The Influence of Film?

Robert Greenwald's Uncovered

Fred Wiseman's Titicut Follies











*Greenwald-the argument is the priority

-structure is not artistically modivated
-talking heads
-stock footage

*Wiseman-artistic style is the priority
-direct cinema conventions
-reality fictions
-artistic renderings of the actual

Promotion
Greenwald website
Wiseman wesite

More Hope for Cinematic Influence

"movies have the power to inspire. you have the power to act."

The Orgins of The Evil Red

Throughout history the color red has been associated with power and passion. In ancient Rome the color red was reserved for the Emporer alone. Early medieval depictions of angels and the virgin Mary's hair were almost exclusively painted in red.



In the early 1500s the leaders of Christianity discovered that the Germanic tribes depicted their God Thor with red hair. All things red were considered to be descended from Thor.




























Christianity wanted to discredit this pagan idol, so Mary's hair became blonde, and all things demonic were rendered in red, the most famous being the devil.

Final Projectamundo

I was walking to work about a month and a half ago when I realized that I always walked the same route. I looked up every street to the right of my path and realized I had only been down about half of them. I decided to walk up a random street and cut over to my normal path further up. It was a strange experience because to be on a street in my neighborhood of three years that I never new existed. After a while I was taking all these different random paths to work, to the bars, to the train, to wherever I was going. My final project was inspired by this incident and the Luis Borges short story, Garden of Forking Paths. What I'm attempting to do is start a novella at Rittenhouse Square that will begin in a different way depending on which of the four streets you travel from. Each of the four story lines will continue to the next intersection; at which point each of the four story lines will again branch off. The story will weave its way throughout the entire city in this manner. So, if you were leaving Rittenhouse square taking Market St. to Samson St., the same story would have a completely different set of events than if, say, you walked down Locust St. to Panama St. The nature of the street will also affect the nature of the story; so, if the street is swanky, and has a number of fancy shops, the story will reflect that. Also, if you were to go to an intersection, walk around the block to get to the next intersection, or straight on to the next intersection, you would still logically arrive at the same conclusion; that is to say, no matter how you reach an intersection the story will always have that same conclusion, although the events that lead to it will be different. Because of the time limits attached to this project, I can’t branch off at every intersection—it would probably take years. For this assignment I will go straight down four different paths, never branching, but arriving at four different conclusions. On one path, I will take the story around the block and to the next intersection to explain that. The Project will be entitled The Philadelphia Street Novel, the story will be entitled, The Nefarious History of Baron Von Krackenfelts, and His Talented Son. I hope this may help people to explore different routes. As far as the technical aspects, the structure of the project, I was thinking about cell phone activated applications, but I feel that this will only reach a limited number people, it would also exclude those who did not have the technology. What I’ve decided on is setting up boxes that explain the project hold the sheet of paper that corresponds with that site on that path. Ideally, if I ever got a grant to do this project I would set up boxes that were similar to newspaper machines only smaller. These would contain the page for that site. The participant, or reader, would pay like 10 cents for each page to help with the cost of paper/ink. Here’s a rough diagram of what this project might look like.

FOOD WASTE IN PHILLY

My international team, team iota, focused on food as our subject. My particular interest with food was in regards to the amount of food waste there is in America. A few of my friends who grew up abroad found the amount of food waste in America to be appalling. i, personllaly, never really thought about how much Americans waste food, and how much waste is generated by food--particularlly fast foods. I don't wish to try and stamp any kind of moral opinion on the subject of "food waste," I will say that a friend of mine from Morocco yelled at a group of us who were using food as projectiles. He said that in his country wasting bread is considered blasphemous, bread being the staple of the moroccan diet. He was barbarously pelted with all kinds of edibles for his intrusion.

This week our class went to the Eastern State Prison to take the audio tour of the grounds and experience the Janet Cardith installation. This space, i.e. Eastern State, made a great impression on me for reasons I can't quite explain. Many of my fellow students attepted to verbalize their experience in this ominous space, which I think is natural; when we are in such an alien space, with such a rich history our first reaction as thinking, feeling human beings is to try to translate, verbally, what we felt. The experience, for me, was a bit too strange to to speak of; it was so alien, yet so familiar. There was something about this tour that made me very uncomfortable
and unwilling to discuss. Here are some pictures.

