Our Records Outlive Us

Our records outlive us:

The practice of recording and archiving audio and visual information is a (healthy) response to the awareness of our impermanence. There is something juicy and real in the act of organizing information for safekeeping, as evidenced by the recipe books, geneologies, discographies, herbaria, legers, and memoirs we are compelled to preserve.

To honor the human tradition of recording practices and make a little love letter to history, I'm making an artist's book and read-along-record soundtrack, due out in 2012. This is the culmination of 10 years of work in photography, mixed media, sound recording and turntablism.

My musical background includes study in music history, theory, composition and performance at Fordham University and University of Vermont. In 2000, I took a second (and a third) job to earn the funds to purchase two turntables, a mixer, recording equipment, and to begin collecting vinyl records. I began recording and editing mixtapes, playing dance parties, and playing a weekly radio show. Hip Hop culture is a rich environment for creative interaction with music history, and for experimenting with analog and digital technologies in composition.

Concurrently, I began to see my work in photography and mixed media as complimentary practices: photographs became visual "samples"; collages became "mixtapes".

As I began to study Buddhism and work in the field of Hospice, both modes of recording and organizing information (photography and sound recording) became significant to me in their relationship to impermanence; our records outlive us.

The project I'm working on now, "RECORDS", is an audio/visual essay on impermanence and archiving, in the form of an artist's book and pressed vinyl companion record. The form is borrowed from the read-along-record stories enjoyed by the children of the late 1970's and 1980's. I chose to borrow this form for its analog integration of audio and visual information, and because of its concurrence with the birth of Hip Hop culture. The title of the project is a play on words, directly addressing the subject of recording and archiving information, while engaging the interest of audiophiles, DJs, secretaries, librarians, and others interested in the human compulsion to and practice of organize(-ing) information.

I'm currently editing both the artist's book and the mixtape soundtrack.

One piece of the work is honoring the beauty of being alive in this world by documenting tiny things, everyday things. Showing the spectacularly ordinary things in a beautiful way. We have nothing more than this collection of days we call our lifetime. And the gratitude for being here to notice. The essence of the book is love. A celebration of impermanence. A testimony of engagement. Things do not last, but we love, work and celebrate nonetheless.

And our records outlive us.

Sparkling Finitude

"Our brief finitude is but a beautiful spark in the vast darkness of space. So we should live the fleeting day with passion and, when the night comes, depart from it with grace."

-Archbishop of Edinburgh, from the memorial service of Jane White Cooke, painter and lover of life.

Here is the link to her obituary:

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/burlingtonfreepress/obituary.aspx?n=jane-white-cooke&pid=150915069

Here is my favorite line in the obituary:

"After the Academy she was awarded a fellowship to study art in Florence, Italy, where she rented a studio on the Costa San Giorgio and led a bohemian life, devoted to painting and fun." In the midst of grown-up concerns, I find this notion inspiring; perhaps the responsibilities of life are not in conflict with devotion to 'painting and fun'!

How can you devote 'the fleeting day' to passion? I'm going to plant morning glory seeds, lay a color wash over a really big canvas, and watch the swollen lake throw driftwood up its steep shore, over and over again.

See Jane's paintings here.

Money for art, not for war

I'm taking the biggest plunge of my artistic life thus far (other than the daily practice of keep-on-keeping-on) and putting my all into publishing "RECORDS", the read-along-record and artist's book I've been working on and avoiding in turns, for the last 10 years.

Right now I'm crafting the funding appeal I'll submit to public and private arts funders. Here's my project summary:

"RECORDS" is an audio/visual essay on impermanence and archiving, in the form of an artist's book and pressed vinyl companion record.  The form is borrowed from the read-along-record stories enjoyed by the children of the late 1970's and 1980's.  This form was chosen for its analog integration of audio and visual information, and because of its concurrence with the birth of Hip Hop culture, in which the artist (a photographer and turntablist) has found her creative praxis in the present day.  The title of the project is a play on words, directly addressing the subject of recording and archiving information, while engaging the interest of audiophiles, DJs, secretaries, librarians, and others interested in 20th century music history and the human compulsion to and practice of organize(-ing) information. The suggested subtext of the essay is that the practice of recording and archiving audio and visual information is a (healthy) response to the awareness of our impermanence.  There is something juicy and real in the act of organizing information for safekeeping, as evidenced by the recipe books, geneologies, discographies, herbariums, legers, and memoirs we are compelled to preserve.

RECORDS will occupy its position in various archives as a 24-page, full color artist's book filled with photographs, handwritten discographies and setlists, diagrams, liner notes, and album covers, accompanied by a double-sided 7" vinyl soundtrack record. It will be fully indexed and documented, with any necessary appendices. Grant monies will produce a 200-item run of the book/record and promotional materials.  The soundtrack is composed in the spirit of the Hip Hop mixtape, using traditional sampling methods as well as archivist field recordings to create a textural and rhythmic listening experience.

I'll share more samples and juxtapositions in the coming weeks. Feel free to cheer me on and suggest funders or just put me in touch with other archive geeks. Please leave thoughts and suggestions in the comment form. Thanks!

-Mothertrucker aka Beccamack

Starlings, pussywillows, illustrations-in-progesss