The Walk Philly website has been upgraded to make it easy to find the walks near by!
– Use the “Walks Near Me” link to have the site use your geolocation to find the closest walk videos
– Or enter an address to search by location
Walk an augmented termite reality today!
In 1992 three Temple University graduate students, Jim Ospenson, Merle Perlson and Michael Kuetemeyer, were so blown away by Manny Farber’s 1962 manifesto, “Termite Art Vs. White Elephant Art,” that they formed the Termite TV Collective. Kuetemeyer explains, “What was inspirational for us was Manny Farber’s definition of ‘termite art’ being art that doesn’t strive for perfection, where the emphasis is on exploration, on taking risks, rather than relying on a formulaic style of producing work that has been successful in the past. This freedom to experiment creates a sense of playfulness and spontaneity in the work that we produce.”
Funded in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and individual donors, the collective has created a massive body of work over the years, with thousands of videos in its archive. These days, Termite TV is actively engaged in multiple projects. As technology has changed since the early 1990s, Termite has changed its methods of collecting, editing and displaying work.
Termite’s Walk Philly project involves the use of iPods as mobile video viewing devices. As of this writing, there are 25 videotaped walking tours, and the database continues to grow. “Each Walk Philly video tour is a personal interpretation evoking different moods, memories and histories ranging from the playful to the experimental to the informative,” according to Walk Philly brochure. One tour follows an urban forager while others feature historic sites. According to Termite Mike O’Reilly, the collective’s experimental techniques generate a lot of useless stuff, but also some unexpected gems within, creating moments of profound depth.
Termite’s Laura Deutch is in charge of Termite’s Messages in Motion project, which “works with neighborhood programs and community-based organizations to produce, distribute and exhibit short-form documentary videos as a way to support and enhance existing community organizing work.” A van containing handheld Flip video digital recorders, laptops, internet access and a viewing monitor travels throughout the city, offering writing and video training, multiple distribution platforms and groundbreaking teaching models.
Deutch parks the van at a branch library and conducts a one-hour workshop for five to ten young people, who learn how to gather images and do voiceovers. She wants to help kids understand how to use media to create a message that can be personal or political. The results are striking. In neighborhoods that normally only see a video crew covering a murder or fire, young people create poignant video postcards that portray everyday lives, sometimes using poetry as narrative.
Messages in Motion recently received a grant for its upcoming Securing Spaces tour, with a mission to “rethink what it means to be secure by looking at how communities address the interconnected issues of physical well-being, water safety and food safety to create safe spaces in their neighborhoods.” Another upcoming project is Water Food Shelter, also known as The Basics Trilogy. Three 29-minute episodes, addressing basic human needs in poetic and political terms, are set to broadcast in mid-May on PhillyCAM.
Mike O’Reilly wishes he could be more flexible at WHYY, but decisions about programming come from the top down at the venerated public TV station, and new initiatives take a lot of time, much like changing course on a giant ship. Termite TV, by contrast, is able to make decisions from the bottom up, by collective action, and the resulting work is spontaneous, playful and experimental, blending personal and political, able to be limber, light and distributed.
Termite TV is soliciting new work for its Surveillance-themed show to debut in April 2013. For the last 20 years, Termite has been producing 30 minute compilation video programs for distribution online, on PhillyCAM, and at community & gallery screenings. This Spring’s show is centered around the theme of SURVEILLANCE (see below for some ideas to get you excited!)
We’re also looking for an exhibition space that supports installation work, so we’re interested in that too.
If you’re interested in creating new work of any genre or revisiting old pieces, please submit a short paragraph that includes:
Your Name
Description of Idea
Approx. Length
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at termite.tv.surveillance@gmail.
Thanks for your interest!
Coordinating Producing Team:
Laura Deutch
Helyx Chase
Bertolain Elysee
Some ideas:
Performances in front of surveillance cameras
Live nature cams
Public web cams
Baby monitor/nanny cam/domestic surveillance
Targeted advertising/Online personalized tracking
Security guards in museums
New tech surveillance devices (i.e. drones)
Triggered by the case against experimental filmmaker Lawrence Brose, Termite TV is producing a show about art and censorship.