REALITY SEPTA

This is a letter, a completely fictional letter,
that I composed and left on a seat on the R6 train.
In doing this i was attempting to play with the boundaries
between fiction and reality--a subject that is very
interesteing to me ever since I heard about Orson Well's
radio broadcast "War of the Worlds." This particular project
is not as shocking as Orson Well's program, nor is it designed
frighten. This project is meant to play on melodrama--much
like the ridiculous reality shows that are on television.
Leaving this fake letter on a train for people to
read will, I hope, trigger the emotional
sensabilities of at least one traveler. It is meant
to portray an actual account of a woman who is
suffering from a fatal disease and has thus been
jiltted by a man who she loves and who she thought
loved her. I'm not interested in any kind of
statement about love or death, merely the manipulation
of emotions--and I feel like the construction of this
story lends itself adaquately to such ends. There is just
enough expositionto allow the reader to get a sense
of the situation, and there is enough left out to let
the reader imagine for his/her self the extranious
background info and the outcome of our dying hero.

FAT PEOPLE DON'T GO
TO HEAVEN

When I was four my grandmother yelled at me for taking tastycakes from the cupboard before diner. This is how I remember the conversation going:

GRAND MOTHER

Put those cakes down, it's almost dinner time, dear.

BABY KEV

Gram, what the Christ, I just want a fuckin Kandycake over here.

GRAND MOTHER

If you eat before diner you'll get fat.

BABY KEV
(sulking)

So the shit what?

GRANDMOTHER
(with a caring tone)

If you get fat you won't be able to go to heaven.

BABY KEV
(becoming intrigued)

Really, wait...why???

GRANDMOTHER

Because, Kevin, heaven is like a party, and you only want nice attractive people at your party, right, sweetie. If you are at a party with a bunch of fat people, is it really heaven? (Smiles tenderly) Of course it's not.

BABY KEV

Oh, right on, that makes sense.

My grandmother died at the age of 76--she was very thin.

When you look at the portrail of woman and (to a lesser extent) men in the media today I can see that my grandmother really knew what she was talking about. The ideal image of a female body is so warped that 100 pound women no longer have a place amongst those who could be called "thin." Women today spend all there time and energy combating "love handles" "canckles" and the dreaded "fupa." The chubby girl is definitely amongst the sorry ranks of those who Krzysztof Wodiczko would label the "strangers."

Look at Raphael's portrait of the Virgin Mary, depicted on the left. Such a painting would typify female beauty in the 15th Century.
Compare her now with the contemporary image of womanly beauty displayed on the right. There is no question which of these women would be featured in Playboy or Maxim. The Virgin Mary, had she been put on this Earth today would endure countless reproaches regarding the plumpness of her featurs, at the sorority house the sisters would cover her sacred body with the black lines of markers indicating the fatty regions of her body.

To pull these obese citizens out of their chocolate covered, often times peanutbutter filled, hell, I propose a fashion line designed to excentuate the many aspects of a plump physique. I call it Full Figure Fashion"--I'll work on the title. Shirts with the entire belly cut out to exhibit the beauty of that fleshy sack that is so often tucked away beneath baggy sweatshirts and moo moos would be available for the over-weight. Studs for piercing the saggy underchin fat will also be among the height of FFF. I thought that a line of nuget-scented purfume might also be a good way to celebrate the tastes and desires of the over-weight.

The point is that people who don't fit the current body image need to stop accepting what the media defines as beautiful and make a stand. Stick behind your body. Make it fashionable to be fat. Being that I'm skinny I may not be the guy to design your clothes, so design your own, just don't design your line of clothing to hide your body, design it to display your body with pride.

Here are the pics from tonight. Again this was placed on Main St. Manayunk at The U.S. Hotel Bar & Grill.

Below are some pictures of the work for this week's assignment. I wanted to make the sculpture about three times bigger than what it turned out--there were problems with that scale though. I will be posting pictures from the placement of the finished product later this evening. The product, "Eat Meat," will be placed in front of the U.S. Hotel from 5:30 to 6:30.