a gallery space) where Rolando has curated similar shows to prompt people to reconsider the prevailing mythos surrounding the Alamo. This video was taken during the 2011 event, which, I believe, was staged on the feast day of Saint Anthony de Padua, June 13. There are way too many luminaries from the local arts and cultural scene to list here, but we do have a who’s-who of San Antonio, whether as part of the ceremonies, or as members of the audience bearing witness to this moment of cultural adjustment. The band playing is Los Nahuatlatos, and I poached some of their live performance during the event to use for the music bed. I shot this all so loosely, with no intention of editing it into anything, really. I just happened to have my camera with the (cameras are wonderful devices for the socially awkward introvert to hide behind), but when I got home later that day and edited together a short montage, I loved how the emotions (joyful and tragic, at the same time) were so fortuitously captured.
[UPDATE: On September 5, 2024, Centro de Artes Gallery unveiled a show. Dining with Rolando Briseño: A 50-Year Retrospective. My little film was included (true, it’s but a minor footnote to Rolando’s impressive and on-going career, but I’m very honored). The show continues through Feb. 9, 2025. I hope to make it to town and see it.]