I have had no better collaborative art experience than the Workshift performance. Jane Gilmore and BJ Krivanek, both university professors, pulled together their favorite alums and assembled an intermedia cast of choreographers, storytellers, composers, conceptualists, documentarians and experimental media artists. The project was to tell the stories of woman working in an Iowa meat packing plant that closed twenty years ago. The performance took place on the factory property and the audience rolled from scene to scene around the meat packing plant in a modified cattle trailer.
My role in this project was video director. There were twelve scenes in the hour-long performance and 6 of them used my videos, but each in very different ways. In one, a video of pigs eating was juxtaposed against archival footage of a 1970’s family preparing a traditional pork breakfast. The video was framed in a circle and was moved around the set like a searchlight. In a different scene, videos of past workers were played on my TV-Sticks held in front of the actors’ faces. In this scene, the videos became a mask transforming the performers into the workers.
One of the reasons that I enjoyed working on this project, was the fact that the artistic directors gave each of the sub-directors a great deal of creative liberty in translating the scenes in our own style. This hands-off approach to directing allowed me to explore the themes in my own voice instead of doing what I thought the director wanted. I have tried to model my directorial style after that of Jane and BJ.
WORKSHIFT DOCUMENT
After completing the video compositions for Workshift, I jumped on a plane for my summer job in Philadelphia. I was never able to actually see the production. Six months later, I finally had my chance when I was informed that a Chicago production company called Zero-One was editing the documentation. I met the editors at their studio and became fast friends. I later shared a studio with them, formed a rock band and eventually an art school (see Chicago Art Department).
They were nearing the completion of the full hour long edit and asked if I would be interested in editing the shorter 10 minute version (the one more likely to be actually watched). I spent a good portion of the winter working on that video and collaborated on the DVD to submit to the National Endowment for the Arts as part of our grant responsibility.
LABOR SHOW – SAINT XAVIER UNIVERSITY
This exhibit was curated by Jayne Hileman and included artworks that dealt with issues of occupation and labor. She asked if I would be interested in screening my ten-minute version and I agreed. I designed a video kiosk that would allow a viewer to click and restart the video from the beginning yet allow it to play on a continuous loop the rest of the time.