04 04 10 Update

I've pretty much finished the preparations for Friday's preliminary meeting at Stiffel, including a sheet that each person will take home to hang on the refrigerator to remind them what to bring on April 16.

Since we finally had a decent Monday, the day I keep free to work on Journeys South, I was able to hit the neighborhood and do some videotaping. I want to have a lot of clips I pull from.

I always forget how static cities really are. Apart from cars and humans, not a lot moves. The 7th street area is ever more still. I focused primarily on architecture and spaces doing pans over cornices and house-fronts. I'm always fascinated by remnants and reminders of things that somehow stick around despite progress's best efforts to obliterate them.

The photos are video stills that I extracted.

March 15, 2010 Update

Met with Susan Hoffman and the social director, Lynne, to get everything in place for videotaping people with their saved objects. The preliminary session will be April 9 with the video being done on the 16th.

At Susan's request, I also put together a hand-bill for her to give out. I did my best to keep things grounded and concrete. People will also get a hand-out at the preliminary meeting and will write in what they are bringing so they can post it on a refrigerator or somewhere prominent. I also plan to bring objects in case someone forgets or perhaps they'll see something from "my museum" that grabs their attention.

This morning I did preliminary drawings of what the kiosk will look like. I'm still experimenting and since there will be loops of 16mm film, I'm trying to figure out how they and the pulleys might enhance the whole design and connect with the overall idea of the project. I will be talking with the planned fabricator, Frank Siciliano, on April 1.

Additionally, I did more poking around the neighborhood, unfortunately my video camera gave out, but I have some ideas of what I want to capture. I also stopped in at the store across from Happy Clams and did some shopping, just to kind of make my presence known.

12 31 09 Images from the Neighborhood

The area around 7th St. Stretching from Snyder to Shunk.

Tech: Nikon F100, Arista 400 film (same as Tri-X, I think). Lab development and scan by Photo Lounge.

12 23 09 Update:

I spent yesterday transferring all the interview video onto a mirrored RAID drive. I then need to convert the video again to audio mp3's for Tom Carroll to use, and to DVD format so it can go to the various interviewees and also be easily watched. I'm retaining everything on the one terabyte drive for easy future access. It's over six hours worth and though I didn't watch all of it, I revisited much.

There is more planned for after the New Year, which will round the Stiffel interviews out to eight. Additionally, I hope to interview other people who do not attend Stiffel.

Two things struck me as I watched the videos. The people interviewed rarely talked about objects and their acquisition. Many talked about poverty, but not about things they purchased other than perhaps saving up money for a musical instrument. My point being, as a group, their lives appear to have been very much not oriented around material gain for its own sake.

Also, recollections of how difficult or tough the neighborhood was in terms of street life varied with the women not mentioning it at all and emphasizing the connectedness and harmony in the neighborhood for the most part. The parallel story being that Stiffel has filled the void for many older residents, creating a new sense of community and even connecting people back to neighbors and relatives to which they had lost track.

The men had more "war stories," but then again it varied from recollections of doing a wrestling tackle on a larger opponent (David Welsh) to fending off a group of neighborhood toughs with a burning stick. (Joe Pepper) My only surmise is that like today, one's perception and experience has a lot to do with what circles one runs, personal temperament, and the ability to avoid trouble before it escalates.