What Caged Finches Sound Like
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The sound of 11 caged zebra finches, scenes from a train in Sri Lanka, and the life of a forgotten literary figure of the Harlem Renaissance were among the subjects explored by awardwinning film, video, and acoustic artists at the New School on Friday when the media studies department hosted its ninth annual graduate student showcase of outstanding works. The “best of show” accolade went to M. Weimer for her video “Passing: 13 Things About Nella Larsen.” Ms. Weimer used 13 dictionary definitions of “passing” to explore the obscure life of the writer Nella Larsen, whose second novel is titled “Passing.”The work, which straddles between video art and traditional documentary, uses the little photographic and biographical information that exists to document the life of Larsen, who was the first African-American woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship.
The film featured a version of George Gershwin’s “Summertime” sung by Sarah Vaughn, an African-American, and remixed by a Japanese disc jockey trio.
Other prizes that evening went to Brooklyn resident, Justin Feinstein,for an audio composition consisting of the sounds of 11 caged finches. On the track, what sounds like percussive beats is actually the sound of the birds landing on the sides of their cages. Another Brooklynite, Michael Petrucelly, was recognized for his documentary about a bohemian erotica writer, David Newburge. In the film, Mr. Newburge laments the gentrification of Greenwich Village and introduces his pet parakeet, Kicky, which suffers from cancer. Mr. Newburge was present at the screening.
Also winning was Ken Gordon for his short trailer called “Northwest by North-Northwest” which explores the disparity between the street grid of Manhattan as it is internalized by its residents and the actual directions of north, south, east, and west on a compass.
Introducing the program was the event’s co-producer, Michelle Handelman, who teaches at the New School. The evening was hosted by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who together work with sculpture, video, and computer software.They showed a miniature diorama of a traffic jam scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Le Weekend.”Their other work included a suitcase with a collection of DVDs of the television police show “Starsky and Hutch” – which ran from 1975 to 1979. Only the episodes were broken up into a kind of “typology” where a viewer can see consecutively all the car chases, all the sunglasses, and so on.
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MYSTICAL CITY Jewish Tsfat is a town on a mountain in the Upper Galilee in northern Israel. Over the centuries, its inhabitants have included famous Jewish mystics Joseph Caro (1488-1575) and Isaac Luria (1534-72). Noted features of town include its artist’s colony and historic synagogues.
An inaugural benefit was recently held at the Museum of Jewish Heritage for the Nachal Novea Tsfat Fund, which supports the work of the Breslev community in Tsfat. The event featured a public dialogue between Rabbi Ephraim Kenig and Elie Wiesel, the fund’s honorary chairman.
Honorees that evening included the CEO of Frankel’s Furniture in Brooklyn, Nachman Fried, and his wife, Toiby, an aesthetician; the CEO of Century Coverage Corporation in Valley Stream, N.Y., Yossie Ross, and his wife, Alice, a homemaker who volunteers in local hospitals; and the president of the Nachal Novea Tsfat Fund and chief executive officer of Doar Communications, Rabbi Samuel Solomon, and his wife, Dr. Meryl Solomon,a family practice physician.
Mr. Wiesel cited these lines of Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” The famous passage goes on to list several examples such as a time to be born, a time to die, a time to kill, and a time to heal, and so forth. But when it comes to one verse, Mr. Wiesel pointed out, the text literally reads “time mourn, time dance.” He then said that Jewish Orthodox mystical rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (d. 1760), who is known as the “Baal Shem Tov,” had a marvelous interpretation on this matter.That rabbi noted that there were occasions when time itself was mourning and dancing. Mr. Wiesel said that Jewish history was dancing when Jerusalem was reunited in 1967.
