Research for a Community (and maybe mobile) Filmmaking House -- goal is to broaden the generalized historical narrative through personal documentary making

Ashes and Embers. Haile Gerima, UCLA Film & Television Archive, still.

The L.A. Rebellion: How the '65 Watts Riots helped spark a cinematic revolution [soundcloud, 5 mins]
The California Report, by Steven Cuevas, 9 August 2015

This weekend marks the first anniversary of the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that sparked anger, unrest and lots of questions about policing in communities of color. Those same issues were at play 50 years ago this month in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The story is familiar: a young black man pulled over by police for suspected drunk driving, an argument, a shoving match and within hours a full-blown riot. A few years later, a group of young black filmmakers from UCLA would use Watts as the backdrop and inspiration for a short-lived but influential film movement that came to be known as the "L.A. Rebellion." Its story is chronicled in a forthcoming book and expansive DVD collection. 

More about the L.A. Rebellion:
It functioned as a cross-disciplinary group, filled with undergraduates and graduates from all departments who wanted to learn filmmaking.  They were a collaborative group, crewing on each other’s films, offering critiques on rough cuts, and organized film exhibitions, lectures, and conferences.  Composed of Africans and African Americans, they worked to create a film language to respectfully express cultural particularity and Black thought.  The L.A. Rebellion sought to compel the audience to intervene in the social reality rather than passively accept it.   Bush Mama (1976) and Killer of Sheep (1977) took place in the Watts neighborhood, where people who actually lived there acted in the films.  In this way, L.A. Rebellion’s work created images that were very particular.  Their community-oriented film praxis serves to refute Hollywood convention, and therefore whiteness’ cultural power from being the unseen universal. 

Be Kind, Rewind, dir. Michel Gondry, 2008.
Two bumbling store clerks inadvertently erase the footage from all of the tapes in their video rental store. In order to keep the business running, they re-shoot every film in the store with their own camera, with a budget of zero dollars.

You'll Like This Film Because You're In It: The Be Kind Rewind Protocol, 2008.

Michel Gondry has a utopian vision, and you're a part of it. In short, he sees a future in which communities will come together to create cinema. But here's the thing: it doesn't matter if the finished product is good or bad; it just matters you make it. This is Gondry's manifesto: it lays down the rules so that you and your neighbors can try it for yourself. Don't have a DV camera? Not to worry: you can write to Gondry via his website, and, if he thinks you're serious about following the protocol, he just might lend you one to carry it out.

In a way, he's advocating for the 21st century version of community theater: the process is to be as much fun as the performance, and the performance is to have a finite reach. It is for your friends and neighbors, not for some stranger mindlessly searching for Katy Perry videos on YouTube. To ensure that the protocol is not used as a gateway to Hollywood, Gondry has imposed a time limit on the inception and production of the video. The participants are to execute a series of tasks, each more difficult than the last, which will result in the completion of a short film. To discourage preciousness, Gondry repeatedly insists that "imperfection is your ally"; again, the purpose of the protocol is that you finish it. 

Biblioburro: The Donkey Library, dir. Carlos Rendon Zipagauta, PBS, 2011.
Biblioburro is the story of a librarian and a library. A decade ago, Colombian grade-school teacher Luis Soriano was inspired to spend his weekends bringing a modest collection of precious books, via two hard-working donkeys, to the children of Magdalena Province's poor and violence-ridden interior. As Soriano braves armed bands, drug traffickers, snakes and heat, his library on hooves carries an inspirational message about education and a better future for Colombia.

History Moves (est. 2015 by Jenny Brier, Director of UIC Gender and Women's Studies) is a public history project that presents under-explored aspects of Chicago’s history. We make public history accessible and meaningful to all Chicagoans by collaborating and curating with local organizations and residents to recount how they have changed the city and the course of its history. The mobile museum will move this history around the city, serving as a site for community engagement with ideas about the past and present.

History Moves also engages in cultural partnerships through history making. Our toolkits will impart the skills required to produce and curate public history, with a focus on archival research, oral history, material culture and clear and concise writing. We will also work with area historical institutions such as libraries and archives to expand access to under-displayed historical sources.

Utopian Aesthetics and Ecology

 

Adventure Playgrounds & Nils Norman

Nils Norman's "An Architecture of Play" PDF:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/385153/dc78d536ade81ac0a239217ee19d3593.pdf

Nils Norman's "Pocket's of Disorder" essay:
http://www.cityprojects.org/cityprojects_content.php?id=167&i=11

The PDF above is a survey of London's adventure (or junk) playgrounds, which are autonomous building sites for and run by children. Much of this history comes from children colonizing former bomb sites, which were then developed into officially sanctioned and built-out playgrounds, particularly in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Artist Nils Norman has documented and written about adventure playgrounds as part of his larger project investigating architectures of play and built public space. As part of the project, Norman traces the impact of playgrounds and ad hoc sites of play on early modernist urban planners.

