Closer


Music video for Donald Johnson’s song, “Closer.” Recorded By Javier Hernadez-Miyares at his Rego Park Studio. I like to call it the Rego Ragga. The instrument you see at the beginning is a small Indian made synthesizer that is used to play Sitar and tabla against etc. It fills in for those weird squeezebox and crank driven drones that are used in Indian music to such wonderful effect. Javier likes to collect all sorts of odd little synths and electronic noise makers I thought this one would work well with the “Eastern” sound of this song, while still being contemporary…. plus I thought switching it on would make a good beginning and ending of a shot.

The Other Night At Barbès

Barbes
The other night I was home alone and bored with drawing on the computer and bored with all manner of other digital media distractions and most importantly, bored with being alone. I became nostalgic for Paris. So inspired by the recent and past collabs with UU, I decided to grab the old Montmartre valise of magic (drawing supplies and paper scraps,etc.) and head out to a local spot I haven’t haunted in a while, Barbes. There to make a mess with ink and paper and people and the ultimate solvent: alcohol. Tango music filled the air as I made some scribbles. It was a nice time and today I am playing with the drawings and thinking about how mixing up video images and digital drawing for Willoughby could be as fun and sort of familiar as making Café Collages, or whatever you call those things I’ve been doing on books and maps and scraps since at least Paris and then Galapagos back in ’97 or 8 I think? Still, it seems important to keep people and place and paper involved at least on a conceptual level.

In other news, it seems official that I will be doing a residency at 17 Frost from November 3 Through the end of the Year! This will be a multimedia installation for the project we’ve been collaborating on since last summer, CAGE.
barbes2