i do have a couple of exciting announcements, however. there are going to be TWO more screenings of CHANNELING!

the first is in BOSTON at CineMental. unfortunately, latham and i won’t be at this screening, although rumor has it our presences might be digitally summoned…

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 9:30pm
CineMental Presents: Channeling: an invocation of spectral bodies & queer spirits at Brattle Theater
40 Brattle Street Harvard Sq. Cambridge
9:30pm $10 for advanced tix hit this link.
followed by discussion and drinks at Casablanca downstairs from the theater.
facebook group for this

and the second is in LONDON at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival! we’re screening as part of the “experimental visions” section on sunday, april 5th. click here for more info and to buy tickets, etc. latham and i WILL be at this screening, and needless to say, we are really, really excited! it’ll also be something of a chicago takeover–our friend jules rosskam also has a film in the festival; against a trans narrative, which will show the night before our program. it’s a really fantastic piece, and not only because both latham and i have small parts in it!

that’s all for now, i’ll post reminders as the dates get closer!

in the meantime, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped us out in ways big or small–we couldn’t have done this without a really staggering amount of generous assistance from friends, new and old, who offered lodging, food, directions, advice, equipment, services, or simply good company to our road-weary asses. we met a ton of fantastic people on this journey, and got to visit a lot of old friends; it’s really heartening and wonderful to know that there is a network of supportive people out there.

and of course, another gigantic THANK YOU to everyone who came out to one of our shows, paid good money to get us to our next destination, and maybe even dropped in a little extra to help us get a coffee or beer. we had really sweet and enthusiastic audiences, pretty much across the board, which is another fabulous thing to know exists out there in the world.

OK, RECAP COMING SOON. STAY SPOOKY!

still one more show in new orleans!

January 27th + 28th [Tuesday+ Wednesday] / NEW ORLEANS
9pm @
Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center
1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd
http://www.zeitgeistinc.net
donation –
$7 general
$6 students & seniors
$5 Zeitgeist members
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January 27th + 28th [Tuesday+ Wednesday] / NEW ORLEANS
9pm @
Zeitgeist Multi-disciplinary Arts Center
1618 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd
http://www.zeitgeistinc.net
donation –
$7 general
$6 students & seniors
$5 Zeitgeist members
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January 25th [Sunday] / HOUSTON
8:30pm @
Domy Books
1709 Westheimer
http://www.domystore.com
Free Admission
Donations Encouraged + Appreciated!
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January 24th [Saturday] / AUSTIN
8:30pm @ The Hideout // 617 Congress Ave
AFTERPARTY 10pm @ The Cockpit // 113 San Jacinto Blvd
http://www.agliff.org/2009/01/13/channeling-an-invocation-of-spectral-bodies-queer-spirits/
http://austinvideobee.blogspot.com
http://www.hideouttheatre.com/
http://www.cockpitaustin.com
$5 admission
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we stopped by the guild cinema, dropped off our mini-DV tapes with kief, the owner/operator, then wandered into this strange salon/gift shop/cafe/sandwich shop, hoping to get a beer and some wifi. place was totally dead, and the staff was totally weird. after sitting down with our bevs, we realized there was NO internet, even though they’d told us they had it. OH WELL. we did get to hang out in a little alcove separated by beaded curtains, along with an entire wall of novelty greeting cards. hooray.

we were basically waiting for sarah from basement films to get out of class; the screening wasn’t until 9:45, so pre-show dinner was in order. we ended up making burritos and a salad at sarah’s house, which was a fabulous idea; homemade food has NOT been a consistent occurence on this here trip, and it really hit the spot.

then it was time for the screening! check this out:

we're on the marquee!

sarah also made a really cool poster for the screening:

no gelato, yes queer videos

the guild is a really cool, small independent movie house; if you’re ever in albuquerque, i highly recommend checking it out. i mean, look at this popcorn guy!

wheeeee! butter!

latham "programming" (and also clearly humoring me)

then, a very nice crowd strolled in; we got written up in the local weekly, which always helps. here they are!

