Assembly Screening Next Day Quickie Wrap Up

Well there were about 6 cameras going at The Assembly screening, and one videographer, so we’ll be able to provide much documentation soon on the crowded arts hodge podge of awesome that was last night at Friendship Cove. And we’re getting started on preparing the DVD and final versions of the projects for posting on the site- there is some work to do for this, as we need recorded versions of all the soundtracks and songs that were performed live last night to match up to the video tracks. Sounds like we’ve found some kind friends who’ll help us pull that together professional-styles so hopefully soonish.. For now, here are just my fleeting impressions.

- People involved in the project came early, and hung out through soundcheck which ran a bit late, but the bar was open for business, and we had copies of the Assembly Scriptbook zine for people to look at. The Friendship cove space is covered with murals by different artists so it’s a pretty visually enjoyable place to spend time, and folks started to mingle and meet eachother.

- Though Tessa had planned to introduce each project and MC the night, as it got closer to showtime it became clearer that since we were lacking the professional stage mananger we’d had to call the last shows, Tessa was going to need to be in the back, coordinating the timing between each piece, so I ended up stepping into her spot- hopefully I did justice to the huge amount of work she’d done coordinating these groups and their different needs and desires.

- Stephen Taylor, another member of his band Trike, and 3 of the powerful gals from Liederwolfe performed the song Stephen had written, the text of which had been used by the Assembly scriptwriters as catalyst for their leg of the relay. There were 3 false starts, which turned out to be part of the script (ha!), and then they got going. The rock opera vibe is unique and hilarious, and those girls built up harmonic big voice ressonance with a bar room gusto that set everyone on notice this was not going to be a normal night.

- We showed 5 films and had 6 live performances of soundtracks, 7 projects total. For me of course the freakin coolest moment was watching my own animated gif movie with the lads from Parlour performing the soundtrack they’d scored for it. It was INSANELY exciting - they are sweet, friendly rock stars, first of all, and the music was perfectly done to build a mounting intensity with the biker scene, and again in the chaos of the party scene. Though the sight lines were not ideal, making it hard to read some of my talkin bubbles, the shadows the performers cast from their drums and keys while rocking out suited the vibe of the movie, and of Sylvia Rich’s TV sampled story and the balance in focus was right - between watching these great performers and watching the story projected on and behind them. Now that I think about it, ours was officially the the free culture piece of the night- Sylvia sampled text, and I sampled photos from creative commons and from a recent staff photo shoot and used the Gimp, and Alex Cooper of the musicians told me about a freeware software they’s used to help match their composition up to the movie!! I need to find out more about that actually…

I could do a shout out bit by bit of each gorgeous moment - Josh Hinck’s vocal, the animated pigeons accompanied by fluid low key guitar, the disturbing hilarity of Louis Pearson and Tu-Linh Doan’s script faithfully rendered in video and sound by Allan Lento. Allan was great fun to talk to about open access to inspiration, and making art just for the sake of it, just because you feel better after. Turns out he and fellow guitarist and soundscape musician Tino Scafidi went to the same high school in St.Michel way back in the day, but had never really met before this venture into all things indyish, fancy that.

The night had the feeling of a lot of very different people coming together to see what had happened, or if we’d pulled it off, or to see their friends’ work; and slowly kind of melting into a laughing group enjoying the fact of collaboration between over 50 wildly different artists. To us - Tessa and I - event management is about making work with the people who show up, trying to pull it all off with a smile and a relaxed demeanour when shit happens and, geekily, enjoying the conceptual interestingness of even the flaws in the process. Elran and I see this website as a space for extended arts collaboration between a network that’s hopefully built with enough creative redundancy to be able to pull off bigger things then we could individually, the events we attempt are like our real world expression of that, and I think last night did a pretty great job of communicating what we’re all about.

Though there were many instances of the surprising and miraculous follow-through that emerges when someone bails or something happens and someone else needs to step up, the stand-out was Brad Levia from Lake of Stew. He arrived very early, well in time for soundcheck. And hung out low key but eyebrows raised a bit as the hours went by and none of the 7 other people in his band appeared. We still don’t know what happened to Lake of Stew, and I hope they’re ok and not still wandering the streets of industrial emptyness and art lofts near Friendship Cove, but Brad was the man on the spot.

During the piece right before his I asked the crowd if anyone else from Lake of Stew had appeared, and got a no. Brad shrugged his shoulders in the shadows, and then slipped off with Tessa as the video piece before his began to roll. Did I mention Lake of Stew was supposed to bring their video as well? Sounds like this project was beleagured by chaos, another instance of the 80/20 rule maybe? We thought we’d have to skip their project entirely. Not So!

Though the Lake of Stew fans who left pre-emptively on my note of doubt may by bummed out to hear it, Brad snuck to the sound booth back and used Jonathan Stewart’s script to write a great song in under ten minutes, which he then performed to our proud and astonished hollars. And now it sounds like you’ll be able to catch Brad at a MonthlyMess coming soon! This, for me, is what it’s all about… okay this, plus the young girl - maybe 7 - who was taking pictures of the night- Elran gave her a business card and asked her to please send them to us for publication and she turned into a steady lil pro stalking the room.

Here’s a preview - *safe solvent’s Martin Reisch and Lara Kaluza participated again, as they have, like art stars, in every Indyish event. In my opinion this resulted in their most lovely and visually dear contirbution so far. They are great at what they do, and I think assembly line collaboration suits them. Martin is also speedy and thorough, and emailed us this morning with notice that a quicktime version of the movie, only missing it’s soundtrack, had been uploaded to our ftp. (Between ftp and Celtx our tech during this project was remarkably smooth- about 80% of the time. =) Enjoy this sweet preview and we’ll keep the Assembly content coming here on the mixed in with our regular arts writing. Thanks to everyone for participating, and to Tessa for her exceptional work.