Shouting

A recent visitor to the Resonance exhibit decided to use his or her own fat sharpie to respond to the sentence prompts on the walls. I wasn't there, but I saw the results today. It looks terrible. It looks like shouting. If I were a letterer in a comic book, this is how I would indicate a person who couldn't control the volume.

If these panels are metaphors for a public discussion about the arts, is this an indication of what can happen in a real discussion? Someone shouts? Someone, intentionally or not, makes his or her ideas louder than others? Should I simply let this go, because, hey, "This is what a discussion in real life might sound like?"Perhaps I should even feel a little bit of pride that the exhibit managed to recreate that aspect of real-life.

Or am I the director of a show? There is a significant element of performance to this show. Angela and I have talked about this. Are we not directing this space and the performance inside? Is the show called Cacophony, or is it called Resonance? Don't I have the authority to administer the hook or kill the lights if the plan begins to come apart?

I'm not asking for comments on this one readers. For me it comes down to intention. If this person intentionally wrote responses to be louder than everyone else's, than I will simply continue to wish upon them--for the next few days in which I purge this frustration--a short-lived mild flu or temporary skin rash. Petty, yes, I know. But man, that marker really hurts the aesthetic of the panels, and the world doesn't exactly need more blowhards these days. If this person made a mistake--people have been making all sorts of funny aesthetic missteps in this exhibit--I'll simply smile and hope that people still feel like buying a few of these panels anyway.

Of course, there's no reason why someone who buys a panel can't simply remove this response and replace it with another.

And, I'm also reminded of another saying that goes something like this: the arguing and the hand-writing is never so intense as when the stakes are so low.

As obnoxious as it is, I think the ugly marker stays up.

A Nice Feeling of Satisfaction

The show I'm working on with Angela Colasanti, Resonance, opened last night and it was a blast. I wrote detailed reactions over at the Resonance Artworks blog.

It's been a while since I've had writing out in the public sphere. It feels good. I had fun at the opening, and it seems as though visitors did too.


Perhaps more importantly, we achieved one of the goals of the show--to make art out of a public conversation about the arts.

Angela is the best partner a writer could ask for. She made this project great. I can't thank her enough for taking me on this ride that began in May.

Thanks to everyone who contributed last night. If you still want to interact with this exhibit--or if you just want see this for yourself--the gallery is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. There's more information at studiobbb.org

Next stop: The Closing Reception on the 9th. Doors open at 5PM. Doors close late.

Just Six Days to the Opening of Resonance

With the exhibit less than a week away, I feel that it's time for another update.

The panels are almost complete and the marketing is done. If you receive a postcard, note that reception is listed as ending at 9PM. It won't. I think we might be there fairly late.

Here is a photo of me sanding a panel last week. And, yes, that's a decades-old Arts Expo t-shirt courtesy of Mark Stupak's artistically inclined hands. I'm dressed a little more professionally here in this television interview on BCTV.

The interview was a great way to talk about the exhibit and the arts in the public sphere. I owe thanks to Nick Lawrence and BCTV for providing us with this opportunity. The guests included Jane Stahl (representing Studio B), Jenny Hershour (representing Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania), and my partner on this project, Angela Colasanti.

We're really happy to have the support of Citizens for the Arts in PA. Programs like the Governor's Schools for the Arts might not return, but Hershour's organization works to support many other great arts initiatives in the public sphere.

The show opens Friday, August 26th at 5PM in Boyertown, Pennsylvania.

The gallery is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays (other days by appointment). For more information about the exhibit, the gallery, gallery hours, and directions visit Studio B at studiobbb.org.

An Entry About the Sponsors of Resonance: Speaking for the Arts

The past three weeks have vanished in a storm of preparation for the exhibit. There was the interview on BCTV, purchasing the last of the materials, putting the finishing touches on all of the written material, and securing our sponsors. This post is about those sponsor organizations that have allowed me to do this great big exhibit with Angela.

Our sponsors are all locally owned businesses that reflect the values that Angela and I hope to celebrate with this exhibit. I'm talking abut the values of civic engagement, generosity, and communication.

For example, Citadel is a credit union—as a customer with as little as five dollars in a savings account, you are a member of this financial institution, and you have a say in important decisions. Can a financial institution reflect democracy? It can if it’s a credit union. citadelbanking.com

E.G. Landis Jewelers has been a part of our area’s economy for sixty years, and their financial support was generous and helpful. eglandisjewelers.com

Everything Postal and Printing supported us by printing a few critical banners and posters. everythingpostal.com

Penn Valley Construction provided us with a donation, and they have provided the region with highly respected masonry work for over thirty years. They can be reached at 610-896-7910.

A.D. Moyer Lumber, a pillar of a community business for decades, donated some critical materials for our panels. And, I recently learned from a trusted source that their Gilbertsville location helped out a neighbor who was building a wheelchair ramp. admoyer.com

And of course, the marvelous Studio B donated their space so that the entire region could express their feelings about art in their lives. studiobbb.org

The Manatawny Creek Winery is even helping us! Every community needs to relax now and then, no? manatawnycreekwinery.com

I guess what I'm trying to do here, is to say the following:

Making art is a tough business, and supporting it doesn’t make you any money. These organizations were generous, but they can’t afford to be Santa Claus all the time. Please take the time to consider using one of these great organizations for one of your future endeavors.

