In 1919, black sharecroppers’ decades-long efforts to challenge debt slavery in the Arkansas Delta culminated in the nation’s deadliest racial massacre and labor battle. With contemporary parallels in the Movement for Black Lives, the film reveals the enduring legacy of an untold but seminal story in the continuing struggle for freedom and equality. A lyrical composition of Delta voices, archival materials, and the new, groundbreaking research, WE HAVE JUST BEGUN is a portrait of ongoing rural struggle toward emancipation, despite brutal attempts to suppress it.

An investigation into the impact of dreaming (and it’s lack) on the individual and collective psyches. Beginning in the city of Vienna, which is posited to be a gateway to the underworld, the film builds a psycho-geographic map from experiences, encounters, reflections and observations. The film opens within the space of a dream located in Dr. Sigmund Freud’s office at the turn of the twentieth century. The viewer is introduced to an eclectic cross-section of the Viennese public – who discuss their perspectives on dreams, the unconscious, and the resulting effect on waking life. Each encounter reveals a new pathway on the filmmakers’ evolving map. Conversations are interwoven with imagery and text inspired by the filmic history of dream representation, music, archival imagery and audio recordings.

Empire Logistics was a collaborative research initiative seeking to map, data mine and document the social means of distribution within the international goods movement industry. Initial class projects initiated by EL at Cal Poly, Pitzer College and UC Riverside focused on Mira Loma, a census-designated area with the highest density of warehouses in the United States, where big firms like Wal-Mart and Target house their goods in massive distribution centers before moving them to their retail outlets all over the country. EL seeks to facilitate direct response to immediate social problems through accessible technology; by providing resources for collective and participatory action that bypasses official media channels; and by forging community and solidarity among related struggles.

A laboratory for exploring the intersection of individual and shared states of unconscious/ness. Invited guests included experts from diverse backgrounds to facilitate dream experiments using both poetic and analytical approaches.

During the month, Wilson and Zimmerman continued research and production for their experimental film, Close the Eyes, as they further examined both personal and collective dynamics of dreaming and its relationship to larger social and cultural issues of our time.

Using archival video, movement propaganda and original investigative material, the film and book track the emergence of a mass movement seeking “dominion” over all aspects of contemporary society. Structured as multi-layered cinematic essay, the film investigates the ideological and rhetorical echoes between an obscure Christian survivalist group active in the 1970’s-80’s (the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord or CSA) and the mainstream Christian Right of the 21st century.

The supplementary text combines additional interview material with CSA documentation, excerpts from two memoirs by Kerry Noble (former religious leader of CSA) and an extended screenplay excerpt of Silhouette City. In addition to a theatrical premiere at The Roxie Theater in San Francisco, the project has been presented widely through a screening/discussion tour of numerous film festivals and college campuses.

A contemporary translation of the Greek myth that explores the operation of love upon individual and collective consciousness. The piece is told through the visual exploration of an abandoned military base, underscored with experimental musical improvisations. This film explores deep time and the viewer’s willingness to project meaning and narrative coherence onto a landscape that alternately illustrates and undermines the story being told.

As predicted by his Branch Davidian followers, Vernon Howell (aka David Koresh) has returned to Mt. Carmel for final battle. Revisiting the 1993 Waco, Texas episode, gamers enter the mind and form of a resurrected David Koresh through custom headgear, a voice-activated, hard-plastic 3D skin. Each player enters the network as a Koresh and must defend the Branch Davidian compound against internal intrigue, skeptical civilians, rival Koresh and the inexorable advance of government agents. Ensnared in the custom “Koresh skin”, players are bombarded with a soundstream of government “psy-ops”, FBI negotiators, the voice of God and the persistent clamor of battle. Players voice messianic texts drawn from the Book of Revelation, wield a variety of weapons from the Mount Carmel cache and influence the behavior of both followers and opponents by radiating a charismatic aura.