very comfy crowd at the guild

very enthusiastic folks, with some good questions. they also very very kindly dropped a generous amount of money into our donation bucket (which for some reason we didn’t bring along with us). our NPR-style pleas for gas money must be just desperate enough–either that or people really do like the program!

or perhaps everyone loves badly drawn pacman ghosts.

after the screening we downed a couple of growlers worth of beer with our host sarah and her boyfriend ben; we really can’t thank the two of them enough for the food, drink and great conversation. our stay in albuquerque was definitely brief, but truly fantastic! here’s a sneaky snapshot i took of the two of them at breakfast this morning:

sarah + ben

right after this picture was taken, latham and i hopped in the car and drove for 13 fucking hours. we listened to a bit more of jane fonda’s autobiography, a fair amount of barbara ehrenreich (we picked up “nickel and dimed” way back in portland, as well as a collection of essays at the phoenix public library), some democracy now, some radiolab… basically anything to make the time go by quicker as things turned from relatively scenic west texas landscape to pitch-black tunnel-esque we-are-in-the-middle-of-fucking-nowhere night driving. around dusk, i got pulled over doing 90 mph in an 80 zone, outside of fort stockton, tx. fortunately, the cop let me off with a warning. the fear of getting pulled over again, coupled with the 65 mph nighttime speed limit (aka LAME SHIT), seriously slowed us down, making for some of the most taxing driving of the trip so far (seriously, it’s a tossup between that and the slushy mountain snowstorm in west montana/idaho–yes, today was that bad).

so anyway, we made it to austin, having only slightly lost our minds. i dropped latham off at his friend jordan’s house, and made my way to meet up with ivan, who helped us organize tomorrow’s screening. i’m crashing with a friend of his, heyd, who has a lovely home, a sweet old dog, and a nice bottle of whiskey. not to mention more homemade food ready and waiting for me! really, the people who are helping us out along the way on this trek are just too fabulous. they run the whole spectrum of old friends to new acquaintences, but they’ve been uniformly generous and helpful and kind and and and…

and, it’s 3:30 in the morning, i was in a car all day, and i had a fair amount of whiskey this evening, so i should probably just call it a night. tomorrow is lookin’ to be really, really great–ivan and the folks at the austin gay and lesbian international film festival have done a lot of promotion, people are excited about the screening, and latham and i are DJing afterwards at the cockpit! yeah!

PS. SPECIAL BELATED BONUS PIC FROM THE LA SCREENING!

echo park crowd

as lisa from the echo park film center kind of brilliantly put it when she sent me the pic: “Matt had a shaky hand that night but it definitely adds to the mysterious Channeling vibe!” indeed it does! thanks to lisa and matt both!

January 22nd [Thursday] / ALBUQUERQUE
9:45pm @
Guild Cinema
3405 Central NE
http://basementfilms.org
http://www.guildcinema.com
$5 at the door
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also, please note: VENUE CHANGE IN SHREVEPORT!

January 26th [Monday] / SHREVEPORT, LA
+ DJ’ed Afterparty!
7pm @
minicine – swampland
846 Texas Avenue
http://www.swampland.org
$5 donation
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but first! let’s go backward! to last friday!

SAN FRANCISCO

the show at ATA on the 16th was packed! after the disappointment that was our benefit night at the Stud earlier in the week, it was really great to have so many people come out. in fact, there were so many people that my dinky little digital camera couldn’t get everyone in a single photo, so here are right/left views of the crowd:

left side...