Dave Kessler

Huzzah, my friend Dave is working on a documentary and he's asked me to do some writing!

I don't want to jinx it by writing too much about the documentary or my part in it just yet, but here's a link to a page Dave created.

This documentary will be a collaborative effort, but Dave's vision is guiding all of us--I'm thrilled!

Ed Sabol

I think this is going to be a new section to the blog. The "lost entry" section can be amusing, but it doesn't cover those situations when I simply take two, three or four weeks to write about something that I've been meaning to write about. I think I'll call it "Running Late."

Innovative filmmaker, Ed Sabol was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on August 6th.

Coming from a large extended family of football fans, I grew up watching football frequently. It wasn't every Sunday and Monday, but it was close. And, as cable television expanded in the 1970s and 80s into the suburbs around Philadelphia, the number of channels on which I could watch sports highlights also expanded. Not that I was a big sports fan. I didn't have the discipline, size, or stamina to play. I also lacked the ability to stay focused--an important skill to have if one is going to be a serious fan.

What I did have was a set of working eyeballs, a pulse, and a brain susceptible to the cinematic rhetoric of Ed Sabol.

Sabol's ability to put together to moving images from critical angles, in slow motion and accompanied with a score designed to inspire feelings of heroism, competition, and struggle, made my heart race.

Here's an NFL Films look at the Dallas-Philadelphia rivalry. And, here's an NFL Films look at Philadelphia fans. I love it when Peter Nero, conductor of the orchestra, talks about a concert-goer wearing an earpiece so he can hear the game score as he listens to the orchestra on a Sunday afternoon. Of course, there's also this quote from Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Philadelphia Fans love football in a really dark and disturbing way. . ."

NFL Films apparently also knows how to do research.

Newsworks.org, the new WHYY news initiative here in Philadelphia, has this list of best NFL Films.

A Good Short Story for the Summer

CutBank, a cool literary magazine out of Missoula, Montana, just published its 75th issue. I recommend my friend Anne Ray's story, "Novio, Novia." You can buy issue 75 for ten dollars. It will be delivered to your residence. I make the additional claim that you will enjoy it.

Ray's story about a college girl trapped in a crappy summer job at the intersection of multiple cultures is funny, engrossing, and at times even a little anxiety-inducing. And, it's perfect reading for this hot summer we've been having. I love it. The craft is elegant but not distracting--it's as though you're immersed in a clear stream of narrative. In fact, when I picked it up off my nightstand this morning, it sucked me in so quickly and so thoroughly that I forgot to make my usual morning pot of coffee. Ray's story won CutBank's Montana Prize in Fiction.

You can buy it here through submishmash: http://cutbank.submishmash.com/submit/6242/account

Silent New York

On July 30th, I had the fortune of being in a strange and wonderful theatrical experiment, Silent New York. Playwright Matthew Freeman invited me to be in the show only a few days earlier, but he assured me there were no lines to learn, no blocking to learn—my part in this production was to simply be onstage as myself. When I received the complete “script” from Freeman, I saw what he meant.

In fact, “no lines to learn" was basically a commandment. There was to be no speaking, and it applied to hand gestures, facial expressions, taps, etc. My job as a participant was to be onstage for approximately ten minutes, and in that ten minutes I could stand, kneel, dance, sit, huddle under the desk onstage: whatever I wanted to do, so long as I didn't speak. I could stand and stare at a member of the audience, and if giggling or squirming developed in either me or the audience member, so be it. But, the point of my presence on stage was to simply be present. Yes, in a way I was “in dialog” with the audience, but at a level more primitive than speaking, even in Freeman’s broad interpretation.

The “script” went on to indicate that I was one of six people in the show: in addition to an announcer, there would be five other people that Freeman knew. Each of us would be announced, walk onstage, be present in that stage space for ten minutes, be thanked by the announcer, and then we would exit the stage. Our direction was to simply be ourselves in that space. I entertained the notion of getting some work done on my blackberry, but that was forbidden too. My job was to be on stage and be stared at by an audience.

I told you it was strange. But, it was also wonderful. When it was my turn on stage, I did a few different things, but I settled into one pose that felt very natural: standing with my big gut stretching my shirt out (I’ve been eating too much junk food this summer) and my hands resting on top of my gut, just below my heart. I stared at the back row of the theater, but I couldn’t ascertain faces. In the days leading up to the show, I had thought about doing many different things, but this was not one of them. However, after a few minutes on stage, it was just what overcame me. It felt right. What the audience was thinking, I didn’t know. I was just trying to find some comfortable space in which to be myself. When I did, I was happy.