Background: Lawrence Brose is an internationally-known award-winning gay experimental film artist who has created over thirty films since 1983. In November 2009, Lawrence was charged in federal court with possessing internet images of child pornography, including 100 images from his most famous, internationally-shown film, De Profundis. Despite maintaining complete innocence, Lawrence lost his job as Executive Director of CEPA Gallery; was forced to hire a lawyer, which depleted all his savings; and many of his freedoms, such as the freedom to travel have been severely restricted. Since the arrest many facts have to light that call the charges against him into question. A detailed description about the case can be found at http://lawrencebroselegaldefensefund.com/. A good article about the case, “The United States vs. Lawrence Brose: A Butterfly on the Wheel” by William Altreuter can be found here: http://www.artvoice.com/issues/v11n45/guest_essay
P
urpose of program: In this program we seek to show our solidarity with Lawrence Brose by addressing some of the pertinent issues this case raises (such as artistic censorship, prosecutorial overreach, freedom of speech, criminalization of gay art), as well as related issues connected to Lawrence and his artwork. As this case is still ongoing Lawrence himself cannot be interviewed for this program. Experimental work is welcome – we are interested in pieces that captures some aspect of the emotional and intellectual impact of this case and the events surrounding it. Please contact coordinating producers Dorothea Braemer at dorothea AT termite.org or Joanna Raczynska at RACZYNSKA.JOANNA AT GMAIL.COM to discuss your idea before you submit work.
Deadlines:
• Friday, March 29: Proposals for show segments (segments should be no longer than 5 minutes long) – Please contact us via e-mail to discuss your idea!
• Friday, July 26: Finished pieces are due.
• August/September: Show will be assembled.
• September/October: Premiere screening
We look forward to hearing from you!
Termite TV Collective presents SURVEYS at Vox Populi Gallery as part of “CITYWIDE : A Collective Exhibiton”. SURVEYS is a video installation that chronicles the 22 year history of Termite TV.
Exhibition Dates: November 1 – November 25, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, November 1st 6:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m.
Vox Populi 319 N 11th St, Third Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107
In conjunction with CITYWIDE Philadelphia, Vox Populi gallery will exhibit SURVEYS, a collaborative multimedia installation created by members of the Termite TV Collective. Termite TV will be one of five collectives – including Marginal Utility, Magic Pictures Gallery, Space 1026, and Basekamp – exhibiting within Vox Populi for the CITYWIDE collaborative effort.
This November 2013, 23 artist-run artist collectives in Philadelphia are banding together for a cross-collaborative multi-venue exchange to celebrate the impressive population our city has of artist-run entities!
This month-long celebration of Philadelphia contemporary art that will include performances, panel discussions, gallery openings, and a publication in a variety of venues across the city. The essence of CITYWIDE is about magnifying individual voices through collective action.
CITYWIDE is the recipient of a Knight Arts Challenge and is a “massive collaboration” organized collaboratively by Vox Populi, Space 1026, Little Berlin, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Grizzly Grizzly, Marginal Utility, NAPOLEON, Fjord, Mt. Airy Contemporary, Rebekah Templeton, Highwire Gallery, Basekamp, McCartney/Belknap Projects, Practice, The Traction Company, InLiquid, Paradigm Gallery, Magic Pictures, Termite TV Collective, The Soapbox, Title Magazine, The Nicola Midnight St. Claire, Pterodactyl, ART/ASSEMBLY, BYO Print, and Oof Animation Collective.
Spanning from the Callowhill neighborhood on the edge of Center City to West Philly, from Germantown to the Northeast and from South Philly to Kensington, CITYWIDE represents over 200 artists in total!