To quote from his text:
"The first official junk playground was opened in 1943 on the outskirts of Copenhagen. (It still operates today). Designed by Sørenson, its original intentions were to create a place where ‘children are themselves the creators’. This ideology, together with notions of ‘Pro-Play’ and later ‘free play’ was crucial to the identity of the adventure playground. Early adventure playgrounds were usually enclosed within a specially designed earth ramp or bushes that helped create a sense of seclusion and safety for the children inside and also to act as a barrier against the mess and noise from outside observers. Dens and huts were put up in spring and then removed in late autumn and the materials used were mostly whatever was available, scavenged or recycled. It was important to Sørenson and his colleagues that children’s play was to take place in nature-like surroundings and nature was imported into the playgrounds offering a lot more than conventional playgrounds, including informal gardening, animal husbandry, water and fire. Wilder areas reminiscent of woods, meadows and the countryside were also part of the design. Early adoptions of the adventure playground model in the United Kingdom and Switzerland (Robinsonspielplätz) began in the 1950s but it wasn’t until the late 60s and early 70s that adventure playgrounds became popular across Europe."

"Literally anything that seemed usable was brought back to the playground as a resource. This form of urban recycling was an important part of the adventure play aesthetic. The aesthetic continues today though the practice has become more regulated. Structures were at first more makeshift and adaptable and gradually the more popular structures have become permanent features, central to the shacks, stages and lean-tos that were tacked on around them. A lot of the structures you see today in more established playgrounds are 3rd or 4th generation versions of the original structure, tuned and tweaked by each successive generation of users. These are usually the most popular structures: ones that enable huge groups of children to interact and play together. The desire to stay off the ground as much as possible is facilitated by platforms, catwalks and walkways connecting various larger structures together. Towers are numerous and come in many shapes, heights and decorative styles. Many playgrounds have structures in them that are half finished or half broken, discarded or vandalised ruin fragments. An important distinction to be made in playground terminology is the contrast between ‘fixed play’ and ‘free play’. ‘Fixed play’ is the antithesis of adventure play and the term is used to describe the ‘inflexible ironmongery’, of unattended immoveable modular metal climbing frames and swings designed by architects, artists or urban planners. The unsupervised fixed play playgrounds are considered to be more dangerous and offer far less choice and complexity of play than adventure playgrounds, but they are much cheaper and far easier to maintain, which makes them a more realistic but unimaginative option for councils and architects when making planning decisions that involve children’s recreation."

Here's a video a lecture where Norman speaks about his research on the heritage of artists working with playgrounds:
https://vimeo.com/21037294

Artist Placement Group (APG)

The APG (Artist Placement Group):
http://en.contextishalfthework.net/#program
http://www.ravenrow.org/texts/40/

The APG was a fascinating late 60's experiment in embedded artist practices and artist run organizations that was initiated and maintained by the British artist couple John Latham and Barbara Steveni. The APG was a London based artist collective that sought to organize, place and embed artists within governmental institutions as well as corporations. The artists they placed retained their autonomy and were not beholden to produce any work as part of their placement, let alone anything resembling institutional/corporate propaganda. The placement provided a first hand, almost ethnographic opportunity for these filmmakers, sculptors and photographers to work without a studio; dropping them directly into the context and site of their research.

To quote from the recent Raven Row exhibition looking at the history of the APG: 
"APG's proposal to organisations was that they forego the idea of patronage by commissioning works of art, and instead consider benefitting from the artists' insights. In turn, APG would enable artists to benefit from a 'real world' context in which to develop new ways of working, or as APG's axiom put it: 'Context is half the work'."

These placements included the National Coal Board, Esso Petroleum Co Ltd, British Airways, the Intensive Care Unit of Clare Hall Hospital, and the London Zoo.

To quote again from the Raven Row exhibition essay: 
"APG's radical premise – what it called the 'open brief' – was that artists would be paid a wage by the host organisation regardless of the material output of their placement. Both the host organisation and the artist were contractually bound to enter the agreement without precondition (except for a general compliance with the organisation's rules, a controversial caveat). Given the unpredictability outcome of the 'open brief', it is unsurprising that so few organisations were willing to take on placements, relative to the large numbers of letters written and meetings organised by Steveni to try to persuade them. As the chronology at the end of this publication makes clear, APG sustained itself for over two decades by engaging directly with the public through exhibitions and symposia, and by developing networks of sympathetic business people, politicians and financial supporters. APG's lack of formal strategy forced it to continuously reinvent itself."

