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September 1
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1.
Avatar
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Scene: Setting up the camera angle and framing the shot, I am preparing to record a video diary. I look down and read from a script in a black binder. After reading from the script I look up at the camera and repeat the line from the text: "I am lying to you."
Voice:
Reading from a notebook. "He speaks to them in a quiet voice as he pushes the pause button on the computer game that he is playing. 'I am lying to you,' he says looking up at the web-cam. He observes a faint reflection looking back at him from the monitor-screen, barely recognizing this emotionless face as his own. Unsettled by this moment of self-awareness; he presses the RETURN key to continue the game."
Looking up at the camera. "I am lying to you."
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Hyperscript 1
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September 2
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2. Two Chairs
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Scene: An empty white chair sits in the middle of my studio.
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Hyperscript 2
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September 3
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3. Moby Dick
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Scene: The scene is a shot of me from behind--looking out at the ocean, toward the horizon. The shot is framed from above my shoulders to just below the top of my head. Tattooed on my neck are the words "Moby Dick," in black or blue ink.
Voice:
The sound of the ocean can be heard under my voice
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of…
Such a portentious and mysterious monster roused all…
The wild and distant seas where he…
Raise the buried dead perpendicular out of their graves boys--that's
The undeliverable,,,
Nameless perils of…
With all the attending marvels of a thousand Paatagonian…
With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been…
What they call my shadow here on earth is…
By reason of these things, then…
The great floodgates of the wonder-world swung open…
The wild conceits that…
For me…
The swift, sudden turn of…
To sail forbidden seas and…
Two and two there floated into my…
Somehow a most melancholy…
The wintry ocean, whose freezing spray…
Its endless processions of…
One phantom…
– incomplete excerpts from Moby Dick
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Hyperscript 3
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September 4
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4. A Paper Mushroom
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Scene: Silent action. I fold and then unfold an origami mushroom. I try to smooth the creased paper with my hand.
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Hyperscript 4
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September 5
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5. The Butterfly Stamps
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Scene: The camera is looking over my shoulder at the work desk in front of me. On the desk are a letter and a shadow box. I take the letter, open the box and pin it to the back of the box as one would pin a butterfly specimen in a case.
Voice:
My friend sent me a letter from India. It has two butterfly stamps on it--I think she put them on the letter because they reminded her of the video that I made after my little niece was killed in an accident. The video was called, "The Butterfly Collection of Miss Emily Watson" -- but it wasn't really about my niece. It was about memory and the past that we construct for ourselves to explain how things have come to be the way they are in our lives, and about what we choose to remember and what we choose (willfully or not) to forget--and how even our most painful experiences lie embedded in these reconstructed memories and in the things that we hold dear to us.
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Hyperscript 5
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September 6
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6. Reconstruction
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Scene: Facing the video camera, close-up of my face.
Voice:
I'm in the process of getting this birthmark removed from my lower lip. What do you think?
I've already had one session at the dermatologist's--and it is beginning to disappear.
I don't really mind it. But some guy came up to me at a video shoot and said, sort of half pointing at my lip, "Are people afraid to kiss you because they think that you have some sort of disease?" I didn’t even know the guy. He was just standing near me while I was trying set up my equipment. I don't even remember what I was video taping--but I remember what he said, and think about it every once and a while when I'm looking at myself in the mirror.
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Hyperscript 6
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September 7
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7. My Yoko Ono
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Scene: Tight shot of a rectangular, un-primed, white canvas pinned to my studio wall.
Voice:
I thought it would be an interesting idea to make one of Yoko Ono's "Instructional Paintings" as a video for this Blog. Do you know about that work? These are "conceptual" paintings--so they are more about the idea of painting and art than the physical product.
There is one in particular–her instructions read that you (the artist) are to hang a bottle behind a canvas "where the west light comes in…the painting exists when the bottle creates a shadow on the canvas, or it does not have to exist…" she says.
The painting exists when such and such happens--or--it does not have to exist. I love that idea.
So when I was thinking about performing this, I remembered the shadows that are cast on my wall by the Fichus trees that grow near the westward facing window of my studio. The shadows create a beautiful effect. This reminds me of Cezanne's, "The Gardener," painting, which reminds me of memories of my old friend Jim, which remind me of many, many other fond memories. Anyway, I thought that I'd hang a canvas on my studio wall and capture the shadows as they slowly appear--and this would be my Yoko painting for you.
