Many stations still bear some remnants of the 1900 original architecture with a streamlined consistency of French Art Nouveau, with modern amenities added over the past century to expedite service.

Though it is the second largest subway system in Europe after Moscow, the speed of the trains are sub par to many systems across the globe. The trains also carry relatively lower numbers of passengers, with capacities of 560-720 passengers. During rush hour there is a relaxed crowdedness that encompasses subway travel, but on off-peak hours, the ride is usually leisurely, with most trains running every 4-10 minutes.

There is an abundant opportunity for people watching on the Metro. Due to the vast variety of the Paris population and its copious amount of tourists, there are many different personalities on the train, marked by distinguishable fashions. Of special note is the abrupt change in the denizens the further you travel south or north out of the city center. Here you see the augmenting numbers of the lower class, and the maintenance of the subway stations mirror the less fortunate stature of the passengers. Though this is a commonality amongst all public transportation systems that service major cities, in Paris, the great divide is extreme.

Metro service is currently undergoing technological developments including automatic doors on newer trains to facilitate heavy traffic, installation of on-board TV monitors, and there is an effort to transform Line 1 into a “driverless” system that will be maintained by video control.

Movement gestures that were indicative of the Paris Metro involved the sometimes difficult latch system to open the doors at station stops. There were innumerable amounts of stairs though some stations had escalators and I don’t remember seeing a lot of lifts. Most thoroughfares are lined with white ceramic tiles, a technical decision to help improve lighting, but most of the lighting in the stations is garish and fluorescent.  Directional signage is concise and there are very helpful maps that point out what exits to take for city destinations (they are also clearly marked on the walls, the specified exits). Many of the trains have a step up or step down entry, that is adjacent but not totally alined with the platform, so a constant shift of the vertebrae is likely due to the amount of stairs and the platform differential. The legs and lower back get the most work here, and the shakiness on some train lines provide an efficient work out for the upper body muscles.

Here is the visual research video for Paris Metro:

I’ve taken to explaining in a tangent that I am a Choreographer/Writer and that I like to work with different media as a multidisciplinary artist. I have tried and failed to streamline my ambitions because it is an impossible undertaking. I have managed to shed a few of my abilities due to economic and social hurdles (i.e. acting and painting) and I have done my best to avoid taking on any new extensions of my repertoire. Until now.

I am completely obsessed with making art through film now. I have always been a big film buff and I have had the wonderful opportunity to work on both sides of the camera in the past. I think that film is the genre that has the most potential to include many different types of art forms. There is the medium itself, the performance aspect, the design (costumes, sets, art production), music, and many others. It gives the audience a vicarious point of view of the work and it can be inspired by anything from text to visual representation and so on.

Most of my other endeavors have taken a backseat to my video work. I have been creating video self-portraits since the summer along with portraits of the cities I have visited in Europe over the past few months.

Last month I received and award for my short film “YouBahn” that is part of my ongoing research on subway environments. This particular segment took place in Berlin where I juxtaposed visual footage of the movement culture of the city’s U-bahn system. It was a nice surprise when I found out the news.

I won the 3rd place prize for the MOB Competition sponsored by CIANT (The International Center for Art and New Technologies). The contest called for film work that was taken with a mobile phone. The selected winners were artists who successfully demonstrated “a unique opportunity to look at the urban space through an unusual medium.”

I was invited to Prague for the MOB Conference. This conference was led by executives of CIANT and there were presenters who gave demonstrations of innovative art & technology projects. At the end of the conference, the winning videos for the competition were shown.

I was very impressed with the other two films that were selected. The 2nd place prize went to a duo from France who submitted a film about harsh conditions of homeless people in a suburb in France and the means in which they used their environment to survive. The winning film came from Iran and depicted the current cloud of violence that is rampant in many communities there.

It was nice to see that the other films were so socially and politically relevant and they both were very arresting visually. They both managed to capture the issues in a simple yet provocative way. Though I was curious about the validity of my work since it was not drawing on the sociopolitical, I am proud that I was selected as part of the winning works.

The whole trip was a very inspiring experience for me. The presentations at the conference were thought provoking. There were a variety of artists and scholars who showed their work that ran a formidable gamut, from new technology applications to funded research programs to performance art. I was very impressed by the work of Marcel lí Antúnez Roca (http://marceliantunez.com) who showed us much of his past and present projects, none of which can be pigeonholed into a specific category.

It was a nice treat to have all of these art nerds in one room conversing about many different aspects of the role of art and technology and its current state in the world. Many people had very thoughtful things to say about my film “YouBahn” and it inspired me to continue my work in this genre.

Prague is a beautiful city. I spent the first day mostly at the conference and then socializing with the conference attendees. The next day I walked to Old Town where much of the historic architecture and buildings were. I was constantly recording footage with my iPhone and I edited a portrait of the city into a film:

Though I am still hellbent on continuing my work as a writer and choreographer, I have been pulled into the undertow of film making. Since I have been in Berlin I have been mostly recognized for my film work and I hope to continue this trend.

