muddled pigeon

Feature Length
Format: 35mm Film

"Sister of the Prophet" is the story of twin sisters Ellen and Elizabeth Harmon. After 'The Great Disappointment' of the prophetic Millerite movement in the 1840s, Ellen begins publishing and proselytizing prophecies that come to form the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Through a progression of poetic and historic tableaus, "Sister of the Prophet" explores the textures, sentiments, and queer possibilities of 19th century America through the eyes of Ellen's twin sister, Elizabeth Harmon.

Running Time: 15 Mins
Format: HD Digital

"Signs of an Edict" is an experiment in dance-on-camera cinema. Towing the line between self-enforced restrictions and notions of justice, a familiar figure seems subject to unfamiliar forms of trial. As the body moves through landscapes and characters, can these notions of justice be taken seriously?

Running Time: 15 Mins
Format: Cutty Digital

"FOLDOUTS" is a video installation collaboration between Tyler Burdenski and Jamie Bokan Blair. A reviewer remarked that the installation "broke my heart...broke it so good, and stuffed light and salt water, and sweet vinegar rice into my tender lines of flight. I kneel down on both knees in this dream with y'all. Hold both palms open to they sky. Learning how to put my hands." It was developed for the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence AIRSPACE gallery in Philadelphia in 2016.

Running Time: 13 Mins
Format: HD Digital

"Past Future People" OR "Signs of Surplus" OR "After the Day of Overreckoning"

Faces of the future in the muck of the marsh.
Cattails of the cataclysm!
Deal with the dogma of the defeated!
Praise the pursuance of the post-apocalypse!

A backstage premonition of tomorrow's body politic. 
Book your front-row seats now for the boredom of the bayou.

Running Time: 5-10 Minute Episodes
Format: HD Video

The "Veneer Portrait Series" is a video series featuring the work and personality of artists and their ambitions. The first season features artists in the Austin, TX area. The series plays with artist self-perception, relationship to ambition, and largely features work that blurs the line between reality and fiction.

Running Time: 1hr 30mins
Format: HD Video

Starting with the proposed closure of five public elementary schools in Oakland, CA, "On the Subject of School Closures" explores three key community responses: legal action, illegal action, and joining the charter system. After the Oakland closures, school closure dramas explode across the US in cities such as Chicago and Philidelphia. "On the Subject of School Closures" is a playful attempt to get at what is at the heart of the school closures at a time when the USA is faced with an important decision: moving forward, do we treat public education as a social system or as a new marketplace?

Format: HD Video

"Father Appa's Live-Streaming Confession Booth & Saloon" is a short video-based performance piece, hosted by The Foundry for the quarterly Foundry Nights Artist Residency, Feb. 2014. Father Kelly and Father Appa present Gougle Brain Tissue, the newest in sharable social experience. Relieve yourself!

Running Time: 45 Mins
Formats: Super8, SD, HD, & Pixelvision

Shot in the backwoods of Alaska and wastelands of a salmon processing camp, the film follows two friends on their way home. They stop and camp out for the night, waiting, catching up on rest. The following morning one of them is missing with no explanation. "A Thoughtful Goodbye" examines the character's intersections between identity, memory, love and projection. As one searches for meaning without a past, the other struggles with his desires when they confuse memories. 'Sometimes I forget that I am not you and you are not me'.

Running Time: 1hr
Format: HD Video

A hybrid-documentary film, combining fictional and non-fictional sequences, explores the function and relevance of "media literacy" in education. While the fictional vignettes explore the 'interior' life of education, the documentary vignettes explore the inseparability of values from curriculum in several public schools throughout Texas and Massachusetts. Focusing on mask-making (ways of understanding 'here' and 'elsewhere'), the film explores the idea of a hidden curriculum, touching on the 'War on Terror,' classroom social conditioning, and the Texas textbook controversies.

Running Time: 1hr
Format: HD Video

This documentary questions the use of visual symbolism and identity in Ireland, particularly in the mobilization of politics. The lifespan of the human use of visual symbols for national unity is a very long one—perhaps endless. "Projected Landscapes" uses the model of Ireland's "magic lantern lecture" to understand the culture of visual language today. In the visual culture around identity who is the lecturer, projectionist, the magic lantern slides, the surface being projected on? Do these symbolic roles still exist today?

Running Time: 26 mins (compiled)
Format: HD Video

The "Recourse Vignettes" comprise of 5 shorts between 4-7 minutes long that orbit issues of media literacy, self-expression, and digital language. The vignettes focus in particular on digital literacy/saturation across age groups.

Running Time: 3mins
Format: 16mm

Borrowing openly from cultural critic Herman Gray, "Thanks to Palace Discourse for Audio Reporting" is a minimalist experiment with sound and image. Imagine a world in which media and culture fetishizes pain and tragedy--and then maybe imagine making popcorn.

Running Time: 10 Mins
Format: 16mm

Ped Cycles is a study in the ways in which the viewer interacts with and makes assumptions about the subjects exhibited, based on one isolated aspect: feet. Capturing stories and textures undergone by a string of subjects' feet (or spokes, or wheels), the film short experiments with what the audience members would assume about nature, relationships, and gender.

Running Time: 6 Mins
Format: Video

"Night Raga" features a surbahar performance by Evan Strauss. The piece is the product of an improvisational experiment with lighting and mood.

Running Time: 5 Mins
Format: 16mm

"Waiting Room" plays with the experiences undergone by 'waiters,' both isolated and as they interact within the room through eye-contact, body language, and introspection.