As Freeman admitted in the script, Silent New York was more of an experiment. It was based on, and I’m paraphrasing here, the hypothesis that people in and of themselves—devoid of performance, entertainment value, gadgets, skill, eloquence--are worthy of appreciation. Not study, not examination--appreciation. The audience, asked to look at an individual sitting in a chair, or staring at the lights, standing in a corner, or sipping water, will at some point in that ten minutes—if only for a moment--consider that out there, on stage, is a real person. There’s a wonderful compassion, even love, in this simple experiment.

I had a friend tell me once, that he was concerned for the future of the students he was teaching. He basically said that many of them, not all, seemed to regard everyone around them as starring in a video that was either entertaining them (or not). What I love about Silent New York is that it responds, and to some degree rejects, the idea that everyone around us is only one event away from starring in a youtube video.

Yes, for a long, long time, audiences have been asked to recognize the inherent humanity in others, to appreciate their fellow humans, but Silent New York makes it a kind of strange exercise. I use the word exercise carefully here. I bet it was difficult for some to sit there and stare at someone not doing anything intentionally interesting for ten minutes, for ten minutes at someone simply being. It would be difficult for me to concentrate. But, I also think it must have been fascinating and weird. And that’s a good thing. We have, as a culture, travelled so far down into this cave where we see other humans as mere entertainment, it will be work to climb that distance back to the opening where humans are complex and special.

Full disclosure, Matthew Freeman is a friend of mine. I would have participated in this project for anyone who asked, and I would have seen the value in this project regardless of who organized it; I think I just came to these to actions more quickly for my friend.

If you attended Silent New York, please share your thoughts. If you were an audience member, what were some of the thoughts you had throughout the evening? If you were on stage, what was it like for you?

Privacy and Hotel Guest Lists

I can't afford a nice long vacation this summer, so a few short get-aways have become the substitute--and the conclusion of one get-away lodged itself in my conscience. I hope this post can help me work through it.

As I was checking out of my hotel, standing at the front desk signing paperwork, I overheard a local police officer ask the manager for a list of all the guests staying in the hotel for the upcoming week. The manager politely told the officer that she couldn't do that. The officer kept asking. The manager kept politely refusing. Once I signed the bill and sealed the maid's tip in an envelope, I felt like I should go.

This is why I'm writing this post. I felt like I should have said something, but I had little authority in this situation. As someone fascinated with privacy in our society (how we imagine it, define it, use it, abuse it, trade it, etc.) I wanted to offer my opinion. But what exactly was my opinion? My gut told me to tell the manager to stand her ground--that those guests had entered into a private business transaction with her hotel, and she had an obligation to those customers to protect their privacy. From another perspective, the hotel is in control of the names in its registry; is it much different from an old-fashioned registry on a counter? Perhaps it has the right to decide what it does with those names. Furthermore, if there truly is a security issue, perhaps the hotel has an obligation to the community to assist the police? But what evidence did the office have to show that the public safety or security was at risk and that this action was critical to protecting that? Then again, if there is a crime being investigated, perhaps the police can simply get a warrant for this information? Again, though, my interest in privacy is that of the amateur academic.

In the book Understanding Privacy, author Daniel Solove argues that privacy should not be conceptualized as the "individual" versus the "collective." He argues that privacy exists precisely because the collective recognizes the benefits and importance of privacy. Solove uses that point to argue that, therefore, we should conceptualize privacy differently: as a set of "protections against a plurality of distinct but related problems...information collection...information processing...information dissemination...invasion." Solove argues that this is a rhetorical shift away from trying to come to a common definition of privacy, with an agreed upon boundary, into which an issue must distinctly fall inside or outside. Instead, we are now free to talk about problems. And, yes, we still get to discuss whether a specific situation in the real world would be a privacy problem or not, but as Solove claims, this allows us to focus on what makes something a problem: harms (who or what was harmed? in what ways? to what degree? etc.)

For me, what I appreciate most from Solove's book is that in its closing pages he shows that this conceptualization of privacy is good for addressing systemic harms. He shows that, to a fault, U.S. law asks individuals to provide concrete evidence of injury regarding privacy issues. He suggests that that procedure allows too many important privacy problems to be ignored on the basis of receipts of payments made to a therapist (or lack thereof). Conversely, his conceptualization of privacy allows the courts (and legislatures) to consider how ways of life, behaviors, systems of interaction at the individual, group, and societal level are harmed in ways that are subtle, yet critically relevant and important.

In my gut, what I overheard at that hotel makes me conflicted. It seems that the cops were trying to catch criminals. That's good. As for me? I was checking out; I can't show injury. That's good, too. And, the upcoming guests of that hotel--if their names or other information were turned over to that officer were they all going to be rounded up and interrogated? No. So, can they show injury? But, and this is where Solove comes in, would something have been harmed if the hotel turned over all of those names? In my opinion, yes. The trust we place in a business transaction, the upfront way in which we fight crime, the balance we, as citizens, seem to feel between the ideas of "the long arm of the law" and our "that's-none-of-your-business" attitude--all of those realities become, to a degree, harmed by an act like this.

The other irony here, is perhaps too obvious. If the officer and the manager had only spoken privately. . .

There's humor in that, no?