August 2006 Archives
Deepest Journey. We drove about 2900 miles in 7 days. Jake Longstreth and I saw America. We saw it's harshness and we saw it's beauty. We drove for about 400+ miles a day, and shot photographs for about 4 hours a days. We stood in parking lots. We scurried up embankments. We snuck to the backside of buildings. We had things stolen. We picnic'd in parking lots. We had the cops called on us. We stayed in emo hotel rooms. We noticed the differences in the land of this country (the northeast, the rolling densely wooded hills of pennsylvania, the heavy humid skies of the midwest, the fields of agriculture that butted up against retail, the point in kansas where the midwest became the west, the familiar vastness of wyoming) while also noticing the sameness of what we choose to put on our lands. We tried to take somewhat attractive photos of the same buildings in different places over and over again. We got tired. We got pumped. We're planning another trip.
Check out some of the photos from this trip.
Video is pretty big in size. 7+ minutes. about 50 MBs. Roll with it, America is big.
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Music played during driving footage = Steve Hillage ----> Dear Nora
Places we stayed:
-Altoona, PA - Econo Lodge
-Harrison, OH - Quality Inn
-Danville, IL - Super 8
-Columbia, MO - Best Value Inn
-Hays, KS - Budget Host Inn
-Cheyenne, WY - Firebird Motel
We kept a comically thorough log of the trip including every tank of gas and everything consumed by us (water excluded) which I hope to post soon, but now I have to be up in 8 hours for the 12 hour drive back to Portland and we have to shoot a Wal-Mart in Burley, ID, a great strip in Meridian/Eagle, ID and possibly some stuff in Ontario, OR.
Peace. Love. Dove.
I write to you beautiful people from a Quality Inn here in Harrison, Ohio right on the Indiana/Ohio border. The cicadas are loud this morning and their interplay with the din of the freeway makes for a truly unique mix. This is the morning of Day 3 of Jake Longstreth's and my cross country road trip. We left from Southbury, CT on Tuesday morning. Our journey is one of documenting retail and restaurant chains in America with a focus on new growth and areas of brand bunching. It has been at times beautiful and at other times alienating and ugly. We have walked miles in parking lots, taking hundreds of photos, ate at Dunkin Donuts, sat in standstill traffic on the West Virginia, Pennsylvania border.
We have stopped in places like Deer Park, NJ; Scranton, PA; Wilkes Barre, PA; Buckhorn, PA; Altoona, PA; St. Clairsville, OH; Reynoldsburg, OH; and more.
(If you want to track us)
Day 1 was Southbury to Altoona, PA. Day 2 was Altoona, to Harrison, OH. Today we plan to spend most of the day in Indiana.
The first day was inspiring and artistically rich. The second day was almost as equally as frustrating and brutal. Day three has so much promise.
Check out some of the photos from this trip.
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A few notes from the Mead Five Star one subject notebook that was purchased at a Big KMart in Scranton as a journal for the trip.
- Babies 'R Us looks amazing
- Office Depot official questions Jake('s intentions)/somewhat pleasant interaction
- No beer in convenience stores here. End up at Pizzeria Uno bar for 1 beer each.
- "Why are you taking pictures of the plaza?"
- Long John Silver domination continues.
This is footage from day one. The music is R. Carlos Nakai. It opens and closes inside the "Human Vortex" tunnel in the Country Junction store in Wilkes Barre, PA.
I've always been afraid to include any political statement in projects that I've been involved with. Worried about as coming off as naive, or making bad political art, or even being exclusionary with my statements and therefore I have avoided it like the plague.
Inspired by Rebecca's recent statements and words along with Jona's newest post I realized it was time to break the political vacuum.
I have gone as far into the feared void as possible. Not having any experience with subtly marrying politics and art I have gone for the didactic, anvil falling on your head approach. I hope by showing myself I can say this stuff and everything will be okay, actually everything will be better because I'm being more complete and honest, that I can get to a point that actually combines my aesthetic and what I believe in. Sometimes artistic merit (not that I think what is normally on this blog has lots of artistic merit) doesn't matter and things just need to be said.
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This video is big in size (36 MB). Had to make it that way so the things could be read. It will take a minute but let it load all the way.
Music is: David Bazan "Backwoods Nation," Lil' Wayne "Georgia Bush" (It is lame that Lil Weezy is denigrating the President by calling him a woman's name, but I wanted some popular rap and this is some good political disses), Adrian Orange "I Don't Know."