...right side

it was really amazing to see so many friends and acquaintances come out–latham and i both know a fair amount of people in san francisco (go figure)–and just as satisfying to see lots of people we didn’t know. it was also great to have math bass and dylan mira, who together form EMR and whose piece somethings gonna soon holds down the mid-point of the program, at the screening.

even more spectacular was the AWESOME ouija board cake that latham’s friend maya made for us; the crowd devoured it so fast that i didn’t even get to try it! (latham did, at least). maya works at the cake gallery; be sure to check them out if you’re in the bay area and need an erotic cake. i can attest to the fact that they have many varieties of chocolate genitalia.

strangely, we got zero questions after the show. perhaps everyone was too stuffed with cake.

the ouija board cake, in all its glory

hmm, do people love cake?

i also have to thank my hosts kathleen and will; they’re old friends from way back in my boston years who put me up in their tiny new apartment and unleashed the torrent of cuteness known as HUD upon me during my stay (the cat lady in me has been sorely deprived during this trip).

HUD!

hud in my face!

LOS ANGELES

we rolled into LA only a few hours before our screening at the echo park film center, long enough to drop off our stuff at our host ashland’s house, decompress from that long, tedious SF-to-LA drive, and grab a bite to eat. unfortunately i don’t have a picture of the crowd from this show; one of the EPFC staff took a photo during his intro and i thought it best not to overload the crowd of about 20 folks with too many flashes before the screening even started! i’ve emailed him to try to get that for us, though. the screening was well-received, and again there were quite a few familiar faces in the crowd! the Q+A was pretty lively, which was nice; overall on this tour, people seem to be very intrigued by the idea of “queer spirits” and there have been some good questions about how certain piece relate (or don’t) to the theme of the program.

afterwards we grabbed absolutely delicious tacos from the “taco zone” truck that parks nearby, then headed out to hear ashland DJ at a bar in some industrial area south of downtown. ashland is one of the organizers of wildness, a queer night that happens in LA every tuesday; we’re totally bummed that we had to move on without getting a chance to check it out!

sunday was an off day; we grabbed some breakfast at a cuban bakery in silverlake (i think?) and hit up a rooftop pool, which was nice but sadly, freezing cold, even with the gorgeous weather LA was having. i was feeling a bit under the weather, so i camped out in ashland’s apartment while he and latham rode on mulholland drive and went to a video exhibit at the LACE gallery. i got some much-needed rest and had a nice video chat with a special someone back in chicago. then we met up with a bunch of ex-chicagoans at merkato, an ethiopian restaurant that requires some patience but is pretty worth it (i’ve been there twice now and it’s pretty damn satisfying). the attached store was selling bottled water with pictures of the obama family as labels! somehow, we walked out of there without buying one. no, i don’t know why, and yes, it may be my biggest regret about this tour thus far.

on monday we had a power lunch with kyle from the london gay and lesbian film festival (i’ve always wanted to have a power lunch). that’s right! CHANNELING will be screening as part of this years london gay and lesbian film festival at the british film institute. consider this an unofficial announcement: we should have more details soon. latham and i are suuuuper excited about this, as you might imagine. anyway, we had a great chat with her about all sorts of things–cities near and far, car culture, curating and making video art, the amazingness of the video data bank, chicago-based radical social movements. then loaded up on supplies at trader joe’s and hopped the car to drive to…

SAN DIEGO

we knew this was gonna be real hit-and-run; we don’t know a lot of people in san diego, and we knew we’d need to get on the road early to phoenix the day, due to losing an hour when we crossed back into mountain time. after finding last-minute accomodations with an old acquaintance, we did a little internet-nerding out while said acquaintence’s friends smoked large quantities of pot around us.

fortunately the agitprop gallery (the don’t have a web presence–not that i’ve found, anyway) was close by. we met up with the folks who run the gallery, david white and his partner megan, and the organizer the screening, lily chen (david and lily are both grad students in the UC San Diego’s Visual Arts department). agitprop is a cool little space, very underground–they had some cute handmade chairs and stools from what looked like scrap plywood, and the space is also used as studio space for various folks. after some setting up, a pretty good crowd of 25+ folks rolled in. not bad for a monday in san diego! we had a great q+a afterwards too. many thanks to agitprop, lily, and the UCSD Visual Arts department for making it possible for us to come to san diego. alas, there are no pictures from san diego because my camera evidently chews up batteries like candy. sorry!

after the show we popped over to the whistle stop for a drink and encountered a really intense trivia night, run by a dude who was straight out of clerks who was wearing a legend of zelda NES cartridge on a gold chain and including categories like “science fiction planets” and an audio category about NES musical themes. it’s too bad we had all committed to a one-beer night; i think we would’ve placed at least (the other categories weren’t quite so nerdy, honest!)

