Santiago de Chile

Santiago is a city of confrontations and contradictions: the architecture, the people, the politics, the religion(s). It sounds like an overwhelming and unconsidered statement, but it has been swimming around in my brain since I arrived.
The people are open and hospitable, like none I have ever seen or met. Yet, there is this an astounding feeling of separation - from you and them and amongst themselves. There is a middle class, unlike many South American countries (so I have heard), but the separations between the classes is much greater than I am used to. There is a clear divide between the haves and the have nots. There is a clear divide between the mountains and the sea, that is where Santiago lies. There is a clear divide between the architecture of the 60s and now, hmmm yet they are situated right next to one another.
There is a quite uneasiness with the history of the Pinochet regime (I realize this is a very touchy subject here) and yet, there isn't. I definitely do not understand how all of this is.
The balancing act is precarious, yet they seem to almost cancel each other out. They are hiding something. Or are they?
I need to investigate.
I almost feel like I cannot post this.

Just some thoughts

Some of you may be wondering just what is it that I have been up to on the other side of the world.

I've been thinking (amongst other things). I thought I would post a few thoughts. Still working with the lil' fuji - I love the exposures, but I certainly don't luv the un-user-friendly-ness of the menus. My new LUMIX should arrive in the next week or so. Hopefully the menus will be easier to navigate.
Additionally this lil' lumix will give me access to better shots. Why? Santiago (and Valparaíso) are notorious for pickpockets and theives of the like. The smaller the camera, the less conspicuous I look. I hope the camera is all that the reviewers said it was....
You may be wondering what you are looking at. Well, there is the fish market, Kate, a certain perspective in Valpo, somewhere on Irarrazaval (yeah, took me a while to figure out how to say the name of that street correctly) waiting, an almost deserted beach after days of rainstorms in Chuy, Uruguay, some debris from a day of neglect in Uruguay (before the rainstorms), and just a corner house with the Andes in the background - respectively.
I figure, even if I don't really have the time to make work, I can at least work visually through ideas.
Do you think I should write more so that all of the images have some text in between them? Hmmmmmm......

Alfred University in LOOP Video Art Festival '09

It's done! It's done!! We (Victoria Bradbury, Stephanie McMahon, and I) watched 56 videos last Friday night and chose 12 of them to participate as the Alfred University 2009 Selection for the Programa de las Escuelas at the LOOP Video Art Festival in Barcelona, Spain this May (May 21 - 31). It was mighty difficult this year, I have to tell you. But we finally made some decisions and here they are (in the order they will be screened):

• Stephen Rooney, Surreal Alfred in Winter, 2008, 4:25
• Gia Michael, anx, 2008, 2:43
• Colleen Keough, aggwessive, 2008, 1:47
• Terese Longva, RE-producing the Original Me, 2008, 9:09
• Woody Packard, Why I am Late, 2008, 2:49
• Jason Bernagozzi, Recitation/Reception, 2008, 5:54
• Joe Bigley, A Western Man's Rejection of Convenience,2008, 2:36
• Chris McDaniel with Chang Chun and Zhang Jing, Covergence/Divergence,2008, 4:53
• Elena Grajek, basil, 2008, 0:45
• Lauren Graves, just the yolks, 2009, 4:23
• Moyi Zhang, Organ city, 2009, 9:26
• Elena Grajek, Lane's Brain, 2009, 2:04

I'm currently exporting a version so that I can post it here .... maybe it will be up later on tonight!!

Thank you to everyone who submitted!!!

New Curatorial Work for Me! Yipee!

Just a quick note: I'm on the curatorial team for the digital art and photography biennale in San Francisco del Monte de Oro in the province of San Luís in Argentina! In commemoration of the the bicentennial of the May Revolution, the municipality of San Francisco del Monte de Oro is organizing several events and the biennale is one of them. The exhibit will open there in March of 2010 and then travel to the capital of the province, Cordoba, Rosario, and finally Buenos Aires!

Submissions will be taken from April to December of 2009. Stay tuned!