So I started out the next day to set up for the video shoot and waited--but the shadows didn't appear. Then I realized that the beautiful shadow effect only happens at a certain time of the year--in late winter--when the sun lines up in the center of the window at the far end of my studio. It only happens for a few hours in the late afternoon.
I've never had any occasion or reason to place this experience in time--outside of the stream of sensations and thoughts that are the interior of my studio.
So I can't show you the video of the Yoko painting that I wanted to make.
But it exists.
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Hyperscript 7
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September 8
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8. The Bird Cage
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Scene: A hand reaches into a cage of birds. The birds fly wildly from the hand. Unsuccessful in the attempt at capturing the birds, the hand withdraws and closes the cage door.
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Hyperscript 8
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September 9
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9. In a secret place
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Scene: A very short scene of some unspecified space where many lost things have been accumulating with the dust. The space is perhaps under a bed or behind a couch. It is a space that has been forgotten and has not been cleaned for a while. A book (Moby Dick), some Christmas lights, a Superman Action Figure, a sock, some keys might be there. Other lost things are there. A flashlight lights the scene.
Voice: The sound of breathing. Inhale.
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Hyperscript 9
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September 10
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10. Voyeur
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Scene: Camera shot of my studio at night from the sidewalk across the street. The camera is hand held and there is slight movement. There is light coming from deep inside my studio. The lights from the other windows in the building are dark. Silhouettes and shadows of the fichus trees are visible.
Voice:
Lightning strikes as something in the woods examines the small cottage. Through the outside window, ASHLEY and LINDA can be seen embracing. This force watching them moves around the house to another window. The silhouette of SCOTT and SHELLEY undressing can be seen. The force continues around and arrives at CHERYL’s window. Inside, she brushes her hair in front of the mirror for a moment, then sets down her brush and moves to the window. She stops to un-crumple the sketch drawn earlier, looks out at it, then out to the dark woods.
CHERYL can faintly hear some kind of sound. It is the same sound she had heard earlier from the cellar. A noise almost like that of something breathing.
The evil entity rounds the corner of the cabin as CHERYL walks thorough the room to the front door. She can be seen stepping out the door. It closes behind her. Wind shaking the tree branches sends dead leaves fluttering about.
CHERYL
(Calling to the woods) Is anybody there?
There is no answer. CHERYL steps away from the cottage toward the woods.
The breeze animates her nightgown and it too seems alive. CHERYL stops.
CHERYL
I know someone’s out there…I heard you… I heard you in the cellar.
Suddenly, CHERYL becomes chilled. She folds her arms around herself and stands at the woods edge, listening. There is only darkness and sounds of the evening wind blowing through the trees. CHERYL steps into the forest a few feet then stops. A cry deep within the woods can be heard. She freezes. Whispering in the distance grows somewhat louder and a soft wail is heard—line that of something long since dead, dredged up to roam the earth again. CHERYL is about to turn back toward the cabin when a rustling comes from a group of trees about twenty yards behind her. She stops. No sound. Nothing moves.
(Note: This scene is from the movie, EVIL DEAD)
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Hyperscript 10
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September 11
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11. Aerial
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Scene: Satellite images of my building from Space--at greater and greater distances, camera moves up, view of San Francisco from satellite, camera moves up, view of California from satellite, camera moves up, view of North America from satellite, camera moves up, view of Earth, camera moves up and loses focus.
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Hyperscript 11
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September 12
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12. Is there snow falling on Mars?
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Scene: The slow digital scanning of Martian polar region is revealed in slow vertical bans on the screen. Just as the entire scene is captured a new scanning frame begins to reveal another view of the scene from a closer angle--the camera moving to close up view of a Martian snow scene.
Voice:
"[The] 'Snow at Louvenciennes'
Alfred Sisley
1874 The Phillips Collections, Washington, D.C.
Sisley once wrote, '[T]he spectator should be led along the road that the painter indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artists himself has felt. Every picture shows a spot with which the artist himself has fallen in love.' Indeed, in 'Snow at Louvenciennes,' the viewer is literally led down a road, directed by the artist and appreciative of his richly observed scene of falling snow in a quiet village.
