Early Autumn Report from the Cottage
Saturday, September 26th, 2009Dear Fans,
It is a rainy Saturday night here in Edinboro, PA. That’s right. Edinboro. Population 6,500. Edinboro is a short drive from Erie, PA and a longer drive to Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo, all cities where I have friends. I accepted a one-year teaching position at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, temporarily stepping out of the art and activist communities that I was involved with in Portland, OR.
Good things: I found a beautiful country cottage to rent for the year (see image), I live just a few miles away from the Springs Rod & Gun Club, and I hope to begin another cycle of the Experiments in Immediacy performance-video-mail series that I created in 2005 – 2006. Also, country cottages are well suited for long periods of reflection, rumination, and writing, activities that have been occupying my time when I have not been teaching interesting courses like, “Cinema & Identity” and “Experimental Film & Video Art.”
Soon, Brett Kashmere, editor of INCITE!, Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics, will be publishing my first ever manifesto, furiously typed here in the cottage over the course of several days. It is called “Relational Filmmaking: A Manifesto.” While it felt odd to write something that had such conviction, ultimately it was useful to sort out what it is that guides my filmmaking practice and to put it into a tight piece of writing.
Currently, my main project is an essay for the forthcoming AK Press book, Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, edited by the militant research collective, Team Colors. My contribution is an essay about radical and interventionist art practices and strategies. The rest of the book is about other social movement strategies and theories in the US right now. It will be released at the US Social Forum in June 2010 and it’s sure to be a hit here in the USA and elsewhere.
Exciting: I have conducted or lined up interviews with folks like Natalie Jereminjenko, Mike Bonnano of the Yes Men, Paige Sarlin of 16 Beaver Group, Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble, Rich Pell of the Institute for Applied Autonomy, Rosten Woo (formerly) of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and more. My plan is to map out what seems to be going on among artists, engineers, activists and others whose work hovers around, sits squarely in, or straddles the boundary between art and something else. What do we mean by “radical art?” What is an intervention nowadays? What are the relationships between radical art practice and current organizing strategies? This is no small task, and it is one I am taking seriously while also delighting in the opportunity to think and write about work that I find so inspiring.
Next weekend I will be in New York City to grab some of these interviews and to check out a few screenings of Views from the Avant Garde, the experimental film section of the annual New York Film Festival. I am looking forward to catching up with those cats in the Big Apple.
So dear fans, expect more communiques from the cottage. Perhaps I will actually get into blogging this year. It has not suited me in the past but maybe that was due to my go-go-go lifestyle in the lively city of Portland.
With much affection I remain,
Julie