INFO-BOOTH (Collective Urinalysis)
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE)
COLLABORATORS: Melissa Longenecker, Jennifer Nelson, Michael Warren Wilson, and Natalie Zimmerman

A public introduction to the Post-traumatic Institute for Social Satisfaction through audio, video and ephemera. Urine samples are gathered from visitors and a collective urinalysis is performed by a urologist. Results are later posted to LACE website.

THE BOOK OF RAGE & LONGING
Byzantine Museum, Athens; Los Angeles, CA
COLLABORATORS: Dimitri Kotsaras, Mr. Flo, Melissa Longenecker, Jennifer Nelson, Michael Warren Wilson, and Natalie Zimmerman
2004

Excerpt from the Song of Rage and Longing:

“Several on-going letters of sincerity from the United States and around the globe are sent to the ancient center of Athens near the Acropolis. Writers are asked to express their passionate dismay, their poignant pleas, their will and affirmation for a different administration of our dimension. In keeping with the idea of democracy and a heterogeneous blend of voices, those desiring to participate need only log on to the Rage and Longing site to send their personal missive…
In Athens, these multiple thoughts/voices, arriving through an online interface, are projected within a rooftop installation overlooking the Acropolis. As each missive arrives, it is immediately printed and an interpretive/administrative committee edits together an official text – a new agenda created on the spot through arguing, editing, cutting, pasting, and whimsy. This is made into a large, “canonized” book. Sections of the official text are then given to a Greek chorus to sing. This amplified song of rage and longing fills the area.”

PREEMPTIVE ENGAGEMENTS
Kunsthalle Dusseldorf
COLLABORATORS: Jennifer Nelson, Michael Warren Wilson, and Natalie Zimmerman
2003

• Four martial artists are recruited to manipulate interior traffic stancheons.
• Meat Report from the u.s. is broadcast on video.
• Traffic Report is broadcast live from Los Angeles.
• Motivational CD is broadcast.

Responding to a predetermined set of possible cues delivered through the various broadcasts, the traffic weavers move ropes and stancheons. The conductor attempts to maintain broadcast connections and to clarify key messages as they are communicated.

PERCH-ANCILLARY
Chinatown, Los Angeles
COLLABORATORS: Jeremiah Day, Fred Dewey, Dimitri Kotsaras, Jennifer Nelson, Michael Warren Wilson, and Natalie Zimmerman
2002

• Five readers of motivational texts
• One relay reader
• One typist
• Two vocalists with cellphones

Readers simultaneously read key passages from motivational texts. typist attempts to record as much verbal data as possible, producing a record/script. Relay reader calls vocalists and reads record/script. vocalists loudly sing record/script, using extemporaneous melodies. Operation repeats cycle for two hours.

REVIVAL #1 & #2
PISS Press, Los Angeles
COLLABORATORS: Jennifer Nelson, Michael Warren Wilson, and Natalie Zimmerman
2001-2002

4-channel installation based on a 60-minute performance at the former site of Spahn Ranch (Chatsworth, CA)–a one-time shooting location for Hollywood westerns. In the 1960’s, Charles Manson and his family used the ranch as a commune and base of operations. 4 performers (strangers asked to perform after only a brief moment of informal contact) stand upright in a diamond formation. Each holds a gun pointed at the person/player located opposite for a duration of sixty minutes without reprieve. The installation reconstruct the filmed configuration–substituting four rear-projection screen representations of the original performers. Because of the length of the performance and the necessary concentration needed to maintain the pose, the performers’ tension remains constant. Frustration and exhaustion levels rise and fall as each minute of daylight passes and performers move between balance and constriction and the setting gradually fades to darkness.

A simulated signal corps, spontaneously organized around a lost language of survival: the International Signal Code. This code, eleven body signals and eighteen ground signals, constituted a form of knowledge that is simultaneously ubiquitous (‘international’) and largely unknown. A series of interventions, operations, instructional videos, photographic references, training objects and texts were executed.