Well… for this project I am trying develop, I need to test the reciprocity failure of this film. For shooting long time exposure with film, we “used to” need to do it (if no datasheet given). Well, this name, though, is very interesting… Reciprocity Failure…. is something we can find everywhere, and also failure to handle a reciprocity failure. Domestic or political ones… in an academic environment…. we always mutually fail. And we fail to handle our failure…
On June 19th 2011, I left Oakland, CA heading for Johnson, VT by my car to come to Vermont Studio Center. It was quite a trip, an enduring driving through heat and cold weathers, flooded lands, etc. etc.
Here was the route.
Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs served like a music lecture for me. Its climax sounds “like” his West Side Story but this composition is a masterpiece of counter point, utilizing Baroque vocabularies, he created a great “written-out” jazz composition. The last part of Riffs, the third movement is quite ecstatic. It was premiered by Benny Goodman even though the composition was originally commissioned by Woody Herman. Well, my favorite Béla Bartók also wrote a tune called Contrasts for Benny Goodman. And I remember Stravinsky wrote Ebony Concerto for Woody Herman. There is an interesting episode about Bartók writing Contrasts which I read in his biography, but I will write about it when I find a good video of the tune on YouTube or somewhere else.
The name of this band seems to be Synchronicity and they transcribed the composition for piano, percussion, bass and yes, clarinet. Some parts sound rather interesting, but some other parts are a bit “thin” ensemble, especially “fugue” part has lost mastery of the original, but this version has its own charm.
I think it is an interesting idea to connect recycling with our visceral feelings, and performative aspects of the event must be enjoyable. But, why do they need to throw bottles aiming at other people? Of course it has the effect of catharsis by doing something you would never do in your everyday life, and that is the function of feasts and rituals in many cultures, and there are some festivals in which people can throw something at other people such as Holi and Tomatina. And, in our contemporary society, can pigments and tomatoes be replaced with beer bottles if targets are physically protected by bullet-proof glasses? Yes, I make my work out of what I hate. Yes, I do. Is it the same? And yes, it is “recycling with a vengeance” which is much healthier than throwing a bottle at someone without any protection for real revenge. Is this a happy straw man strategy, or I fell into a straw man argument?
Several days of a bit of both excitement and disappointment, and new days start and continue… I may not need to know what these things I am dragging behind me, and keep walking toward somewhere over a dense fog into where a big black bird flew away.