Re-Edit of SlapStick

Check it out here

Cut out all of the fans and the actual hockey game.  Cut some Player time.  More concise I think.  

I think this is going to be chapters in the big Hockey movie, where the Player keeps upping the ante, playing crazier and more absurd hockey.

Then I can cut the fans in between the chapters.  I'm thinking of calling them "Intermissionaries"

Mike out

Alternative Venue

is the name of my latest video.  It's a working title, just as it is the first cut of the movie.  I will pare it down some, I'm sure.  Anyway, check it out here.

Need to get my shit together to do another one that is on my mind lately.  It's something about hockey from a kayak.  or something. 

juggling pucks.  

underwater hockey.

vertical. hockey.  

mike.

out.

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans

is a John Lennon quote that I've always liked.  

Trying to stay focused on art making but lots of things are getting in the way.  Like kids, house, fishing, well, maybe just those things.  

Been editing my hockey stuff, need to make plans to shoot another one.  Hockey from a kayak is next, I think.   Some of what I am planning can't be done until freeze up.   I'd like to do some short videos in the meantime.  and write my first paper.  get ahead of the game.

Have my mentor set up, Lee Walton.  I'm excited to work with him, teaches at U of North Carolina Greensboro, but shows all over the place.  Check him out at www.leewalton.com

Come to think of it, I should email him right now.

more later,

mike out

Arduous Journey

I feel great.  Really.  I just had a bunch of great ideas that tied a bunch of other great ideas together.  I don't want to brag or anything, but this feels really big.  

It seems to bring together some thoughts I've had about my recent work with work I plan on doing with my thesis idea of "playing in the face of Death, Devastation, Damage and Divorce" - the 4 D's.  

I wrote this status update on my facebook page:  Michael Conti is facing the book, and it's not that interesting of a quote so I'll spare you that. I find this list much more interesting: obstruction, resistance, absurdity, repetition, obsession, labor intensity, absolute, relative, structure, duration, endurance, meaning, existence, catharsis, correlation - and this question: What does one thing have to do with the other?  

Something about that list that I compiled from my notes from last Art Institute of Boston residency gets me going.  I think that if you put all those words in a circle with the word play at the center, that would be what my art is about.  

I have some ideas that involve hockey, playing in liquid water, underwater, on the other side of the ice, and on vertical ice.  I want to make a paddle board puck and hockey stick, and juggle hockey pucks and sawed off stick.  This is what fine art is all about.

Post Residency posting

Back from the June Residency at the Art Institute of Boston, my third.  One year down and one to go.  I feel some pressure to amp it up art wise this semester, then focus on writing the thesis in my final semester.  

I have some short movie ideas, but am just collecting my thoughts for now.  Now sure how or where to start filming.  It helps me to talk to people a little bit, see if the idea even makes sense when I try to articulate it.  

Also got to start taking more notes and story boarding.  That will help my process for sure.   Even a script might help.  

I'm going to leave you with a picture from my last trip to Boston.  I call it "Young Buddha in the Fountain". Hope to write more soon,