The only problem is that my subject matter could use some refreshing inspiration. Since I have pretty much alienated myself from my life in the states and I haven’t been afforded much time to collaborate with other artists here in Berlin, my work right now is very self-contained and I feel like I am thoroughly engaged in Narcissistic work. I have many ideas and scripts that I hope to produce within the next year, and most (but not all) of them involve characters besides myself.

I love the intimate feel of using my iPhone and my webcam to capture the elements of my work but I would do pretty much anything to gain access to some more professional equipment. I think with the right camera, I could make some more beautiful work that doesn’t focus on me.

All of my self-portraits and my city portraits are a statement on accessibility of social media. In a way I am satirizing the way we capture memories and information today. There is a certain obsession in us all with ourselves, and I wish to document that in a meaningful way.

I used to organize ideas and to-dos in varying degrees of obsession. I used the Evernote app on my iPhone along with texts to myself, little hints and reminders on social networking sites, voice memos, emails to myself, in my paper planner, on a spreadsheet, in a Word doc, in my notebook, on a Post-it®. Thomas Jefferson was a great list maker and he had a brilliant way to make his OCD sound like poetry. My lists are more like prose.

For some reason I’ve stopped making lists.

I don’t know if I am suffering from this due to my waning attention span or what (thanks internet). For someone who lives so much in their head, it is a hard job to find a comfortable space to put all these thoughts. Since my arrival in Europe I have tried to shed my patriotic sense of urgency that is indicative of east coast dwellers. It is not easy.

Lists, much like vacuum lines on a carpet, can be orgasmic to a control-freak like me. I’ve gotten into the bad habit of absorbing information and recording it in unorthodox ways. This is something I have always done as an artist, expressing intent through different media. But something has changed in me. I have become lax in my obsession for perfection or the right way. Exacting is not longer a way of life.

Since I am in the pre-flight phase of so many unrealized projects, I am left smarting by the lack of tangible outlets. I am that squirrel storing up the succulent feast that is to come and all the hard work I have to endure is making me hungry.

I just stumbled upon an old file where I was sketching out the skeleton of the plot for a new duet I was composing for my friend/colleague Megan and myself. She had recently been drafted into The Peek-a-boo Revue, a burlesque troupe I was doing choreography and direction for in the mid 2000s. She was the first solid Modern dance compatriot I had in the group so I immediately jumped on the chance to work with her outside of the burlesque stage.

It was a burlesque act in a way (like most of my work, in a way), that I wanted to present to a broader audience and it was a performance art piece that I wanted to use for the burlesque show. I had the idea in my head that I wanted to satirize a combination of French Mime and Kabuki Theater. In an effort to appreciate either one I failed miserably and thought it just to make fun of them.

The way I wrote the sketch was not common for me during that time circa 2006. When I was writing for the burlesque show it was mostly done organically (sans the scriptwriting) with ideas being tossed hither and tither amongst all of us until we came up with some semblance of a good act. At the time I was loving what I was doing but craved to be doing more “serious dance” – an attitude coerced by the then public perception of burlesque.  Crafting this overtly structured outline was my way indulging in self-contained over achievement.

We performed a pumped up version of the Mime Duo for The Peek-a-boo Revue using a lot of farce, a little striptease, and some classical music and it received a good response. It was called “charming” and “funny” and “playful”. The response at the art gallery where I staged its watered down debut was a little more timid, as if the audience was expecting there to be some secret buried beneath the performance that was supposed to explain something irrevocably deep. I remember that during the gallery show there was a young child, maybe seven or eight years-old. I was nervous and worried about a part of the dance where we get mildly provocative and we stuck up our middle fingers at each other.That certainly made it more entertaining for me and gave me the idea for another act.

Bi-polar Opposites

Plot Structure/Movement Outline

Part I: The Exposition

(Pantomime, no music)

1:  Megan is making celebratory dinner

(Oven, smelling food, setting table, matches, lighting candle, forgot to turn the oven off)

2:  DeVo at undisclosed location…calls to apologize for missing dinner.

3: Megan sad and dejected blows out candles and goes to sleep.

4: When DeVo enters, Megan waits to hear “Honey I’m home…” but he is on the cell phone. Megan pretends to go back to sleep

5: DeVo retreats to the TV, it wakes Megan up, she brings him the guitar, and he pushes her away. She tries to console, he pushes her again, and they fight.

Part II: They Had a Fight

(Pizzicato Polka)

1:  Dance composition exhibiting male/female power struggle…dance leads up to crucifixion poses on platform “pedestals”.

Part III: The Perpetual Denouement

(Overture to Die Fledermaus)

1: Megan catches DeVo at television, she creeps towards him on stool and is pushed away.

2: Megan gets perturbed and teases him with her body. DeVo relents and sits her down to watch TV with him.

3: Megan steals the remote and makes DeVo beg like a dog, forces him to dance with her, puts their stools together, and mimes “one channel” and begins to enjoy the television to DeVo’s chagrin.

4: DeVo comes up with the idea to dance Megan (in order to spin her around until she is dizzy and disoriented) so he can steal the remote back. 