PHOENIX

the drive from san diego from phoenix was probably the best so far: really beautiful mountains passes full of bright pink boulders, fantastic desert landscapes which were suspiciously devoid of cacti until we got well into arizona, and a glimpse of the US/mexico border, complete with intense border control checkpoints, fences, floodlights, trucks, barriers, etc etc etc. (we’ll get more of the latter in texas, i think). we even stopped in a gas station to listen to obama’s inaugural speech; we needed to pump gas, but neither of us wanted to get out of the car and miss any of it.

anyway, we made decent time, and arrived in phoenix with time to clean up at my friend roya’s apartment and get some vegetarian chinese at one of those guru-places with all the spiritual info and stuff. fried “fish” wrapped in seaweed and drenched in ginger sauce. YES.

then we made our way over to soul invictus, met up with steve weiss from no festival required, who arranged the show for us, and did some tech set-up (the stereo separation on our last piece (tell me why): the epistemology of disco sometimes makes things tricky). anyway, a crowd of about 18 people bailed on whatever inauguration party they were invited to and were in attendance, and we had yet another interesting q+a, which i found extra fun because latham and i got to stand on a black-and-white tiled stage (it’s the little things, at this point). i also have to extend a special thanks to the folks who came out for this show for contributing to our donation jar in addition to paying admission–they basically gave us enough for a tank of gas, which is fabulous because money is TIGHT, as you might imagine. still no pictures; i totally forgot to get batteries. SAD.

after the screening, latham, myself, roya, her co-worker chloe, and chloe’s boyfriend matt walked down the way to the bikini lounge (are you catching a pattern here? drinks are always in order after a screening!). there was an extremely talkative DJ (as in, he had a microphone) playing records to a pretty crowded room of folks. i missed his name, but he ended up playing some pretty solid electro-boogie and old school hiphop, so his indulgent booth-persona can be forgiven.

today is another off-day; latham and i slept-in big time, and roya took a half-day off of work to hang out and show us some stuff in phoenix. we got some pretty fabulous coffee at lux, had some mexican at filiberto’s (i could live in the south/west just for the food, omg), and popped over the phoenix public library, which is a really nice building for a public library–think contemporary art museum–and although the wifi didn’t work, latham had a stroke of genius and found the audiobook version of JANE FONDA’s autobiography, “my life so far.” it’s 22 hours long, people. we are SO SET for the rest of this trip. we’re almost done with barbara ehrenreich’s “nickel and dimed,” which we got in portland.  and sure, it’s taken us a while to get through that, but that shit can’t hold a candle to JANE FONDA.

more updates soon! i promise to get some effing batteries too.

Posted in tour diary ]]> http://channelingqueerspirits.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/tour-recap-2/feed/ 0 ethanawhite SF left SF right ouija cake! cake after hud! hud in my face! http://channelingqueerspirits.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/channeling-in-san-diego-and-phoenix/ http://channelingqueerspirits.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/channeling-in-san-diego-and-phoenix/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:44:14 +0000 ethanawhite http://channelingqueerspirits.wordpress.com/?p=114 ]]> i’ll throw up another tour recap soon, but we’re off to this right now:

January 19th [Monday] / SAN DIEGO
8pm @
Agitprop Gallery
2837 University Avenue
$5 suggested donation
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and tomorrow we’ll be listening to a hopefully inspiring inauguration speech while we drive onward to Phoenix!

January 20th [Tuesday] / PHOENIX
8pm @
Soul Invictus
1022 NW Grand Ave
http://www.soulinvictus.com
$6 at the door
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