The Journey Begins: At the first WORKS and covering YEMENWED by Tall Matt Haynes

PROLOGUE… THE MIDDLE OF THE FIRST WORKS: This first draft of this entry was composed in Tall Matt Haynes’s car outside the Washington high school. It was 10:15 on Thursday night and the The Works had been temporarily evacuated so the over-21s could be sifted back in for the more grownup festivities. This being a high school, the procedure fittingly felt like a fire drill. For Tall Matt Haynes, it was a great chance to blog, hopefully returning to the party without the nagging feeling that he should get something down before his accuracy blurs.
YEMENWED: Okay, so Blog Assignment #1 has been to cover Yemenwed, an ongoing exhibit at the Washington High site. I really had no idea what Yemenwed was upon seeking it out in room 107. My heart sank as I saw it was a video loop. Fudge! I’ve just arrived at The Works and instead of romping around fleetingly looking at multiple stuff while socializing and mooching free snacks, I gotta lean against a wall in a bare room and watch a damn movie. One that probably doesn’t have a plot either. Fudge, fudge!
Well, good news is that “Yemenwed: Episode 3” is quite watchable. Yemenwed is an art collaborative based out of New York whose video, sculptural and movement work explores the relationships between seemingly separate worlds. What you’ve got in Episode 3 is a computer animated landscape of waving grass with a pathway that leads you to a narrow white pyramid. Inside are all sorts of cool computer animated internal-body/interior-design forms that slide through walls, expand, retract, transform, all to neat, neat sound design. Composited into all this are live-action humans some of whom have made pilgrimages to the pyramid and some of whom are inside the pyramid doing ritual mime business. This is what the characters of TRON dream about if and when they nap. Fun. A bit busy, but fun.
The other video in the loop is “Bedroom w TV” and while it’s much simpler and easier to track than “Episode 3,” I didn’t have nearly as much fun with it. Firstly, it’s a video recorded live performance so my grump logic told me that I was only getting the experience second hand. Secondly it has the look of the dreaded Unfun But Important Performance Art Piece (alienated-looking people in a loft space doing alienated-looking repetitive motions occasionally emitting alienated-sounding music). So my mind put up a wall to that one, mostly. Still, good stage pictures, nice progression of focus, nice tight work from the ensemble. Maybe if I had seen it live.
Oh, and there’s a sculpture in the room as well, down front near the wall projection. From where I was standing it looked like the love child of a kayak and the Spock coffin. It doesn’t do anything during the show but I have to admit that after “Episode 3” I felt that to approach the sculpture was to invite it to jump me and send me to dark, pretty places.
EPILOGUE… BACK TO THE END OF THE FIRST WORKS: Tall Matt Haynes returned to The Works at 11:15 pm. To his dismay, there was no more free corn-flavored ice cream being dished out on level 2. Tall Matt Haynes did, however have an excellent time greeting professional friends and checking out other exhibits and sights. Random highlights include: “The Works” projected onto an old outdoor smokestack (brilliant!), space-transforming golden shiny shreds hanging from all hallway lights (clever!), unisex bathrooms (golly!), and an outdoor giant white sheet upon which was being projected the image of a giant white indoor sheet being ripped apart (funky!)
Hope you all enjoyed yourselves. I’ll see you in the lobby.