5: Megan regains herself and steals the remote and breaks it. DeVo cries in horror, Megan tries to console to no avail, they take their stools to each end of the stage, then go and sit on their “pedestals”.

6: Loving glances tug-o-war…push each other away. DeVo gets up to dance for Megan.

7:  DeVo invites Megan to dance but before they start DeVo takes a call. Megan does sad dance movements, then grabs DeVo and mimes “We need to talk!”.

8: DeVo prompts Megan to go to her stool so they can talk via email.

9: After the email fight, Megan goes back to her pedestal to play the guitar. She writes a song and brings the lyrics to DeVo who has put his headphones on. He balls up the song and throws it away. Megan retrieves it and puts it away.

10: Megan brings the guitar to DeVo and he pushes it away. Megan walks off and mimes “Goodbye”, DeVo runs after her and says “Honey, I’m home!”.

Part IV: Love, or Something Like it

(Rue St. Vincent – Yves Montand)

1: Balletic dance where DeVo rediscovers his passion and starts writing songs again.

The advent of copyright is something that is augmenting rapidly in the culture of art and the art of culture. The dissemination of intellectual property is a heated debate that has become the subject of many landmark lawsuits across the world. What one creates belongs to them and cannot be shared, in some new version of political claim. Somehow in this day and age if an idea is inspired by another one is considered theft.

Every choreographer today has to struggle with the rules of fair use when it comes to creating new works of art. It is commonplace for us to steal work that is honestly just a derivative of what we have learned or seen in the past. Since the beginning of dance, music has been the driving force behind the art form. Without the work of classical musicians, dance would have always been this droll, soundless visual effect without much merit behind it besides the traditional forms of folk dance.

I have turned to using a different platform to show my work after being hounded and censored by the popular YouTube website where it is more impossible than ever to watch something or post something that you do not have the legal rights to. How did this happen?

Art in all genres is an homage to something…a time, a place, a story, another piece of art. We would not have the great masters of the past if they were not permitted to use the musical scores of the composers that inspired the composition of movement and stories. While many choreographers are dead set on using original music for their work, modernity affords the artist a never ending source of inspiration to artists creating music today.

One of the most prolific and influential artists working in pop music is Beyonce. Her new music video for the song “Countdown” is a prime example of walking the tightrope between inspiration and blatant thievery. In the video she makes obvious references to Audrey Hepburn and other cultural icons, which is indicative of her work. Beyonce is no stranger to this Quentin Tarantino-esque style of regurgitation, having spent so much time and energy paying homage to Bob Fosse (the biggest influence of my work), Bettie Page, and legendary Josephine Baker.

I always experience an inordinate amount of pangs in my heart when I see Beyonce’s work. We have so much of the same taste and inspiration that it is hard not to pine away about the thought of being able to work with her. Sometimes it feels as though I am watching something that I wish I would have thought of or perhaps I already did, wallowing in the adage about great minds thinking alike.

I don’t know what I would be without the things I have learned and I worry that one day I will be altogether restricted in what I am allowed to create without suffering legal repercussions. It is against the law to use a piece of work of another artist in a matter of profit, this I know and lucky for me, my net gross has not ever been in existence when I have stretched the rules a little bit past their limit. I can’t help but wonder what is the point of the controversy and the legality of it all. It is a tradition for artist to use art to be inspired, no matter how closely it relates to the original work.

This past winter, one of my favorite photographers, David LaChapelle, sued Rihanna for using his signature S/M works as part of the storyboard for one of her music videos, an inspiration for the work in a varying visual interpretation. The irony of course is that LaChapelle is infamous for his use of exploiting and recreating popular works of art through skewed visual imagery, plus he worked with Rihanna just 3 years prior on a photo project for MTV. To me, this is baffling.

Lady Gaga was sued for her work “Judas” that bared similarity to a song from another band. And despite repeated accusations of trying to become the new Madonna, she uses the inspiration from Madonna’s most controversial works to produce the video for “Alejandro”. This I thought was a ballsy move on her part, but again, a comment on the value of inspiration.

Before laws were made to protect the artist from what the government considers theft, there was a free range on creativity. Many musicians (especially) struggled with the ownership of their original music and in some twisted fate of marketing hierarchy, the best man or woman could come out on top no matter if they created the original content or not.

Beyonce’s newest album, “4″ was leaked on the internet prior to its release date. Beyonce, in a humbling statement on her Facebook page, thanked the fans for their zealous anticipation of her new music and then in true superstar fashion with the intelligence and power to navigate through this new technological world of music, teamed up with the corporate giant Target and sold exclusive content through their stores.

I did sneak a peek at her new album but was nonplussed by much of the work. It all just seemed so disjointed with the over produced tracks and the random guitar riffs thrown in hither and tither. I was not surprised by the success of “Who Run the World”, that song is rife with convolution but it has a great beat to dance to. In the video she references Fosse again with choreography reminiscent of his brainchild Cabaret the Musical. The choreography is transcendental in a way, bridging the gap between contemporary hip-hop and classic jazz dance idioms. There is nothing she can do wrong.

