Intermedia at Tate

The Tate museum's intermedia website is curated by Kelli Dipple and focuses on new media, sound, and performance. They just launched a new series of projects including works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Lynn Hershmann Leeson (one of my faves), Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg, Stan VanDerBeek, and Tony Conrad.

Along with this crew, I too am being featured in a video interview that introduces my new Foreign Film Series. For those who are interested, there is even a "trail(er) mix" version of my soon to be finished 75 minute feature from the series entitled Immobilité. This month we're finishing postproduction thanks in large part to the enormous sound talents of C. W. Mossholder. As the Tate site suggests:

The story of Immobilité revolves around three pirate personas. Existing, as if in another time, looking back. The work critically reflects on the fluidity of emerging identities in digital culture from both philosophical and literary (fictional) perspectives. Amerika mixes landscape, portraiture, mobile videography, poetic intertitles and subtitles, along with an original 75 minute soundtrack, to create a provocative story about a dreamworld within our own world.

Immobilité is the first artwork in Amerika’s Foreign Film Series. Amerika refers to the work as ‘a feature-length foreign film shot entirely on mobile phone.’ Shot in Conrwall in the UK, the work includes an original soundtrack by sound artist Chad Mossholder and introduces Camille Lacadee and Magda Tyzlik-Carver, whose characters go by the name of 'Etc.' and '...'

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Metadata: Immobilité, visual art, Mark Amerika, film, exhibition, new media, Tate museums, mobile phone

Blink

A few days ago I linked to some witty and very insightful political writing by David Foster Wallace (RIP), but there is a new piece out by George Saunders in The New Yorker that takes the cake:

Explaining how she felt when John McCain offered her the Vice-Presidential spot, my Vice-Presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin, said something very profound: “I answered him ‘Yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”

Isn’t that so true? I know that many times, in my life, while living it, someone would come up and, because of I had good readiness, in terms of how I was wired, when they asked that—whatever they asked—I would just not blink, because, knowing that, if I did blink, or even wink, that is weakness, therefore you can’t, you just don’t. You could, but no—you aren’t.

That is just how I am.

Do you know the difference between me and a Hockey Mom who has forgot her lipstick?

A dog collar.

Of course, the undertone here is that what we're seeing "go into development" is the "treatment" to the sequel to "The Blink Presidency" -- a counterintuitive adaptation of the book "Don't Think -- Blink!" This is bound to appeal to 51.3 - 52.4 percent of the voters lost in their economic depression.

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Metadata: politics, pigs, pit bulls, Palin

A Supposedly Fun Thing He'll Never Do Again (Update)

A question I keep asking myself today in response to DFW's sudden departure:

"Did he see something coming that we are still trying to render into vision?"

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Metadata: David Foster Wallace