IN THE SKY

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

NAME: opps, Jeff




As we're just starting up at NAME: mistakes are part of the whole process,but really there is no excuse for the glaring omission of our good friend, Jeff Majer's, role in the Trouble on the Playground video. Jeff not only played the dastardly binocular wielding, basketball throwing villain he rang us up the other day to remind us that while Andrew and we couldn't remember whose concept the video was he sure could. Jeffery's. That's right,yo. Fair enough, makes sense. Jeff's always been the type to not let boredom win over silliness, and Andrew didn't put up much of a fight to deny J.M.'s claim. No harm,no foul...now we got it straight. Painter, southerner, good dude and very near future hubby. Jeff's getting married next month in VA, and we're going and doing double duty. 1.to be witness to our friend's eternal love commitment ceremony and 2.capture the action of said ceremony from the perspective of single dudes ,who have no prospect of marriage anytime soon...that 2nd one is really is not as pathetic as it sounds, anyway until then peep some recent work of one of the best painters we know right above and hit up the website. www.jeffreymajer.com.

Monday, June 25, 2007

NAME: interview Andrew Harris



Below is a video we did with one our friends a while back. It was super fun and we wanted to remember exactly how it all went down so we got ANDREW to come over and submit to some questions with as much inside joke giggling as possible.
NAME: So was that your 1st photoplay?
ANDREW: Ah, yeah that was the 1st one that I did.
N: Now where did we do that exactly?
A: That took place at S17 St. or something like that in my kitchen. In my kitchen, in downtown Richmond, Shockeo Bottom. It was definitely in my kitchen in like a five-foot space...pretty much.
N: So it’s like a movie, but with still pictures. Where'd you get that concept, influences or whatnot?
A: Well, I mean before motion pictures there were pictures. Muybridge and other photographers who studied motion. He and Edison pretty much developed motion pictures. He had the thing where you spin it and look in the slits, you can see the horse running, you might remember that from a science museum from back in the days...and then, ya know it was just fun to come up with little scenarios to play out.
N:I can't remember whose idea "Trouble on the Playground" was. I just remember being bored and silly.
A: Yeah, yeah Charlie worked at that store where they had all that weird stuff like wigs and then I dunno we were pretty bored, maybe a little high, and we decided 'hey lets play around and take some pictures' and I don't know where the concept came... we just had a basketball and a bike and I decided it would be good for Mike to get hit with basketball and fly off the bike.
N: What would you say is the appeal to taking pictures of yr friends?
A:I mean it’s always nice to have a document or documentary of who you hung out with over the years. But as far as doing something other than party pictures. Something kinda different and fun to do, you have to sorta act a little bit, its an activity ya know, a creative, engaging activity.
N: Any photoplay concepts you working on now?
A:I mean I just have one, that’s not that complicated, pretty simple. People meeting up on the train and deciding to go somewhere else. I think it would fun to have those over-animated for the camera indicated emotions and exaggerated expressions. It would just make it more playful, Subway's a good location.
N: The subway is a good location as long as they don't think you're a terrorist or something.
A: Well I have gotten accosted by a police officer for taking photographs with a flash under staircases...I guess you maybe could put a bomb there.
N:I know you have a job taking pictures, but what are YOU working on now?
A: Pretty much sticking with flat abstractions, I like those a lot. I found this old flattened, rusted city wastebasket, ya know. Some tress that look like they're from Africa in Flushing Meadows Park. That I just got the film back on. More commercial stuff to hang in yr hotel room to get royalties from. Just trying to come up with commercially viable pictures as well as artistically expressive.
N: Speaking of commercially viable, I know you guys are starting a magazine right? Can you give me an idea of what that’s all about?
A: Mannequin Magazine is going to be an interesting art and fashion magazine. Visually inventive design, using a lot of hand to paper stuff as opposed to computers. We’re trying not to do any Photoshop on the models; we want to keep everybody real and natural…not overly perfect. That’s just more for the kids. We wanna focus on up and coming and emerging artists, comparison and contrast articles. The blog is gonna be good, mannequinmag.com.
N: If you could set up a photo or concept with no barriers, like money or time or talent what would it look and feel like?
A: It would be big, probably traditional film in black and white, so it would feel analogy and warm, but still clinical. The subject matter would be human form, human figure with some kind of distortion. I’d want to use really long strips of film and print it out so it could be displayed in the round like one long photograph where the viewer would have to be in the center of the room to see the whole piece. Overwhelming, but familiar.
N: Well thank you very much.
A: Yeah, man

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

NAME:Trouble on the playground

A Harris production

NAME: Summer Girl Types


Spring has melted into summer and at NAME: our hormones are raging just like everyone else's so we decided we would put together a field guide for summer girl types. We sat down and thought about it for a bit and wondered where we could find all kinds of different summer girls types,and after a video Ichat consult with a good friend we thought what the F, we live in New York City where intriguing looking women live,breathe and play all day everyday. So we started going out and getting empirical.

NAME: Peak Williamsburg


With the concept of peak oil being rather ubiquitous today. We at NAME: started to think about how other nonrenewable commodities could reach their peaks and there after fall into a terminal decline. It makes sense that Hubert’s Peak Oil theory, based on bell-shaped curve reasoning can be applied to other phenomena besides oil right? Well we thought so. Hence Peak Williamsburg, the theory that the commodity associated with the north Brooklyn neighborhood will reach it's maximum production rate and then steadily decline. So we're putting our feelers out and collecting data to support the theory that we will soon enter Peak Williamsburg, if we haven't already.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

NAME: The Boys with the Thorn in Their Sides


So why are men so vilified these days? All the subtle man phobia images and talk of mainstream media and the ever increasing phenomena of hetero women fucking one another is just some unscientific proof. Don't get us wrong lots of dudes are just plain scumbags,but lots are thoughtful sensitive people who just wanna live. Can't we live? We've seen the sticker that says "Men are the new Women" So what the FUCK does that mean? That its men's turn to get the shitty end of the stick or that women are now powerful enough to be scumbags as well. Neither one of those scenarios paints a very pretty picture for the future of men/women or sorry womyn/men relationships. So we went out and asked a few people without dicks why the world thinks guys are so shitty, then to be thorough we asked another few people with penises what they were doing to fuck up the basis of human civilization.