This new video for “Countdown” took my breath away in a different way altogether. After watching it several times (like I do with ALL of her videos) I became more and more entranced by the content and then I became wildly envious. She can get away with anything. I was most impressed with the notable amount of modern dance that was in the work and I read later that she was inspired by German modern dance. The idea made me a little sick. Then after more research I found this, a rant about the glaring similarity of her work as compared to the Belgian contemporary choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. This is what she does.

The song in itself is a poignant statement about the challenge of surviving a superstar, diamond encrusted relationship (yeah, I feel for you girl). The actual lyrics to the “countdown” in the song are great, but though it starts off as sentimental, it quickly turns into one of those hip-hop boasting tangents that seem a little less appreciative than what the song was meant to be. Perhaps the inspiration was a little too close to home.

I would be hard pressed to find a piece of mine that was completely original. In my satirical dance theater ballet “Man Bites Dog” that I showed last summer, I referenced one of the greatest moments in dance history. Based on Paul Taylor’s “Seven New Dances” that premiered in 1957, in one of the pieces I had two women come on stage and stand completely still (in their respective poses) for one full minute, staring at themselves in the mirror, and then they left the stage. It was an abrupt moment of commentary within the sporadic moods and pace of the entire show. I doubt that there was anyone in the audience that knew about the reference, though the original piece prompted one of the most historical reviews in The New York Times. The critic left a blank column in the newspaper with only a reference to the name of the performance.

I am always flattered by imitation. When I see my work being copied I admit that I get a little bit upset at first but then realize that ideas are meant to be shared and we cannot create without an arsenal. The artillery comes from life and the flora and fauna that it provides. With dance, movement is the same as colors on a palette to a painter, the same as notes on a staff to a musician, the same as words to a writer…I remember I was completely floored when I saw a recent performance that was choreographed by one of my dancers (that shall remain nameless) and there was an inordinate amount of a certain stylized technique that is something very specific to my work. It was like I had given birth to a baby and I was breathing new life into something beautiful. It hurt, of course, but I was proud to see the growth of another artist who found something special in what I had given them. We are all responsible for creating history and remembering the importance of it.

Bob Fosse

Bettie Page

Josephine Baker

I grew up during the birth of MTV where music videos were these unprecedented advertising tools that were effective in drumming up business for music and for delivering subliminal messages to Generation X. Most importantly, they were works of art.

By the time I got to high school I was poised to some day become a famous video music director (as if there would ever be such a thing). I found the medium to be valuable to the needs of my interests and that I had the well-rounded capacity to perform the tasks required to create alluring short films used to expose the image of a band or song. Fast forward ten years and the music industry has taken on a whole new structure. Thanks, internet.

I gave up on the dream because there was no money in it (haha, I am still an artist so I guess the joke is on me). MTV is now a channel taken over by heinous reality TV shows that have replaced the need for actors, dancers, singers, musicians…anyone with talent. I still strive to work in this arena and I had a chance to choreograph and assist with production design for a young up and coming band a few years ago for their music video.

It is such a compelling art form to me that has so many different disciplines rolled into one, but they have become somewhat obsolete, and I fear that the demand and exposition of this craft has already seen its heyday a long time ago.

I hope to be able to use this editing technique while utilizing other subject matter and perhaps with original music. I find that the self-portraits work best with this theme. I like the gritty intimacy of the devices I use and in an attempt to do this choppy time relapse structure with other subjects has been lackluster in my eyes. Perhaps with the right equipment and the right talent, I could make something more full fledged that isn’t totally reflected on myself.

Here is the rest of the background information for the rest of the series…

9. Guest
This video was taken at a friend’s house in Amsterdam. I was fortunate enough to get in touch with him before he left (in a funny twist of fate, he was coming to Berlin for the weekend) and he met with me on my first day there to give me the keys to his flat so I could go to a job interview the next day and spend the weekend exploring Amsterdam. There was a certain loneliness that overcame me when I was in his apartment. Though I have grown accustomed to this gypsy, couchsurfing lifestyle and it is fun and exciting to be exposed to these different environments all the time, I was starting to get homesick for a home I couldn’t remember since it had been so long since I had one of my own. In this video I am getting in touch with that longing for domesticity and a place to hang my hat along with my heart. The song I chose is one that resonates deeply with me. Juliana Hatfield is one of my go-to artists as she has this very admirable openness in her writing that stems from her bipolar disorder (something that she has never kept a secret). The act of doing something so familiar to home in the home of someone else is all too common for me and it creates this uneasiness.