The group similarly morphed the format of the gallery exhibition to suit their needs and their subversively mock-corporate aesthetic. At a rather infamous exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, the APG experimented with a debate-based exhibition format: the main exhibit was a boardroom table entitled The Sculpture, where APG hosted live discussions between artists, industrialists and government representatives.

The group wasn't without it's share of internal conflict. Several of the artists left after initial placements as they felt that the APG's direct action approach to engineering policy was too dominant, too controlling, and no longer about exploring an artistic practice in the expanded field.

From my research, the APG is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment with a large scale exhibition and symposium having taken place in Berlin a few months ago. Their efforts seem pertinent to this class in a variety of ways: collective endeavors into direct political engagement, working in a form somewhere between a mock institution and the real thing, theorizing art's engagement in everyday life, as well as emphasizing context, research and process as artistic means in and of themselves.






A few other, very loosely related things I've been reading:

Jan Verwoert's essay "Exhaustion & Exuberance":
http://www.artsheffield.org/2008/pdfs/exhaustion-exuberance.pdf

Inflatables

http://architizer.com/blog/retrospective-the-incredible-inflatable-architecture-of-the-1960s/


http://www.curbed.com/2016/1/21/10844774/inflatable-architecture-geodesic-dome-design-legacy




Superflex: Supergas project: http://superflex.net/tools/supergas

Micheal Rakowitz:  http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/parasite/

paraSITE
1998-ongoing
Plastic bags, polyethylene tubing, hooks, tape
Different urban sites in New York City, Boston and Cambridge MA, and Baltimore MD
Exhibited at MoMA (2005), MassMOCA (2004), and elsewhere

Custom built inflatable shelters designed for homeless people that attach to the exterior outtake vents of a building’s Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The warm air leaving the building simultaneously inflates and heats the double membrane structure. Built and distributed to over 30 homeless people in Boston and Cambridge, MA and New York City.
 

Collectives

Archigram:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQGrF06uz8


Super Studio:

Supersurface an alternative Model for Life on the Earth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd4SjQB2T 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io2nGHA-ug8

Ant Farm:

Space, Land and Time

 https://vimeo.com/9689255

N55:

walking house  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvxIB83Y0PA 


Superflex: Supergas project: http://superflex.net/tools/supergas


Environmental Communications:

Formed by a group of young architects, photographers, and psychologists in the Venice Beach of the late 1960s, Environmental Communications honed an image practice that constituted a new visual syntax for the late twentieth century city. The group speculated that their "environmental photography" would alter architecture and transform the consciousness of architecture students by way of the ubiquitous architecture slide library. Through their media experiments, events, and slide catalogs, they positioned themselves as interpreters and purveyors of new trends, assembling a lively body of populist and radical design imagery that undermined the canons defined by the prevailing institutions of architectural design. In reproducing the group's photography, booklets, and ephemera, Environmental Communications: Contact High records and critically reflects upon the work of this West Coast media collective.

https://vimeo.com/107737399

Video group Therapy:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlpzFwDquXQ

Image Search of Nomadics, Community, Communications, Industry & Craft, Shelter and Land Use, Understanding Whole Systems & Learning

Art Power by Boris Groys From Image to Image File—and Back: Art in the Age of Digitalization pg 83

http://www.tartumuliseb.net/Art_Power_Boris_Groys.pdf

Siegfried Zielinski & Boris Groys. Thinking Media and the Man-Machine Relation. 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_9NA9ktorU

Ayesha Ramachandran: “The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe”

How does the idea of gobalization use concepts from the past and where is our thinking in flux. With technological changes how does our idea of our place/role in the world change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOFqgqGj95g&feature=em-subs_digest

Intergalactic Travel Gear

The Windship - Sustainable Relief Architecture in the Philippines

Earthship Philippines Windship

NOW THAT I'VE SHARED THIS PROJECT, HERE'S MY ALBUM ABOUT MY EXPERIENCE:

PASTEL FRACTAL - HEXAPLEX CICHOREUM

By earthships|March 27th, 2014

Earthship Biotecture partnered together with the Earth Village and the people of Barrangay Batug to coordinate and build a wind proof structure to use as a prototype for rebuilding in the Philippines. This 10-day hit was the first of several phases of rebuilding the affected areas of the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan.
The design, known as the “Windship,” has been modeled off of the Simple Survival Earthship model in order to create a wind resistant and resiliant structure that is simplified.   The idea is to simplify the structure so that it can be recreated locally with materials found in the nearby areas. Bottles, tires, cardboard, coconut lumber, bamboo and many other materials were donated and gathered by local villagers, organizations and schools.

