People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Man created time. Time is a fiction. Do you understand? Man created time measurements so…so he could know what time it was. There is nothing out there that says that time actually exists as a universal truth. A human being is part of the whole, called by us a universe–a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. There is no time. No–there is time. It’s eleven o’clock. There is time. It’s just…a fiction.
Took a road trip with some UD folks this past weekend up to Maine to shoot some footy for production of our Documenting Mythologies piece. Got very little sleep and ate some really salty lobster, but it was a good time. We ended our trip at the Harvard Film Archive to present an iteration of the piece to about 40 people on a Sunday afternoon. The archive is evidently the only building by Le Corbusier in the U.S., but that still wasn’t enough to impress me. Still not really a fan of Boston.
Finally got a mini-Red Team reunion on a couple of weeks ago, and made some t-shirts. We need to put some work in on making some new screens though, these are all a couple of years old at this point. Still, the “I Red Team NY” is a classic.
I picked up Scott McCloud’sUnderstanding Comics from Desert Island a few weeks ago on the advice of HOVA, who told me that the book is considered one of the seminal texts of game design. I was especially interested in McCloud’s deconstruction of “the gutter,” the space that exists between panels, and it’s relation to closure, the phenomenon by which people take parts of information to construct a whole. The ideas are ones that are interesting to think about in the context of film, with film cuts serving as an analogue to the gutter. But the text also reminded me of the brilliant video for the Madvillainy song “All Caps” directed by James Reitano. In the video, Reitano makes playful use of the assumed constraints of comic panels in some sequences, whilst simultaneously paying homage to the art of Jack Kirby, one of the most influential comic book artists of all time. Plus Madlib and Doom murdah dem on the track. Dig.
Haven’t watched this video since circa double-ought and I’m only somewhat embarrassed to admit that I just realized that the concept is Kweli/Mos/Hi Tek driving a dollar van. A Black Star dollar van. Got damn hip hop makes so much more sense in NYC. Still a banger.
Josh asked for a friend’s help to shoot.
Josh asked for a friend to provide a condom.
Josh asked for a film lab that would process the film for him.
(the lab tends to ruin his films)
Josh wraps the microphone in the condom, tells his friend to start shooting, and tries to swallow what he’s made.
Last week I started production on a documentary piece that I’m hoping will somehow capture the relationship that restaurant workers have with Fifth Avenue, in particular their feelings on the bike lane that stretches from Flatbush to 23rd Street. There’s a strange sort of unspoken competitiveness among NYC bikers that seems to span the range of bicyclist demos. I’ve gotten dropped by dudes who are probably coming off a 10-hour restaurant shift and repping mart bikes with shitty, fat mountain bike tires, who cast a pitying glance over their shoulder as they burn me. It probably sounds silly to someone who doesn’t ride, but that sort of competitiveness is simply driven by pride. There exists something in this world that makes a rider want to prove to a complete stranger that he can dial it up and navigate the dangers of the NYC public street better than said stranger.
The thing that interests me the most about the topic of this piece is the public policy discussion regarding bicycling infrastructure. The most obvious rationale for the absence of restaurant workers from this dialogue is that bike infrastructure advocacy is the sort of “activism” that is normally entirely relegated to the bourgeois class, and for good reason. When you are struggling to stay in your apartment and feed your family, taking time out of your day to lobby public officials for the construction of a bike lane is a luxury that seems laughable. But I really want to try to figure out the relationship that restaurant workers have with their bicycles, with the public street, with pedestrians, with car drivers and with other bicyclists. I equate my bicycle with mobility, freedom and joy. How do they perceive theirs?
In attempting to produce the piece, I’ve felt especially self-conscious about my inability to speak Spanish, and am concerned about fostering an appropriate dynamic with any potential subjects. The seeds of gentrification have already been planted in Sunset Park, and I’m worried about coming across as paternalistic or condescending. Actually, just finding any subjects willing to speak with me has already proved pretty difficult. The language barrier is certainly a problem, but I have a feeling that a lot of restaurant workers in the area might be undocumented, and reasonably wouldn’t feel comfortable answering a lot of questions about their jobs on tape.
In trying to figure out the form of my piece, I was strongly influenced by a piece of audio work done by one of my UnionDocs mentors, Kara Oehler. Her sound portrait was a documentation of the experience of migrants who risked their lives and imprisonment to cross the border from Mexico to the U.S., tied together I was also greatly influenced by an amazing piece done by filmmakers Kevin T. Allen and Jen Heuson, in which they documented the stories of members of an undocumented farm workers collective in Florida. In cribbing their approach, I hope to do most of the interviews on audio, and then pair the narrative that emerges with footage from 5th Avenue shot over the course of a day and night. I’ve only made a few forays to Sunset Park to do some lighting tests and audio gathering, but have already been seduced by the charms of the neighborhood. The storefronts decorated with extravagant quinceanera dresses, the street food vendors, the 24 hour bakeries-cum-diners, the produce stand at 50th Avenue that’s open 24 hours, the Bronco Tacos truck. Sunset Park today is emblematic of the sort of immigrant enclave that makes New York a beautiful place to live. I love it.