10. Staples (Part 1 and 2)
These were the most difficult to edit and I spent the most time on these videos. I am still not happy with them. I made part 2 first and it was one of the first “on location” shots that I had done that was in a very public place (the grocery store) but had a very intimate feeling. Though you are surrounded by people when you are shopping, you are in this bubble…concentrating on what you need for your life, trying not to forget anything and then getting distracted by what you want, not just what you need. I was a little bit shy about making a video of myself in front of other people but I remembered I was in Berlin. The carts at this particular market had little raised baskets in the main area of the shopping cart, so it was easy to set up the iPhone in a place where I could capture my actions and have no major impediments in view. I had way too much footage and it took several cuts to get it down to a comprehensible length. In the end I added much more footage of the bottle recycling because it was such an important aspect of this film entitled “Staples”. My staples in Berlin consist of peanuts, pretzels, cheese, yogurt, coffee, wine, cigarettes and sometimes deli meats. These are the tools of my survival here, and I thought it would be an important self-portrait of me to make because eating is such a vital thing, and I do it sparingly these days. The footage in the kitchen was at the time my new place to crash. I had choreographed this great scene of me organizing the groceries according to their respective locations (a product of my OCD) but in the end, it was just too long and I had to cut it because the amount of light wasn’t helping. There are many things I would have done differently in hindsight, but I think the message is still there and it captures another moment in my nomadic life.

11. Scribe
One of the best things about being in Berlin is that I have more time to do my writing. Though I do so many other things with my life, I would be nothing if I could not be a writer. Most of my days are spent creating things with words and though my outward facing career as a writer is still in the embryonic stage, it is my Life Force. It would have been silly for me to have this series without capturing the artistic process of writing. This took place in an apartment of a boyfriend of mine whom I have been dating since my second time in Berlin. He was letting me stay at his place for the week. I have always felt comfortable at his home and with him, so it was easy for me to navigate my way through inspiration being there because it is where I spend a lot of my time anyway. I could have staged it to look like I was writing a story but I didn’t want to fake it too much. I was actually in the middle of writing a story when I wrote this and instead of planning it out too much, I made the writing part a natural act. I did have in mind making the beginning the end and vice versa, and the smoking and the drinking had to be incorporated because these are normal parts of my writing routine. My favorite part is when I am deleting (it was not a dramatic act, I was genuinely disenchanted with what I was writing). I was worried that you would not be able to tell what I was doing visually, but in the end, I got the point across.

12. Rest
This is my favorite film in this series and I think it is a favorite of viewers as well. The idea came instantaneously when I entered the room. This took place in London, the day after they detained me at immigration and held me in some weird terrorist jail for the night. I was there for the weekend and I fell in love with the design of the room. Ideas were shooting through my brain and it all came together perfectly, with the styling, the action and the music. I have spent a lot of time in hotel rooms, so it was only natural that I make a film about it. I was so traumatized when I made this film that it was important for me to somehow put that into art. I NEEDED to make art. It was all I could think about. I knew right away I wanted to work with the stop motion photography that I used in “Clöses”. “Rest” is a good play on words and I knew that the music would be perfect to set the mood for the video. I wanted to exhibit this longing for innocence as I felt as though it had been stripped away from me at the airport. I wanted to be young and playful and cheerful again. At this point, it seemed so far away.

13. Compose
Another place, more inspiration. Whenever things are going bad for me I have the overwhelming urge to create. This place was another place to crash (by the same friend that let me stay in Amsterdam). It had been too long since I have been in the studio and I needed to work out and also I needed to come up with some choreographic ideas for a piece I am considering making into a film. It was simple for me to make this film, choreography is such a repetitive and grueling process that takes a lot of time, energy and focus. The reverse effect in this is subtle, and at the end I wanted to add this abstraction of the desire to jump out of the window. I don’t know if that came through clearly or not, but I didn’t want it to be too dramatic, so I guess it works.

14. Clean
This video was shot on the same day I made “Compose”. It was one of those moments where I decided I just had to escape. This is one thing that I don’t do often, and I miss the relaxing comfort of taking a bath in my own home. I was not in my own home, I was not drinking my own wine or using my own towel or robe or soap. It was this necessary moment to coerce zen and it worked quite well. These days I have this formula where I spend one day freaking out about my life and the next day doing my best to worry about nothing and to be careless. Sometimes the line blurs and it is impossible to separate the two. In this segment I was longing for some peace, but for me, peace is chaos, and the most chaotic time of my life was circa 2006 when I was running a Burlesque show, playing House with my then husband, raising pets, having a daytime career, trying to make-it as an individual artist, and all the while making time for a social life and time for myself. I think that is thinly veiled in what I tried to encapsulate here in this reverse striptease.

15. Voyeur
Being in Europe has been like traveling down this long road of self-discovery and sexual awakening. Having grown up in a pious, militant family, shedding the guilt of expressing myself is something I struggle with in the art I produce. It is not rebellious or for shock value to take off my clothes in front of an audience or make a video of it. In a way it can be a little self-indulgent but the actual mission of these glimpses into my nakedness is an exposition of my character. I am showing everyone what a lot of people already see in me, but I am abstracting it in a way that is a narrative of how I feel people want me to represent myself. Here in Berlin, in this slutty playground where it is easier to get sex than it is a good slice of pizza, I am objectified more than ever. I came to this city because here I am unique and exotic and somewhat of a marvel. Like Josephine Baker and her Paris, I want to seduce this whole town. It is not so much about desire but it is the challenge that comes along with it. I have found such a new part of myself, so many parts of myself and in that I have lost a lot of who I used to be. It is nice to grow, but to escape can be somewhat demeaning and exhausting. We all spend so much time looking out the window, looking for all those cliché greener grassier pastures. We want the cheap thrill of seeing life on the other side. To see the life of someone else. This is the media, this is television, what is entertainment is something that is real or so unreal you are forced to believe it. I met a guy at a bar and he was from another country and we spent the day together and it was wonderful and I got to get to know him and he got to get to know me and we slept together and I awoke and we became friends and then he was gone. It was a nice glimpse into an impossible reality.