Cardboard insulation used for the roof – 5” to create R-Value of 15:

This first recon/build took two 1U Simple Survival models, faced them to each other and spanned concrete ribs across the two vaults for weather protection and structural support. Bamboo and corrugated plastic connected and covered the middle “avenue” between the building to allow for sunlight and protect against heavy rains and mild winds.

With our small crew, 40 international volunteers and 30 national/local volunteers we were able to train and complete the exterior structure and build what Michael Reynolds refers to as a “fortress”. This building will function as part of Brgy. Batug’s elementary school (which suffered heavy damage from the typhoon) as well as an evacuation shelter. This building will also serve to take care of basic human needs using the Earthship principles in its design.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

The national/local volunteers worked on-site throughout the project, learning about the functionalities and technologies of Earthship through presentations, classes and Q&A given by our crew – namely Michael Reynolds, our foremen Phil Basehart and Rory Morlan. At the end of the build, the local volunteers (with the help of several translators) were able to present everything they learned step-by-step from each day of the project. Here, we were able to answer questions and better explain the “why’s” of the everyday tasks they worked on. The knowledge transfer aspect of this project may have been the most successful that the Earthship crew has experienced. Each project we do, we learn more about what it takes for the local participants to absorb the Earthship concepts in a way that encourages them to incorporate them into creating sustainable, providing and resilient structures for themselves.

Children in the local elementary school were able to see the construction of the project each day as the school had just reopened from the Typhoon in November. They were given classes by members of Earthship, Earth Village and non-profit One Block for Batug’s founder, Andrea Roa. Here they learned about recycling and creating resources from what is deemed as garbage. They took part in a bottle laying ceremony where they wrote letter to their future selves and put them into glass bottles. They then laid them into the Windship’s bottle wall to participate in the concept of building a wall from a piece of “garbage”.

 

Just in case you need some typical earthship visual references:

Getting Intimate with the Ground - Prayer Rugs

Thinking through the role of an intimate space - a prayer rug - inside a public holy places:  mosque,  temple, yoga class or meditation hall, in search for answers to questions on the dividing lines between private and public,  mundane and sacred, past and future, women and men, and about the survival of the old craft

The ornamental composition of rugs and carpets is repeated time and again with few modifications over time, many of the figures and symbols have lost their original meaning and have survived merely as decorative components.

Prayer rugs are used by Muslims primarily to cover the bare ground or floor when they pray.They are often decorated with religious symbols that serve the worshiper as visual aids for memory

What will be relevant for us as such symbols? What do we need and want from the relationship between our bodies, our land and our society?

 Maka 2012

Modern methods to preserve culture

Preserving culture:

Folk art, languages and traditional crafts over the years have been a manifestation of the culture that has evolved along with the evolution of civilization.

Although modernization and the digital revolution of recent years has created great revolutions some of these ancient and traditional crafts are either threatened or on the verge of extinction.

I want to investigate how can modern methods of graphic design that help in preserving or reviving these traditional crafts.

This is in sync with the DIY ideology that developed during the 60's and 70's about giving importance to traditional arts and crafts.
There is a certain philosophy and literature that is associated with every folk art and as the art or craft dies so does the thought behind it which can give us ideas that lay the foundations of an alternative life.

Some of the examples cited in that direction are as follows:

TYPECRAFT PROJECT:

The Typecraft Project is a self-initiated project with the goal to create 29 display typefaces from 29 crafts, one from each state in India. Each typeface is specific to a region, material and craft. So far we have created the letter-forms from Chittara (made from clay paste on handmade rice paper) and Madhubani art from Karnataka and Bihar respectively. The project’s goal is to raise awareness of the richness of our crafts and heritage by highlighting how it can be used in a contemporary manner. By targeting marginalized artisans and crafts, we hope to, through the sales of typefaces, give the artisan a sustained income.

Uptool: a maintenance lab

Aaron Walker and I have been working on a program called Uptool, that is very much in line with the Whole earth Vision.  We hope we will host a few of the classes inside the greenhouse, which is a place for ideas and projects to percolate and grow.

Please join us tomorrow evening for our first event in the greenhouse!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16

JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000

A SCREENING OF SELECTED SHORTS AND THE 1977 SWISS FEATURE

FROM 6-8 PM