A House On Jungmannova
4+4+4 Days in Motion
A documentary by Dan Senn
Director's
Statement
"A House On Jungmannova"
was a spontaneous effort. I was in Europe for installations
of
my art in Poland and the Czech Republic and had with me my video
camera and
lapel mic. The "4+4+4
Days in Motion" festival, for which I had constructed
"The
Odradek
Complex," a kinetic sound sculpture installation,
would be in place for 12
days, and except for maintaining my own
work and socializing, I had little more to do.
But I was also
rapt by the 4plus festival concept, one supported by the mayor
and city
council of Prague. A concept which consciously and smartly
used an abandoned
structure in the center of an very old city
as a kind of anthropomorphic artifact. A
concept which, for all
sorts of legal reasons, could no longer be realized in western
Europe or the United States. So, just like that, I decided to
document the building, the
festival, its artists and to make a
piece. And from this simple impulse was born
"A House On
Jungmannova" with a crew of one.
As an interdisciplinary
artist, I have interdisciplinary expertize, and this has both
its
advantages and its disadvantages. As a composer, a sound
technician
and editor,
I know where to put the mic and how to engineer the
best sound. As a videographer
and photographer, my films are as
much about what is seen as the subject at hand.
As a video editor
with access to my own editing studio, I am able to work long hours,
to start and restart the piece until I get it right. Best of all,
there is little stress in the
process of making a "film,"
except for the pressure I put on myself. I need not
worry about
whether I can meet production costs.
These are just some
of the advantages of working alone and that so few people work
this way is the crux of the disadvantages. It is rare that one
sees in the credits a
single name for a piece, as in "A House
On Jungmannova," a piece which normally
would take many others
to realize, and it has often crossed my mind to fake all sorts
of assistants just to get over the hump of being labeled
"unprofessional."
The
connection between working alone and the weekend hobbyist
is insurmountable
in some.
Before I started to
make experimental and documentary film, I was, and continue to
be, a composer of classical experimental music and a sculptor
of kinetic-sound
sculpture. Today, my moving picture pieces are
often integrated with this work, and
sometimes a piece comes out
that stands alone, like "A House On Jungmannova."
Because
I have worked with photography for many years, the step from music
composition and kinetic sculpture, to experimental and
documentary
film is a short
and easy one, especially given that my Mac computer
doesn't seem to mind which
software I run. Working alone is only
natural for me.
TOC | Introduction
| Brochure (pdf) | Chapter
Clips | Supplemental | Artists
| Dan Senn