I again find myself in a new place. I don’t know what will come of the next video I make, but to keep this chronicle going, it is imperative that I make a film of every new environment I find myself in. I don’t know how long I will be here before I move on to the next place, so I should get moving. Or maybe sit still for a moment.

For the complete collection go here.

Gypsy, Transient, Nomad, Vagabond. Recluse, Misanthrope, Narcissist, Rogue, Recluse. Innovator, Philosopher, Satirist. Artist.

The moniker is always changing though the theme always stays the same. I’ve dubbed myself a Renaissance Man above all else, in a cheeky expression of my right-brained tendencies. Though I am more interested in the whole sum rather than its parts, I feel that the curse of the artist is to have an inexplicable need to discover new ways to create and this coerces one to constantly reinvent themselves.

One of my primary individual projects while I have been in Berlin involves my chronicling this self-imposed rite of passage with my habitation here in Europe.

I have always had an interest in making film based on my obsession with writing and dialogue and character development. I am not the most avid story teller, I am much more interested in exposing characters and it is a common theme in my work. Many times I’ve been criticized for my lack of plot, beginnings or endings. I feel as though this is a unique talent, to have the ability to break the rules of conventional theater and fiction. Many writers struggle with the traditional structure of “who what when where and why”, but for me the most important open-ended question to develop is “how”.

It comes naturally for me to combine theater with dance. There can be this seamless marriage between the two but when one outweighs one more than the other, the end product can become this convoluted, pretentious mess of words mixed with random compositions of movement, leaving the viewer asking themselves the wrong questions. Art is for entertainment. I try my best never to lose grip of that fact. It is not my job to challenge the audience or force them to adhere to my dogma. If they learn something new, great, but it is my job to make it interesting.

I am no stranger to self-portraits. Because I am constantly changing my moods, personalities, and physical appearance (due to internal and external factors), I have always had this habit of photographing myself in various states of dress and distress in the hopes of capturing a moment for archival footage of my personal development.

Inspired by the work of the modern photographer Tyler Shields, I started to strongly consider some ideas for doing my own film work. He is know for his edgy, satirical and sometimes political works, all of them sassy and sexy, many times done with simple compositions and a preference for harsh lighting and unorthodox technical specifications. I was most intrigued by his video portraits. These are short films that are like caricatures of various artists (mostly with a B level following) that are expository representations of their characters. One method he uses involves backward motion photography. What is so compelling about the way he uses the reverse motion in his short films is that there is always some surprise because he sets up a scene to trick the eye into thinking that what is happening backward has a reverse effect, as if the scene is playing forward in the correct order.

I wanted to play around with this device so I took some of my videos I recorded on my iPhone and uploaded them into iMovie. Since I tried and failed to comprehend the complex and overwhelming interface of Final Cut, iMovie has always provided me with an easy, approachable way to edit film. I made a special, very arty film for my Philadelphia Live Arts & Fringe Festival show “Human Error” that was a compilation of rehearsal footage, corporate logos and mugshots of famous celebrities that I juxtaposed together and added special effects to. I then projected the film on the ceiling of the theater during the performance (and I also had a man sitting on the stage next to the dancers while surfing on a laptop computer and eating Doritos) to make a not so latent statement about the constant obsession with technology and pop culture in society.

That was over three years ago when iMovie was a little less user-friendly but provided enough editing options to make your film overwrought with unnecessary transitions and adjustments. With the newer version, the options were more limited in a botched attempt to make the interface more user-friendly. I hated using the newer version and struggled with the idea of buying a program that would allow me free range with my editing. And then it happened.

You have access to all the frames of your film down the the millisecond on iMovie. When you import video footage into the program, a project is created and the film is split into and displayed as many thumbnails. Since I did not have the ability to play everything in reverse (or at least I haven’t figured out how to do that yet), what I did was I started to cut and paste the thumbnails into the project starting from the end to the beginning, creating this choppy, randomized effect that inspired me in a big way. I was on to something.

The first film I did a test with was of me eating a banana. I staged and choreographed the scene so that I was doing what I wanted the fist thing to be seen done last. Also I had to make sure that the last thing I wanted to be seen was done first. So I wanted to trick the eye into thinking that I was eating the banana, but the film would go from end to beginning. And that is the video editing process I use when I am creating these new films.

Because I have a background in theater and dance, making film is a pleasant challenge. The good news is that you have so many chances to create something as perfect as you can; movies are not a live performance. I played around with the banana video for a while and then when I added the music it all came together.

