Sierra At Large

i loved you when you had curly hair

2011-08-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

There comes a time when one can't create anymore, or rather one doesn't want to, because looking at another fractured lens and incomplete photograph, a piece of painting that was disregarded or another half-finished sculpture makes one ill; perhaps not in a physical way, but in a distant, psycho-sexual, removed intellectual way.

Maybe for the last few years, there existed this self-destructive tendency inside me to throw everything against the wall and destroy it. What is the point of creating something, when really it will be overshadowed by marketing, conjecture and meaningless artist statements? I felt like Dominique Francon, when she pushed the most beautiful object she had ever seen, down a steep staircase; destroying it forever, then laughing afterwards.

I had ceased to care...or according to history, I was going through an awakening. A block in one's psyche in which one couldn't access one's feelings, and the numbness overwhelmed all other senses. I felt like some awkward character in T.S. Eliot poem:

I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use them for your closer contact? Neither she nor I will do foolish things

It was finished. I accomplished exactly what I wanted to do, even if it meant another half century would pass without it being seen. I didn't want to change anything about it, to make a more commercial version nor to change the narrative. I loved it exactly the way it was, and distribution or not, it was going to remain intact.

the future of film

2007-11-23T20:08:00.000-08:00

Last week I was at Recombinant Media Labs, where it is headed by director Naut Humon, who is somewhat of a cultish figure in San Francisco circles and the rest of the art world, sits on the jury for Ars Electronica and owns Asphodel Records here in the city.

In his 360 degree projection room, I felt completely at peace.

Here, artists from around the globe came to experiment and visualize their work. As I was sitting and walking, pacing, prancing, meditating, and carefully listening to the minute decibel changes within this space, I could see that this is really the future of cinema- the future of audiovisual narrative works. It would be years before it would be realized, but soon, perhaps within the next 50 years, this is what Hollywood would soon copy, integrate and market to the rest of the world.

We are used to seeing a traditional narrative on one screen with surround sound. Naut Humon has created a theatre in which exists 10 screens that interconnect, so that artists can create multiple-narratives that revolve around the space. I started imagining what sort of film I could devise in this fashion- if all screening theatres had this option.

As a filmmaker, I found one of the obstacles was not how you create your work- but really how it should finally be exhibited. Films come in multiple formats, vary by director and most theatres do not accompany most of these aspect ratios except for the National Film Theatre in London, England, in which they are able to accommodate every format imaginable, whether you show your film in 4:3, 16:9, 1.85:1, 2.39:1 etc.

A 360 degree projection space with 10 screens meant that one could potentially manipulate time and space. It doesn't have to be that a split/ or quadra screen is necessary in developing multiple story lines- rather, ideas could synchronize, come together and separate. One could show multiple scenes of the same event from different angles. As I was thinking of the possibilities, Naut tells me that the next installation was going to be a little "loud".

He had chosen a compendium of international artists who used abstract visual pieces synched with music in his demonstration of the projecting room's capabilities. Sound was sometimes atonal and minimalist, to loud and theatrical. I found that there was something ultimately beautiful about Naut's own vision, to have produced this space in order for artists to create their work.

Vincent van Gogh once said that "there will be a time when my paintings will be worth more than the paint that was used to paint them". Video installations never sell well here in the United States unless one has a strict political agenda. However, here, in 2007, Recombinant Media Labs has created a canvas for artists to test out that theory.

the centre of documentary

2007-11-13T21:34:00.001-08:00

His eyes favored dissension. He wanted revolution. He did all things, uniquely his way. He didn't know how to give reverence to those above him. He could be arrogant at times. His way of argument was a sign of endearment, not of hostility.

I met Josh Wolf on Thanksgiving weekend nearly four years ago, when we were making protest signs at his house in the Lower Haight. I suppose it was one of those moments when you meet someone, and realize that you feel as if you've known them forever.

We chatted, and I left for London. We kept in touch, and when I came back, before the entire incident with the FBI, the Supreme Court, Frontline, the New York Times, the Steven Colbert show, I told Josh, "I want to document what you do."

He trusted me to film him when he was used to being behind the camera. I had him improvise a speech and then made him repeat it under several different microphones in varying tones of voices. At first, he was tenuous. Josh doesn't like being directed, he prefers to direct himself. I told him, perspective was different from behind the camera than when in front of it. He trusted me to do it, he spoke in the tones I asked him to. When I first showed the episode of him for my show on Peralta two years ago- he said to me quietly, "That was fucking awesome." It was exactly a year before he would be sent to jail for withholding evidence to become the longest held journalist in captivity in American history.

This is the trailer of the full length documentary to be released next year.

san francisco minute

2007-10-15T22:12:00.000-07:00

Knowledge is power. Despite the fact that there exists people who want to supress and censor those with alternative viewpoints- or those who keep others from participating in a medium where information can be freely accessed, I have started producing a series of short segments, along with my colleague, Colleen Taylor about various issues in the City of San Francisco, covering politics, trends, music, and the various subcultures that never receive news coverage in traditional media.

Our initial intent was to focus on non-partisan coverage of the 2007 Mayoral Race, however, working with Colleen, we decided to expand from our original position to also include other areas in which we explore the particular issues relevant to the city of San Francisco.

San Francisco is a unique city, progressive in its politics and often considered the left capital of the United States. However, it is still relatively a newcomer when considering the amount of resources available for filmmakers and those who work in media when compared to Los Angeles and New York City. We spoke to Mayor Gavin Newsom last Saturday on what he is committed to doing to help the future of those who work in new media.

