Megan and Murray McMillan

The Shape of Our Best Intentions, 2011

We will be debuting our new video installation, The Shape of Our Best Intentions, at the 2012 deCordova Biennial, which runs from January 23 to April 22. There’s no public opening, but there is a Members Preview Day that’s open to guests of the artists — all you have to do is give them our name at the gate. We’ll also be giving an artists’ talk on Saturday, March 10 at 2pm. Here’s a link to the full list of events for the exhibition. Hope to see you at one of them.

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January 21, 2012, 10 am – 5 pm

Please join us for an exclusive preview of The 2012 deCordova Biennial

The exhibition preview is open to members, corporate members, Lincoln residents, and guests of The 2012 deCordova Biennial artists as a thank you for your generous support of deCordova.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

1 pm Tour of the Biennial with Curator Dina Deitsch
2:30 pm Artist Talk with Biennial artist Jonathan Gitelson

ONGOING Interactive Performance:
For You, [W]Rapper by Jessica Gath
DeCordova invites you to bring a gift for a friend or a loved one for Gath to wrap and return to you.

We’re pleased to announce that our current project, The Shape of Our Best Intentions (which was previously referred to under the working title Flying Room) will open as a video installation this January at the 2012 Biennial at the DeCordova Museum in Boston (Lincoln).

This is the room that will be “flying”, er, asymetrically rotating suspended from a truss. The room is 700 lbs by itself, and 1300 lbs with performers and finished interior. The completed room/truss/counterweight is 2500 lbs, or 1.25 tons.

How do you safely suspend 1.25 tons? With a 2 ton gantry:

Project location (Rumsford, RI)

Project model

Project illustration

We’ve started a new project that we’ll refer to as “The Flying Room” until it’s titled. We just designed it while attending the I-Park Residency. I-Park is a new residency in Connecticut that hosted 15 collaborating artists for three weeks to make works and meditate on working collaboratively. With our blueprints and choreography mapped, we’re now fabricating the set this August and will shoot it September 3 and 4. As usual, we’ll blog our process.

We’re constructing a room that is asymmetrically ceiling mounted, and able to rotate (see the model and drawings above). Things happen in rooms that move.

So many great films. I’ve been keeping a list of my favorite films for a number of years. Here is the current top five:

1. Trois couleurs: Bleu, Rouge, Bialy, Krzysztof Kieslowski (1993-94)

2. Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders (1987)

3. Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates), Sergei Parajanov (1968)

4. The Perfect Human, Jørgen Leth (1967)

5. Annie Hall, Woody Allen (1977)

This is hard to admit, but we’re struggling with this project. Collaborating with so many people has allowed us to go faster than we’re accustomed to going. We’re now in unfamiliar territory and working hard to get our head around exactly where we are. Here are some images of our [still untitled] work in progress.

We either need to add or take away something significant to find this work.

In the meantime, we’re preparing for to be in residency at I-Park for the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Projects Program this July.

Actor Philippe Bowgen working on his choreography.

This project has two parts: 1) a video and photo component and 2) a live performance component that we’re directing and designing. The live performance, titled Meronymy, opens for three shows this Sat and Sun, Feb 12 and 13, at the Pell Chafee Performance Center in downtown Providence. It’s a hybrid between theater and fine art. We’re collaborating with playwright Rachel Jendrzejewski, composer Peter Bussigel and actors Leah Anderson, Philippe Bowgen, Vichet Chum, Mia Ellis and Drew Ledbetter.

Tickets are free, but must be reserved at:
http://pw.brown.edu/blueroom/reserves/new?show_id=60

Chris Capozzi on lift, and Alex Haynes assemble the head.

Every project has its fair share of mistakes. Avoiding them is impossible, the mistakes are merely what our road looks like. We realized a big one yesterday: the math I used to create the head had a critical miscalculation that ended up stretching it 15% wider than it should be. Our head looked like a cartoon.

Awkward.

It was close enough to work for someone who doesn’t notice that their TV is on the wrong aspect ratio, but striking to anyone who considers proportions. Oh my.

Fixing it meant taking down a lot of work and sliding all vertical lines closer: a discouraging amount of work that risked putting us in a pinch to be done in time for the scheduled video shoot in 10 days. Not fixing it meant a conceptual problem: a cartoon head didn’t match with the poetry we are aiming for. Being 15% off is in that fumbly middle-ground that tends to look like a mistake no matter how you swing it.

So, we decided to take the hit and fix it. It will set us back, but we’ve got a strong production crew: Alex Haynes is a fabrication ninja and Chris Capozzi taught Yoda how to smoke.

Our assistant Chris Capozzi and intern Warra Hugh place the next piece.

Our goal is to recreate performer Leah Anderson’s head 20′ tall.