For th[e] work, 'Garden at Louvenciennes,' Sisley set up his easel slightly further away from the bend in the road and just to the left of where he would return to paint 'Snow at Louvenciennes.'"
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Hyperscript 12
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September 13
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13. Glacier
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Scene: A video of melting ice cubes is projected on a white canvas pinned to the wall of my white studio. I sit in the white chair in front of the projection and tell this story.
Voice: I flew from Belgium to Georgetown to visit Pat--I had been in love with Pat since we lived together in New Orleans during our freshman year in college. After a few years we parted ways--he went to Georgetown and I went to Louvain to study Philosophy. It was the fall of 1974 and I had finished my philosophy studies at Louvain. By then, I hated philosophy and hated Europe. I had nowhere to go and no one else to turn to. Pat was in the middle of his final exams and I knew that I was in the way but I wanted to be with him. I only stayed a few days. The last night of my visit, we went to an Irish pub--where Pat hung out. We drank beer and shooters of Wild Turkey, played pinball and darts. I don't remember the next part of the story or what we did or said exactly. There is just a sort of bar scene and bar noise in my memory of it--noise and loud talking which may or may not be my recreation of the scene from other bar scenes that I've been in--but I do remember that we made a death pack at some point--that if one of us died, the other would dance an Irish jig on the other’s grave. Kind of morbid, I guess, looking back at it--but Pat was a little morbid in an Irish kind of way.As we were stumbling home the snow began to fall. We were freezing and we held on to each other as we walked down K Street. I would never see Pat again.
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Hyperscript 13
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September 14
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14. Where love lies
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currently off line
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Scene: I am standing in front of a white canvas that is pinned to the wall of my white studio with a red rose in my hand. I begin to eat the rose and then spit it out at the canvas.
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Hyperscript 14
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September 15
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15. The Telephone Book
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Scene: Close up of my telephone. (My_Voice 1). Close up of the phone off of its cradle and lying on the table next to the answering machine. (My_Voice 2). Cut to an empty telephone log-book.Cut to an image of birds sitting on telephone wires.
My_Voice 1: Hi this is Rudy. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back.My_Voice 2: All of my relationships these days exist on the telephone. I find the voices of my friends and loved ones comforting. We exist in a bodiless conversation. Physical presence makes me anxious.
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Hyperscript 15
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September 16
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16. Is the speed of darkness faster than the speed of light?
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Image: In a completely darkened room--my white studio--a flashlight is suspended from a long cable attached to the ceiling. The flashlight is off to the left of the screen. There is the sound of one inhaled breath as the light passes across the screen like a pendulum. The screen goes black at the moment that the light bulb reaches the edge of its arc, off camera, and to the right of the screen.
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Hyperscript 16
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September 17
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17. Big Bang
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Scene: Image of an atomic bomb explosion (Archival footage from the 50s).
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Hyperscript 17
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September 18
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18. A Postcard from my grandmother
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currently off line
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Scene: Image of a postcard from the White Sands National Park. The opening shot is a close up of the white sands that looks like an image of snowdrifts. The camera pulls back to show that it is a postcard that I am holding. I turn it over and begin to draw a floor plan of my grandmother’s house.
Voice:
We used to stay each summer at my grandmother’s house in New Mexico (my mother’s mother). From the back porch we could see, off on the horizon, a thin white line--the white sands of the "White Sands National Park," which is also known as the "White Sands Military Base And Missile Testing Grounds." It’s one of the places where the atom bomb was developed in the 50s. My grandmother said that she remembered being awakened one night by a light that was as bright as daylight. She didn’t remember anything else and I don’t remember any other details of the story, only that the next day people told her that there had been a giant explosion out in the desert. I always just assumed later on when I learned about the A-bomb in school that it must have been a nuclear explosion that she was talking about. Or at least that’s how I’ve pieced the details of the story together.
Here is a drawing of her house. This is the back porch. And way across the desert is where I think that an A-bomb was exploded.
This all happened before I was born of course. No one in my family has done any research to see if it was even true. But it doesn’t really matter because it has become sort of family legend or a myth--yes a myth I guess would better describe it--something that happened (real or not) before you came into the world that profoundly shapes your world and your destiny.
