The Exquisite Risk of Civil War Brass
The 1st Brigade Band - Winner at the da Vinci Film and Video Festival
A documentary by Dan Senn | Director Bio
Dan Senn
is a transdisciplinary artist working as a filmmaker and video
installation artist, but also as a builder-performer
of sculptural instruments, a composer
of classical music and a ceramic
artist. For many years his video work has been ethnographically
oriented, usually as part of his sound
sculpture installations, with "The Exquisite
Risk of Civil War Brass" being a rare example of
traditional documentary film. As diverse as his work can be, a
consistant theme runs throughout with indelible connections to
the raku ceramic process
which he first experienced as an undergraduate music and art student.
This process, which is Japanese in origin, purposefully uses difficult
to control materials and tools to realize artifacts less encumbered
by human expression, a concept so much at odds with Western aesthetics
that it fundamentally shifted Senn's in his early twenties. Therefore,
his work, in one way or another, consistantly captures or incorporates
this essence of raku and in this documentary, he is intent on
uncovering the impact that the purposeful use of vintage Civil
War brass instruments has had on an extraordinary community band
from Watertown, Wisconsin. click on self-portrait to enlarge
.
| synopsis | video stills | press | motivations | extended bio | press photo | The 1st Brigade Band |
Dan Senn
is a transdisciplinary artist working as a filmmaker and video
installation artist, but also as a builder-performer
of sculptural instruments, a composer
of classical music and a ceramic
artist. For many years his video work has been ethnographically
oriented, usually as part of his sound
sculpture installations, with "The Exquisite
Risk of Civil War Brass" being a rare example of
traditional documentary film. As diverse as his work can be, a
consistant theme runs throughout with indelible connections to
the raku ceramic process
which he first experienced as an undergraduate music and art student.
This process, which is Japanese in origin, purposefully uses difficult
to control materials and tools to realize artifacts less encumbered
by human expression, a concept so much at odds with Western aesthetics
that it fundamentally shifted Senn's in his early twenties. Therefore,
his work, in one way or another, consistantly captures or incorporates
this essence of raku and in this documentary, he is intent on
uncovering the impact that the purposeful use of vintage Civil
War brass instruments has had on an extraordinary community band
from Watertown, Wisconsin. click on self-portrait to enlarge