let’s get awesome

There’s so much to write about. Traveling to the midwest. Visiting the Miss Rockaway Armada. Playing a square dance upstate with folks from the Germantown Community Farm…but I’m sleepy and busy learning Spanish, sewing, mulling over the decision to move to Troy, NY for the next two years, and thinking about doors. Yes. Doors.

Yesterday after a nice afternoon with some friends, the light in my neighborhood was as it usually is around 6pm in the summertime: golden, shimmery, and kind of magical really. As I’m feeling particularly attached to Red Hook right now– partly because it seems like the sale of our block (to someone other than us) is imminent and partly because I may be here rather infrequently if I move to Troy– it seemed like a nice thing to ride around and take some pictures.

I took some photos of the lovely Ikea construction site. Some weeds. Some nice old buildings. And then I saw this door. The one up above. Then I thought that I should take photos of ALL the doors in my neighborhood, block by block. I don’t know how far I’ll get with it, but there’s something about the doors– beautiful ivy covered, rusty chained abandoned doors; newly constructed gawdy condo doors; and old beaten doors that still get a lot of use from the same people who’ve been using them for decades– that says a lot about the changing character of the neighborhood.

Here’s the first batch covering the two block stretch of Van Dyke Street between Otsego and Richards (it’s missing 2 doors right now…soon to come). CLICK.

Last summer, while on the Miss Rockaway Armada, A’yen and I built a storybooth. We invited people in towns along the Mississippi to share stories about their lives. We met some incredible people who…well, they speak for themselves below. Rollover red and orange dots for description. Click to hear stories.

The project will continue this summer with a Storyboat. A’yen will be on the river recording stories on her converted fishing boat and I’ll be editing and posting them from New York. They’ll be posted HERE.

well. it’s not that late. but this working full-time stuff, it sure makes 1am feel late. my friend asked me tonight what the hell i was making a blog for. i didn’t have the answer. other than that i wanted to figure this shit out– because i obsess over figuring these kinds of things out. but the main reason, and the reason why no one will ever see this– is because i need a more dynamic journal. i handwrite things so infrequently that my already illegible penmanship has become totally indecipherable even to me. i have a text document that’s been running now for years– it has music, voice, images, writing…all kinds of things. but it’s clunky. and ugly. and i can’t get to it when i’m travelling because it exists on a harddrive. so, i thought i’d give this a crack.

anyway, the thing that concerns me most is the ability to embed files. so many of the projects that i’m working on or have worked on are in some digital format that i’d like to store here.
this past summer, before i started the full time job, my friend sumitra and i came up with the idea to create a media history timeline. it was based on project south’s curriculum. the top is above-ground media history– including technological developments, regulatory precedents, well-known milestones, and notable trends. on the bottom is a more ‘underground’ or resistant media history. the dichotomy is somewhat arbitrary and admittedly simplistic. but, i thought it would be interesting to create some sort of graphic representation to illustrate some developments in the world of media, both parallel and divergent– and, more importantly, to create something that media activists, media makers, and educators can use as a tool to teach and learn about the legacy of independent media and also to help us situate ourselves in a trajectory…a history that came before us and a future that we will continue to shape. goodnight and good luck.

right-click/ctrl-click and ’save as’ to download. open with any pdf viewer, illustrator, svg viewer, etc… then zoom way the hell in and scroll around.