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Hyperscript 18
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September 19
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19. The Day the Earth Stood Still
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Scene: Open with a scene from the movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The shadow of the robot moves toward the female lead. She screams hand over mouth, with great B-movie style, as she falls to the ground. Just before she is vaporized by the robot's laser eye, she says the secret words make the robot stop and go to the rescue of his alien commander who has been killed by the evil military.
Cut to a shot of a single strand of colored Christmas lights hanging in my studio.Voice: One of my earliest childhood memories is of Christmas. I don't know exactly how old I was but I must have been pretty young--maybe 3 or 4. I remember peeking out from the hallway that connected my bedroom to the living room and seeing the shadow of a robot that was cast from the colored lights of the Christmas tree. I don't remember anything else--just that image--that shadow of the robot.
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Hyperscript 19
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September 20
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20. Time Travel
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Scene: Close up of an old picture of me with my mother, her nun friend (Sister Helen Claire), my brother and baby brother. Camera pulls away to show that I am holding the photo in my hand. Close up of me putting the photo in a wooden box full of old photos and postcards (including the postcard from the White Sands). I close the lid on the box. Fade to black.
Voice: If it were possible… to travel back in time and for me to visit myself as a boy--to walk into this scene--would two Rudys exist or just one?
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Hyperscript 20
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September 21
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21. Fortress of Solitude
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currently off line
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Scene: The scene takes place in my white studio. Elements/props from the previous performances and scenes from the video blog are laying on the floor or pinned to the wall. There is a close up of a Superman comic strip pinned to a wall over my worktable. Superman is flying to his Fortress of Solitude. The camera pans around the room and eventually up to my sleeping loft at the end of the shot. The sleeping area is blocked from view by white canvas curtains.
Voice: This is my studio--my other studio. I have two. Have you noticed? One is where I live--the one with the fichus trees. The other is where I do my video art and sleep--I call this my white room or The Fortress of Solitude.
In my big studio and office is the computer that I use for work. I do web design and graphics for a living. The computer in the big studio is linked to the internet and has all of my graphics and web programs on it--I am blogging from it right now.
The white room/studio, that I affectionately call The Fortress of Solitude, is named after Superman's secret hideout in the Arctic. He goes there when he needs to rest after crime fighting and when he needs a little time to be alone. He often thinks about his home planet there. In Superman's Fortress of Solitude there is a machine that activates a holographic-type image memory of his father. Superman is able to communicate with this image of his father.
I do my video art work on the computer in the white room. It's faster and has more memory.
There are no windows in this room, and no phone, and no internet connection--but I do have a TV.
I sleep up there (camera pans to my sleeping loft).
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Hyperscript 21
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September 22
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22. 9/11 Reenactment
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Image: I am in bed watching the planes crash into the World Trade Center. Split screen (close up) of the planes crashing into the WTC.The word "Reenactment" is flashed under the image.
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Hyperscript 22
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September 23
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23. The Ornithologist
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Scene: (From Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho) Close up of Anthony Perkins peering into a peephole. (Split screen) I am looking through a peephole back at Anthony Perkins.
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Hyperscript 23
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September 24
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24. We are lost to it all together
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Scene: Footsteps in the forest; the sound of fallen leaves under foot; a view of the treetops; clear blue sky behind the trees; a web of dead branches and empty nests made of dried leaves.
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Hyperscript 24
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September 25
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25. Invisible Man
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Scene: A short scene from the movie The Invisible Man. The scene is repeated twice. Once with the original voices of the actors and a second time with my voice over.
