“What-If? In the Days When the Tiger Smoked” is the culmination of an ongoing project which began in Busan, South Korea in 2006. At the heart of the work is the unfolding of a role-playing workshop where participants reenact dates leading up to a fictional polyamorous romance. The performance, played by a rotating international cast of artists, leads to a group wedding and honeymoon between characters based upon two obscure Marvel superheroes and two internationally renowned art personalities. The happy foursome are Orlan, an artist whose actual redefinition of her own body via plastic surgery confronts representations of woman throughout art history; Stelarc, an artist whose cybernetic mission in life is to render the body obsolete; the Scarlet Witch, a mutant superhero who has unlimited powers over probability, and the Vision, a “synthezoid” superhero whose mechanically fabricated body contains a human soul. What-If?…unfolds the entangled story that brought this romantic foursome together spanning the gulf between genders and representations; the body and technology.
Named after the Korean saying for “Once Upon a Time,” our project In the Days When the Tiger Smoked, fuses together our two single-channel video works from 2009, What-If? & What-If? Beyond a carnalove . New works from our polyamorous databank of speculative fiction include a series of video loops. Honeymoon Valley is an ambient exploration of both historic and contemporary South Korean sites and reengages with the terrain where our characters first met and later honeymooned. Wundagore Spa enacts a Proxy-Orlan character’s simulated operation with sticky and reckless abandon.
AnimatronLove revisits variations on the choreography performed by our characters’ virtual avatars contextualized into a series of alternate worlds.

The complete halflifers index

Familiars is an experimental video project re-imagining the Skinners Massachusetts Wistariahurst family house and grounds as a fictional residency program populated by speculative Holyoke entities. Scenes include variable collaborations between (Kirsten-cameras), Hanne-recorders, kitten & catman, living relative memory, baseball ramblers, silk worms, immersion Man, frozen aviary, Japanese & Holyoke mill workers, ectoplasmic typewriters, and spectral publishing entities.

FAMILIARS – HDV – 9:00 – stereo – color – variable dates / variable versions – Torsten Zenas Burns
Special thanks to: Holyoke, MA, The Skinner family, Wistariahurst, The staff and
volunteers at Wistariahurst Museum, Kari Gatzke, Hanne Burns, Lee Pembleton,
Alexis Fedorjaczenko, Chris Nelson, Michael Martindell

Using century old technology, PXXXL creates digital glitch from analogue process. It was animated directly on the celluloid without a camera, in a darkroom, using lights, objects, and handmade lenses. Please do not watch if you are prone to seizures. 35mm print, optically printed.

Mega-cable company Comcast has signed a 10 year renewal contract with the City of Holyoke. For the first time in decades, the contract is favorable to the citizens of our city. The negotiations were led by Mayor Alex Morse and a group of members who have helped to advise him on matters pertaining to Public Access Programming. Notably, Al Williams from Northampton Community Television has been instrumental in steering the advisory committee in “all things Public Access”. The three arms of cable access programming are commonly referred to as “PEG”. Public, Education, Government. Holyoke has had television channels for education and government programming but until now, has never had the “Public” channel. Along with this dedicated channel, Comcast will fund the building of a state of the art media center that will be available to all residents of Holyoke – who have a desire to create content – and that can be watched on TV sets of any Comcast cable subscriber in the city. A percentage of the Gross Annual Revenue of all Holyoke Cable subscribers will be directed toward the operating budget of the access station. There are other important benefits that this new contract will bring; all of the details can be seen on the City of Holyoke’s website. In addition to the work and effort of the mayor and the advisory committee members, the citizens of Holyoke are to be thanked for their effort. There were two ascertainment hearings and others submitted statements regarding cable TV and public access for Holyoke. Thanks to advisory committee member Michael Hines and Holyoke Public Schools Channel 12 (The E in PEG) for the great footage of the announcement.

A camera, a projector, a Friday.

This is the kind of ingenuity that Holyokers possess. Holyoke Hummus Company is an example. Let’s get creative with food in this town.

The Professor has a couple of things he’d like to say…

Jonathan Bates is better known for the food forest he and his colleague Eric Toensmeier planted on their 1/10th of an acre urban lot in Holyoke, Massachusetts. When I visited him in February, most of the lot and its 200 plant species were still covered with snow, but Jonathan showed me around their eco-shelter. Thanks to good insulation and thermal mass, the passive greenhouse maintains above freezing temperatures all winter, and allows them to grow food throughout the year.