My new video installation, Mountain, will be showing next week at Kristi Engle Gallery in Highland Park in Part 5 of her show TBD: A Group Video Exhibition in 7 Parts. Mountain is my attempt to build a mountain using methods inspired by image mapping in 3d modelling sofware and Google Earth’s terrain view – composited video landscapes are projected onto a faceted form, stretching the image out as it follows the shapes of the form. The video is in some places abstracted, distorted and pixelated, and in other places a clear representation of landscape.
The show will be open from the 23rd to the 29th (noon-6pm each day), with a reception on the 29th from 7-10pm. See here for a map.
For the past few months I have been learning how to say “I have to tell you something, but I don’t know how,” in several languages as an ongoing performance/video/installation project. This endeavor is proving to be both challenging and rewarding. I think there is inherent failure in it, but I recite the sentences in my head frequently to keep what I’ve learned, and will take Erika’s suggestion to make an MP3 of all my instructors/collaborators saying the sentence so that I can listen to the correct pronunciations and intonations on a loop while driving. I can now say this sentence in Japanese, German, Thai, Armenian, Korean, and Spanish – although with a slight American accent. I also learned Farsi and Hebrew, but have yet to memorize them. So far even with two years of Hebrew School under my belt (although 26 years ago) that was the hardest, and perhaps a bit disappointing to realize how little I retained from Hebrew School. Or perhaps just that originally learning Hebrew with a NY accent made perfecting the Isreali accent much more difficult than I anticipated. Gil was a patient, yet serious teacher, working with me to get the sounds right, but after over an hour (and a change of videotape) we resigned to the fact that certain sounds cannot be made by everyone. Video stills from each lesson with be added as the project continues… email me if you have a language to teach and want to participate.
video still from Japanese lesson with Takeshi Kobayashi
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video still from German lesson with Rashad Navidi
video still from Thai lesson with Hataya Tubtim
video still from Armenian lesson with Maria Khachatryan
video still from Korean Lesson with John Kim
video still from Farsi lesson with Solange Petrosspour
video still from Spanish Lesson with Erika E. Reynoso
video still from Hebrew Lesson with Gil Barel
As part of the “History of Somerville, 2010-2100” project, we’ve put together a version of the future based on people’s ideas we collected from Feb. 2009 to Dec. 2010. (This is the final version of the project. New predictions include Somerville merging with Cambridge, Charlestown and parts of Medford to form “Peninsular City” in 2050; Whitey Bulger’s ghost saving Somerville from gentrification and artists; and a Class 4 hurricane named Igor striking town in 2045.)
All of this information about the future is available on our website as a timeline and as a free PDF book.
And… Coming soon:
-a printed version of the book!
-a book reading at the Somerville Public Library!
-an art show at the Nave Gallery!
-Future-aoke!
…stay tuned…
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“The history of Somerville, 2010-2100” is a community art project that explores what the future might be like. It is organized by Tim Devin, and was sponsored in part by the Somerville Arts Council.