Voice : (Original dialogue from the movie script.)Constable: Here, what's all this.Invisible Man: Keep back there.Constable: Keep back. Me? Do you know who you are talking to?Invisible Man: I'll give you a last chance to leave me alone.Constable: Give me a last chance? You don't know what you've done; you've committed battery and you can come along to the station with me. Come along now come quietly--unless you want me to put the handcuffs on. Invisible Man: Stop where you are. You don't know what you're doing.Constable: I know what I'm doing all right.Invisible Man: All right you fools, you've brought it on yourselves. Everything would've come right if you had only left me alone. You've driven me near madness with your peering through the keyholes and gaping through the curtains. And now you'll suffer for it. You're crazy to know who I am. Aren't you! All right I'll show you. There's a souvenir for you, (He pulls off the bandage that covers his nose), and one for you, (He pulls off his dark glasses and wig). I'll show you who I am and what I am (He is invisible).Constable: Look he's all eaten away.Invisible Man: How do you like that aye?! (He throws the last of his bandages at the Constable, laughing wildly)Voice 2: I love to watch these old science fiction and horror movies. It is our most basic fear of annihilation that is played out again and again in these narratives that is so hypnotic; and the temporary rescue and escape through fiction from what we know to be our own inevitable reality and fate--our own disappearance,
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Hyperscript 25
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September 26
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26. The Care and Maintenance of the Search Engine
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Scene: Video of myself doing a series of searches on Google, Yahoo, Craigslist and other search engines.Voice: The internet, like memory and history, is fluid. A complex, every changing, web of intention and attention that presents us to ourselves as objects of knowledge.I search for myself on the WEB. I Google Rudy Lemcke, and find dozens of listings. I find this BLOG. I must exist.But what drives it all? I search for my father. I type in 'Dad' on Craigslist and find fathers to other fathers’ sons. Is he there, somewhere in this system of exchange? Is the answer there?
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Hyperscript 26
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September 27
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27. The Haunted
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Scene: The image is of blurred figures/people moving quickly in and out of some generic looking mass transit station. A faded travel guide and postcards from India. Various maps and directions to the Taj Mahal.
Voice: The sound track that you are listening to is the sound of people coming and going through the Taj Mahal. I downloaded the audio file from the Web. Such a haunted place.Haunted love.I’ve never been to India and suspect that I never will...
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Hyperscript 27
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September 28
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28. Horizon
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Scene: The same shot of the ocean used in the "Moby Dick" video is used here but without me in the scene.Birds fly through the scene and out to sea.
Voice: Before you there are two scenes--one is the forgetfulness of being and the other is its anticipation.
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Hyperscript 28
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September 29
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29. Signing off
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Scene: Talking into the Web-cam
Voice: I'm glad it's the 29th and my month long experiment of blogging is almost over. My birthday in coming up in October and I guess that I’ve been feeling a little mid-life-ish these days (is that a word?) and wanting to talk to someone about it. The project was bigger and more difficult that I thought. I had the intention of putting up the videos every day with this blog; but got behind and never got caught up. But please come back as they will eventually be here (and this excuse for the time-lag will be deleted so that people who haven't seen this blog before will think that it went up as it was intended). A little altered history never hurts anyone. Does it? It happens all the time.Anyway, I wanted to personally say thanks for listening before I sign off.
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Hyperscript 29
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September 30
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30. OCTOBER
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Image: The final scenes from Eisenstein's OCTOBER.The sequence is inverted, half size and moved to the top of the screen. Below is a half sized video of my recreation of the final scene of the film with my reenactment of the role of the young boy.
Scenes:
1. Final scene from Eisenstein's OCTOBER. Half sized and inverted on the top section of the screen.
A montage of clocks read: 2:10 am. Clocks all over the world spin to the moment when the Bolsheviks seize power.
Cut to the young boy asleep on the throne: the red guards and the people have completed their night's work and the director has finished his project.
The Soviet Congress: wild applause, Lenin takes the podium, and secretaries fall to dictation. Lenin announces. "THE WORKERS' AND PEASANTS' REVOLUTION HAS SUCCEEDED." The film ends with Lenin's synthesis: the old thesis has been overthrown by the Bolshevik opposition--the result is a new "WORKERS' AND PEASANTS'" state.
2. A recreation of this scene with me as the boy asleep on the throne. Half sized and at the bottom of the split screen.
Voice: "The final act of the revolution seems, after all this, too brief, too dry, too businesslike--somehow out of correspondence with the historic scope of events. The reader experiences a kind of disappointment. He is like a mountain climber, who, thinking the main difficulties are still ahead, suddenly discovers that he is already on the summit or almost there. Where is the insurrection? There is no picture of the insurrection. The events do not form themselves into a picture. A series of small operations, calculated and prepared in advance, remain separated one from another both in space and time. A unity of thought and aim unites them, but they do not fuse in the struggle itself. There is no action of great masses. There are no dramatic encounters with the troops. There is nothing of all that which imaginations brought up upon the facts of history associate with the idea of insurrection." (Trotsky, III, 232. from his critique of Einsentein's film OCTOBER)
3. Image: The End (still image from the film OCTOBER in Russian, with English subtitles.
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