I describe these self-portraits as “Choreographed movement narratives exposing satirical self-portraits of a gay, black artist navigating his way through various tumultuous and auspicious affectations of society.” It is a pretentious way of describing something that I don’t take so seriously, but as time goes on and I am in this never ending world of self-discovery, the issues that I broach in the work is augmenting the brevity of what I first set out to do.

I am trying to exhibit the unique experiences of introspection according to my ideas of how I fit into society at large. The first four films were made during my stint in Philadelphia, between sojourns to Berlin. I was in this foreign yet comfortable environment, sleeping on my best friend’s couch, reuniting with my friends, coming back to a place that was so strange and familiar and I was suffering deeply from reverse culture shock.

The most important aspects of these films is not only the satirical aspect, but music plays a big role and also the intimacy. I wanted to capture all these intimate things in my life in the most frequented environments when I was doing things that are important parts of my character. The funny thing about the environments is that they are never the same – a statement about my amorphous lifestyle.

Racism, homophobia, class-ism, sexuality, addiction, phobias, loneliness, desire…they are all subjects that are subliminally addressed in all of these works.

The ideas come very randomly to me, especially now that I am in Berlin where my inspiration runs at 100 miles per hour (how ever much that is in kilometers). I live in this city where sometimes I feel like my brain is going to explode because just being here makes me feel like I am possessed with a demon inside that just wants to create all day long. I have never really been one to suffer from writer’s block or anything of the sort, inspiration comes very easily and naturally to me. But here in the best city in the world, my creativity is hyperactive in a way and I feel constipated sometimes. So much that I have to keep myself from doing anything, I am so distracted by my ideas I can never think of what is happening right in front of me.

There are still sociopolitical issues to deal with in Europe, though not as abundant as what I went through in America. There are still the cold, mean stares from other gay black men. I am still treated differently because I don’t have a lot of money. I am still objectified by my suitors based on my physical characteristics. I am still plagued with stupid questions about my lifestyle and experience due to the ignorant curiosity of others. It is all just different. No matter where I go.

My recent issue with immigration authorities in London has spawned another heavy flow of inspiration. The more horrible or wonderful the experience, the more fodder I have for my art.

I’ve never been a big fan of force-feeding the pith of my work to my viewers, but this blog is here to expose the artistic process and to document my professional and artistic development, so here goes:

More film descriptions in the next post. See the entire collection here.

In the fall of 2008 I was an integral member of the Drexel Votes program at Drexel University. This was a collaborative initiative to increase student voter turn-out and to exploit the awareness of mainstream and alternative sources for exposition to political affairs, platforms and election procedures. It was a successful venture that boasted 70% voter turn-out of students registered to vote.

At the University Library where I worked at the time, we used innovative and approachable techniques to get students registered, provide them with materials about the election, and to encourage them to make their voices heard. I worked under the guide of the Library Director, the late great Jane Bryan, and together with the library staff we utilized the internet as a valuable tool to communicate with the student body in order to set up this remarkable success.

After the baffling horror of the previous presidential election, it was a personal battle for me to take up this fight for young people to have a vital effect on the system. It was far from easy, but armed with an arsenal of a student committee, a talented young graphic designer and technophiles, we managed to get these kids involved in an exciting way. Blog posts, Twitter updates, Facebook invites…this was the language we used to communicate the importance of democracy.

Now that I am Berlin, having virtually ostracized myself from the political system in The United States, something wonderfully unprecedented has caught my attention in the normally sedate albeit publicly important politics of Germany. Enter the Piraten Partei, a new-ish political party that spent the summer mounting their campaign to gain seats in the parliament.

In mid August, the signs for each party’s candidates started to be posted in their corresponding districts (the large parties nominated candidates and they were responsible for accumulating votes in their neighborhoods in an effort to gain total votes for the party at large, not just individually). The signs were all very German, seemingly restricted by specifications of size, material, content and the locations where they could be posted. The dominate parties were most prominently displayed – The CDU (Christian Democratic Party), The SPD (Social Party of Democrats) and the “liberal” Green Party. The signs were simple in design, having a picture of the respective candidate, their party affiliation, and not much else, all in monochromatic and stoic colors with simple, nondescript font.

One day walking through the edgy, more alternative neighborhood of Kreuzberg I saw a sign that didn’t look like the others. It bore a picture of a young, bald, smiling white man. The poster looked as though it had been altered via Photoshop. There were bright hues of blue and yellow and it seemed alien to the brethren banners from the other parties. The smile on this man seemed exaggerated and a little bit jarring in a way, and it was very eye catching. Below some quote in German (that I struggled to translate) was the a logo for Piraten Partei in which the “P” in “pirate” cleverly took the shape of a pole and flag, making a bold reference statement of staking their claim on the more conservative stance of the popular parties.

Soon I was engaging in conversations about politics, much to my amazement and not so much to my chagrin. The posters were popping up everywhere and word of their campaign was all over the news. Preliminary polls put them just below the percentage they needed to win seats in the parliament, and it seemed as though the public was fascinated in both positive and negative ways.