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According to Mayor Newsom, information, including those on the internet and broadband should be accessible to all.

music as an end to discontent

2007-10-09T00:50:00.000-07:00

I've always been quite surprised at how music can affect and influence one's state of mind. Although working in film and television, I've found that music has a subtle but powerful effect on the way visual information is perceived and comprehended.

I've been quite fortuitous in having worked with talented composers, ones who can create that exact piece of audio work which my mind envisions when I set it against a set of sequences.

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I met Erling Wold quite randomnly, at a Producer's birthday party several years ago, when I first started making short films. He has been the main composer for the films of Jon Jost, and I found that there was something entirely poignant and intangible about the pieces he created because within its complexity, and usages of textural ambient sounds, was at the center, a human element which I found quite hypnotic.

I was working on several commercials for the arts-based show I had produced last year for Peralta.TV in Oakland, when I asked him what he thought about the way his music was integrated into the set of visual images with my voice-over.

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He paused for a moment, then told me he liked them.

missing information

2007-10-07T16:07:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine who works for a publication told me over dinner one night that it didn't really matter if one didn't really know anything about the subject in which he was writing about, rather, it depended more upon how much controversy one stirs, and how many letters to the editor one generates within the public sphere. It seems in our day and age- and perhaps not unlike past generations- we live in a society of the spectacle, and controversial figures and personalities are always great for publications. It was better that people write in with letters of acrimony than with no response at all. That seemed to be a consistent relationship between content-providers, publications and advertisers, a perplexing state of affairs in which advertisers ultimately dictated content. This didn't seem too far replaced from DeBord's commodity fetishism. The loss of quality so obvious at every level of the language of the spectacle, from the objects it lauds to the behavior it regulates, merely echoes the basic traits of a real production that shuns reality. -Guy DeBord, "The Society of the Spectacle"

No one really wanted to know all the facts of a story, rather it was more effective to use the methods of narrative story-telling to create intrigue within the viewer/ reader. This odd amalgamation of fact and fiction, carefully interwoven then was the most powerful way to get one's message across.

However, the current generation had seen it all. Nothing upset them anymore, they ceased to be shocked by events having been carefully desensitized by the exhibitionistic times that have sufficiently numbed their senses. To show all was rather predictable these days.

Having memorized most of the 50 plot lines for most stories, I have found that a more effective way of the re-telling of old tales was the tactic of purposely leaving out important information.

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I have realized that it does not matter where in the timeline one samples the information from, as long as it is in non-linear form and is ambiguously connected to the preceding images. One of the ways the mind naturally worked was by filling in missing information and making connections between seemingly random images and events. Viewers, I've found, do not want to be told everything- they want to make their own inferences, using their own sphere of experience to project their own version of events.

the internal war

2007-10-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

Politics is a dangerous game I rather not play, however to be apolitical in this day and age seems even more dangerous. In 2002, I was in the minority when I opposed the Iraq War, and now five years later, it seems the veil of confusion has been lifted to mobilize people across the nation to stop an unjustified occupation of a nation that has become all but the forgotten nightmare.

As we go on with our daily lives, I wonder how many of us think exactly what is happening to the very foundations of our nation in which our economy is continually deteriorating due to an unjustified war.

We have looted their art. We have shattered their culture. We have killed their children. We have murdered their leader on television. We have divided their people. We have destroyed another nation.

What remains now is do we abandon our own soldiers to do our bidding in country that we have failed to control? Do we leave them there to slowly die while our leaders figure out how to solve the Iraq problem? Or do we cut our losses and ask them not to fight anymore?

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There will not be an easy way out of this.

the voice

2007-09-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

There is something powerful about the way a man articulates himself and shapes images around the words he uses linguistically to communicate context, meaning and emotion.

While I was living in England from 2003-2005, I became interested in the voice as a subject of study, mainly because the voice holds so much information that isn't easily discerned immediately. The tone, the pitch, the way a voice carries over into a space, are the things that we sense at once, but delay in recognition.

It is said that everyone possesses a unique voice, like that of a fingerprint. Working with voice-over talent, I've found that I always like the first take, because the first take seems to me the most genuine in perfectly expressing what is meant to be conveyed.

When I first screened this installation that I had produced for a tutor of mine, she started to cry.

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I suppose there is something entirely powerful about his voice that leaves an indelible imprint in one's mind. I suppose there is also something rather powerful about the way as a director, one can elicit that kind of emotion from a man who mainly keeps to himself, and never shows you what he's really thinking or feeling. In this case, with the enigmatic artist, Martin Callanan.

the year in question

2007-09-25T14:00:00.000-07:00

I'd spent a greater past of last year in South Korea, as the director of an educational institute. Since there aren't many resources for students to learn English in many parts of the rural areas, I had discovered that implementing a strategy to progress learning in an area where there was a lack of guidance was a bigger challenge than I had originally envisioned. Although South Korea is very much a modern country, with internet cafés on every corner and a producer of semi-conductors, the morale of the younger generation seemed lost in their inability to conform completely to their fast-changing nation. Hence, many students find schools a stifling presence in their lives and the only outlet for their collective despair is online gaming and being dulled by the distractions of their ubiquitous television programming in which families are more aware of pop culture references than what is going on inside a student's head. Television in South Korea isn't merely entertainment or infotainment, but a complete way of life.

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Although its architecture has been rapidly changing, I found something quite subversive about the landscape. Despite its name, "the land of the morning calm," I found underneath the surface was a kind of chaos and instability of a proud nation that was conflicted between two different eras: on one hand, the traditional mindset of the generation before the separation of North and South, and on the other, the overwhelming poverty in cross-generational flux.