A Week of Hard Work, Amnesia and Delirium - Wes

It was a strange week of going through the motions with a strange kind of stoner consciousness. A delirium possibly due to just pure information overload: classes, appointments, TAship, urgent communications from students, faculty, staff, and far away project contacts, an exponentially growing TODO list, plunging into grant season, herding the cats of my thesis committee, pitching the project to museums for next summer, creating a project prospectus, and prep for four exhibitions in the next four weeks. Whew! The end result is a sort of frenetic forgetfulness, missed meetings, late assignment, fevered and troubled sleep, and regularly walking into rooms or getting on the computer to do something that I no longer remember what.

Time for some deep breaths. Breathe. Breathe. And time to forgive myself for a little scatter-brainedness while I do an excitingly impossible number of things for a project I find inspiring and meaningful.

I did manage to pull together my undergrad research group that is working exclusively with me on the Secret History project. The independent study is titled "Post-modern History and New Media Production" with readings from Zinn, E.P. Thompson, Georges Lefebvre, and possibly Jean-Francois Lyotard and George Rudé. The project group will be working together to accomplish the ambitious goals of the project this quarter, including assembling the research archive, mapping out the new media component, and cutting together possible minidocs. Right now, the project group is also helping me organize and transcribe the archive.

My shots are already reasonably organized. Though with the secondary (environmental, detail, and establishing) shots, a more detailed catalog should be made. I've gotten a start on it, and it is an arduous task. Here is an overview of what I have:

Primary Interviews
Anna Mae Davis (12 primary videos, 2 audio)
Billy Curmano (15 pri videos, 2 audio)
Ed Hoffman (18 pri videos, 1 audio)
Edwin Hill (8 pri/10 sec videos, 1 audio)
Gerty Tonjum (7 pri/17 sec videos, 1 audio)
Jerry (9 pri videos, 1 audio)
Jessica Bierbrierer (6 pri/3 sec videos, no audio)
John Sullivan (10 pro videos, 1 audio)
Kali Arline (7 pri/17 sec videos, no audio)
Ken Lubinski (13 pri videos, 1 audio)
Lauren Donovan (4 pri videos, 1 audio)
Pat Nunnally (7 pri videos, no audio)
Peter Rachleff (8 pri/1 sec videos, 1 audio)
Rat (4 pri videos, 1 audio)

Environmental/Detail/Establishing Shots
Before Summer Fieldwork
2014-04 At Boat (28 videos)
2014-04 Audio from Delta (11 audio)
2014-04 Lauren's Camera at Delta (83 videos)
2014-04 Video from Delta (126)
2014-04 Video of Faith at Boat (12)
2014-05 People at San Lorenzo (11)
During Summer Fieldwork
2014-06 MPLS Recon Trip (55)
2014-07-13 Launch Party (2)
2014-07-23 Boat Launch (9)
2014-07-28 Mpls-St Paul (18)
2014-08 Latsch Island Boathouses (14)
2014-08 Swimming and Bridge (8)

One fun thing I did is update my project blog a few times. I did some gentle research on historical flatboats on the river and a post showing some of the beautiful faces of the people I interviewed for the archive.