It was no surprise to me that their party won the percentage they needed to gain seats in the parliament. They had a cunning yet obvious way to solicit the untapped voting community in the city. Berlin is known for its slant towards many things not commonly German. There is a long tradition of welcoming the nontraditional and the vibrant arts culture matched with the burgeoning young, immigrant community is a large part of why so many are looking for a change in the way the government works. They had a strong presence on the web and had an overall appeal to young people in their advertising.

The Piraten Partei bares reference to their main political platform that revolves around internet privacy and protection and their goal to develop free internet services for the city. Many of their issues are extremely modern and center around technology and social issues, though they are being criticized for their current lack of knowledge regarding bigger economic issues and the fact that they are all a bunch of young white guys with not much representation of diversity. During interviews with the media they unabashedly claim to know little or nothing about the current political climate of Germany (one candidate said, “I don’t know” when asked about the national debt) and many feel as though this naivete is a hindrance and a bonus for them to be a prominent entity to develop new policies in Berlin.

I find all of this so intriguing. As an artist with a huge web presence, it is important for me to be aware of the rules and regulations regarding the dissemination of information and intellectual property on the internet. I am shocked when I speak to an artist (by now, probably the largest percentage of employees in Berlin) and they do not have a website though they spend over half of their time online.

I am not yet a citizen of Germany and I am torn as to how I feel about this Pirate Party, but I know that the way they are shaking things up (though the party is represented in other international cities) could be a part of big problems and solutions that are imminent here in the hapless disregard for a concrete plan for Berlin’s future.

It didn’t take me long to capture the footage I needed of the subway. There were some distinctive features of the architecture and culture of traveling via The Underground. London is a quite large city geographically with over 30 bouroughs and over 7 million (recorded) residents. It is a city that is rich in history and the arts that attracts thousands of tourists. There are 11 different lines of the subway system and it estimated that there are about 3.5 million journeys every weekday. There are 270 stations connected on the London Underground. The system is almost 150 years old and remains the core of the city’s heartbeat, a vital tool in transit throughout London.

The ticket system is split between kiosk machines and at some stations there are live agents that assist with ticket purchases. There are entry gates that are equipped with ticket readers and scanners that detect passes. For some stations it is required that you take an elevator (lift) to the platform, sometimes after which you may have to take stairs up or down to get to the train. There is abundant amount of signage, many telling you to “mind” this or that. There is a GPS notification system telling you when the next train will arrive.

The trains have doors that require you to press a button to open the door. The trains are quite loud and when taking the central line I found it to be quite rickety. When trying to record footage on my iPhone, I was rocking back and forth quite drastically, as were the passengers.

There is a loud bell that rings when the doors are closing and that synonymous British woman’s voice is constantly jabbering away.

The train cars are a bit claustrophobic and I didn’t notice any place for people to bring their bikes. The blaring bright red and blues are a little jarring at times but it is a fast and efficient system.

I will be taking video and photos of the subway system there and making notes of different cultural and architectural characteristics. I am not familiar with any of the special functions that may be different from Philadelphia and/or Berlin, but it will be exciting to note the correlations and contrasts.

The best part about life during the Fringe Festival in Philadelphia is that you are thrown into this dark tunnel of the unknown that leads to a bright new season of the arts in the city. You spent the summer preparing for the best and the worst of yourself, trying to find a venue, trying to find performers, trying to find a production crew, trying to find a rehearsal space, trying to find the right music, trying to make the perfect costumes, trying to figure out how you will pay for it all…and though the finished project is never finished, in the end, the birth of this child is a far cry from immaculate. And you’ve never looked thinner.

Last year with “Man Bites Dog”, it was a big leap for me. I just came off the well attended “Viva Burlesque” at the GLBT Arts Festival on The Avenue of the Arts, a show that could have used some polishing but demonstrated my strengths in playwriting and burlesque. With “Man Bites Dog”, it was not only a sequel to the satirical slant of “Human Error” (circa 2007 Fringe, a golden year for my professional development), but one of the first shows I produced that had a latent focus on developing my signature technique. With all the references to media and pop culture that is indicative of my work, I was really concentrating on those DeVo moves, not only stylizing this modern jazzy ballet that I utilize so much, but creating new concepts in movement vocabulary. You can see it in my broken arabesques and in my lateral static turns and in my unique isolations. This was a big step for me to really put all of my favorite moves together in one show and expound on the form.

This year I am over 3,000 miles from Philadelphia. Every time I do a Fringe show I say it will be the last one I do. The heartache and the drama is always worth it, and the inkling of yourself that you are left with at the end of the month resembles something that once could have been you. It is such a daunting and rewarding experience, and it is a great time to see everything Philly has to offer in the arts scene. I will miss it this year, though I am sure that if I was there I would only be an observer, not so much a participant. I miss my girls most of all, my muses that appreciated me for everything that I am and would eagerly accept all of my crazy ideas for routines. Perhaps again someday I will return to that important platform in Philadelphia where it all began some years ago.