Termite TV is soliciting new media work for its ‘Waste’-themed show set to debut in October 2015. Current pieces include profiles of artists working with garbage, a trash cleanup project and exhibition, dumpster diving, an old vacuum and timelapse pieces on working with recycled art. Other open topics discussed include Happy Trash Day related work, exploration of vacant lot garbage, profiles of scrappers or scrapyards. Any new works exploring the notion of ‘waste’, however broad are up for consideration. Pieces can range in tone from serious to playful.
Termite TV is also interested in partnering with galleries, institutions, and curators to create installations and gallery type exhibitions and events that focus on the concepts of waste.
If you’re interested in creating new work of any genre or revisiting old pieces, please submit a short paragraph that includes:
– Your Name
– Description of Idea
– Approx. Length
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Coordinating Producing Team: John Pettit (johnrpettit AT gmail.com) or Alan Powell (powell AT arcadia.edu). We are looking to have your proposals and/or rough edits by May 30th and completed pieces by September 12th.
Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz and her team shed light on immigrant life through two 360º videos that profile the experiences of an upstate New York community, Saratoga Springs, which is a hotspot for ICE raids. The films, which take the shape of immersive metaphoric ICE interrogations, help viewers understand the experience of strengthening one’s own identity and building community bonds within systems that foster isolation and othering. The project aims to weave a tapestry of voices and experiences, delving into the complex lives of the minority community members who have been involved every step of the way.
This project is produced in collaboration with the Economic Opportunity Council of Saratoga County; The Public VR Lab of Brookline Interactive Group; and the MDOCS Community Partnerships Program at Skidmore College. They are supported by The Philadelphia Independent Media Finishing Fund administered by Scribe Video Center with funds provided by the Wyncote Foundation. The films will be presented at the Visible Evidence conference in the summer of 2019.
In 2005, filmmaker Deb Rudman began a process to document Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s (PHS) City Harvest program.
Through this program, inmates of the Philadelphia Prison System grow seedlings at a prison greenhouse, and thousands more seedlings are started at neighborhood-based greenhouses run by nonprofit partners. The inmates receive training in gardening and basic landscaping along with valuable life-skills lessons. Participating growers then distribute the fresh produce in their communities, through food cupboard donations and at farmers markets. Students can also get involved with the project through the newly introduced Roots to Reentry internship program.
This program is remarkable in that it provides working solutions for several seemingly intractable problems. This project and film suggest that overcoming food insecurity can be an avenue for addressing immigration, inmate reentry, environmental damage, teen education, jobs training, belonging, and community building. The connections fostered through growing food, sharing recipes, and revitalizing urban environments not only feed bodies but also personal growth and community health. In short, this film offers an example of effective and actionable local solutions to local problems.
Deb’s film about the program was used as training for those who are inside prison. PHS has also shown the film at the gardens, numbers of which have grown considerably.
Production Supervisors:
Deborah Rudman
Aggie Bazaz
Imagine a world where AI, VR, MR, AR and 3D technology allow us to construct experiences as a community-driven public access utility. What are the implications or opportunities for our families, our neighborhoods, our schools,when emerging technology is people powered media?
Termite TV partnered with PhillyCAM and other local media organizations for Philly Tech week. The day long installation and workshop event “Democritization of XR: Extending Reality for the public, ” explored community engagement through digital technology. Termite TV producers Anula Shetty and Michael Kuetemeyer presented excerpts from the VR project “Places of Power” currently in production.
A day in the life of a gardener is all but predictable or mundane. There is something new and exciting every single day, although there are some common threads of routine to connect one dusk to the next dawn. Plant, water, prune, weed, harvest. There’s a peace in that routine, but adventure in everything else.
The only time this adventure slows is when the days shorten and the temperatures drop and the rain turns to soft fluffy snow. After the last crops have been harvested, and the winter growers have been planted, what is there to do other than wait? Well, exactly that. Wait for the days to get longer and for the temperatures to rise, for the soil to thaw and the snow to become a quenching rain again.
Read the rest of this entry »