CURRENT (project description)
Current is an experimental documentary of cultural expressions from wartime America. By combining methods and theories of visual anthropology with a unique process of video experimentation we are creating a new lexicon for cinema. Cross-Country interviews, stop-motion collage, science-fiction fantasy, video-journal entries, and process portraits from an inter-disciplinary group of artists combine to create a collective CURRENT of expression and debate.
Golden fields and glinting glass disintegrates and distorts into video feedback. Through branches and along the open road, we slide past emerald acres and rush hour traffic in a rhythmic, musical succession of images from the endless American landscape. We scour the land filming mirages and reflections with improvisational in-camera composition, responding to the scene unfolding before the lens with bursts of imagery and expanses of meditation. We are documenting a collective dream-time, finding unity in opposites and simultaneous experiences. The camera’s point of view serves as our main character and guide through the film. The camera movements float, then fly, like a spirit roaming the earth observing and absorbing all the sights, sounds and surroundings it passes.
Filmmaker, Jimi Pantalon and visual anthropologist Laura Garland travel across the country collecting audio interviews from volunteers. Using portable sound recording equipment, pedestrians are interviewed about media, culture and dreams. Participants are encouraged to reflect on their own experience or outlook, and to respond subjectively. Responses are laced into the sound collage of the film and represent transmissions from a collective conscious, led by two main voices whose script is based on interactions and observations recorded while traveling. People in different places and moments in time discuss and debate cultural observations and opinions. We have only a brief peek into the lives of these characters, yet we sense that we are apprehending an entire world in the cross signals.
Audio and video are processed through a series of generation loss experiments. Generation loss is the difference in quality between an original and a copy, revealing the ways stories and ideas are filtered and changed with every re-telling. We witness the transformations that take place as information morphs with each new recording. Cross transferring, mixed media collages, and re-photography are combined with artist portraits and video journals to allow the film to navigate between the personal and the cultural, mixing fiction with non-fiction to reflect upon issues of objectivity and truth.
Stop-motion collages act as portals between scenes, creating a visceral editing pace and an organic story structure. Video disintegrates into animated still frames, and is then treated with paint, paper and found objects. Current uses a dichotomy of images to explore what is sacred in our consumer world, the history of mass media, and the impact of political geography on culture. Time-lapsed maps display the ever changing man-made national borders, we see the technological evolution of mass media from movable type to the world wide web, and symbols and archetypes of rebellion are de-constructed to examine possibilities of change and new perspectives. We also see the artists creating the collages, revealing the collaborative process of the film. Working in their studios, in the field and on collaborative events, the WashMachine Collective is a vibrant sub-culture of artists and culture jammers producing and documenting exhibits, performances and events, presented in a series of episodes dispersed throughout the film. This footage is a precious document of a pivotal moment in recent history and the subsequent years, as well as an experimental ethnography of a modern community of artists.
CURRENT ignores boundaries of genre and medium, engaging the interior world of the viewer. Overly determined plots used in conventional modes of storytelling encourage passivity, while CURRENT invokes awareness and reflection.
“Where do we gather our collective ideas and opinions?”
Media infiltrates most aspects of our daily lives and is a major source of cultural definition and reflection. Mainstream media functions as a tool of hegemonic marketing for big business. The information we now depend on is confusing and manipulated. We are facing an epoch of unhealthy media diets, transfixed within a culture of amnesia where the spectrum for debate is limited by the interest and agenda of government/corporation. New stories and experiences are needed to help re-define authoritative information and our individual media diets. CURRENT provides an outlet for unheard voices outside the sectors of coordinated power for new observations on American culture.
Current is a kaleidoscope of small towns, cities, roadside culture and surreal landscapes, scattered with a cacophony of voices and characters. The episodic nature of the film will be in constant, alternating flux; making the process of the film transparent and revealing every stage from the collage script through the final transmission. Along the way, we get glimpses into American life, art, and opinion of extreme differences. A dialogue of debate is created within CURRENT, to be used as a tool for the viewer to continue the discussion and exploration of the ideas presented by the film well after the screening.
The power of a group theater experience is a crucial element to Project Current. Although movie house popularity is fading, public screenings and performances, in which we enter as strangers but leave as a group unified by a singular experience, remains an important ritual. Current will not be finished when we export the final cut. A distribution tour of facilitated screenings is planned for this film. The screenings will take place in traditional as well as unconventional locations, and will be followed by an invitation to the audience to participate in an interactive opportunity for expression. Installed gallery displays will provide avenues of engagement and exploration alongside areas for recording personal ideas about the film, the country, yourself, or anything else. In this way, the intensity created by the screening experience is expanded before being dispersed. By not immediately shuffling out the door, but to collaborate in an expression of creativity in the theatre space, the audience continues the story of the film and makes a place for public dialogue and debate. We are giving venue to the voiceless, and encouraging the viewer to arrive at their own conclusions, to confront new questions and to gain appreciation and awareness of the collective conscious.
