What is Art? Erring Edition, Trailer (2 min. 2014) Directed, produced, and edited by Lester Alfonso as a sizzle reel for the web-series season two.
This is my archive find on Day 46. Relegated to the back burner after an unsuccessful crowd-funding campaign and fundraiser, the “second season” of the What is Art? web series, dubbed What is… Erring? never launched. What’s left is this two-minute clip that captures a glimpse of what it wanted to be. The focus for the next iteration of the series had been on the art and artists involved with one of the most exhilarating pop-up take-overs in recent memory. Public Energy’s Erring on the Mount was a multi-day arts festival that took place within a dilapidated former convent called Mount St. Joseph’s.
The idea for the “second season” was to give the camera to someone else and use me as a kind of host or character — I was going for a kind of Anthony Bourdain of art.
I’ve been shooting this project since 2007 and I’ve amassed quite a bit of footage and audio — especially when we ran the radio version. I can only surmise that I will be coming back to this again and again. After all, there are plans for a new “Erring” project in 2021 for a large closed school.
Tours of the interior were given months ahead of time and submissions for artistic proposals using specific rooms or spaces in the convent were curated. Artistic practices ran the gamut, from theatre to installation art and the variety of spaces included a large chapel, multiple rooms, and an attic!
Erring or “wandering” was originally inspired by a project back in the 1990s where theatre artists presented plays and installations in an apartment that was due to be demolished. The temporariness of things is at the core of this project.
Among the many things not captured by the video was the energy in the entire complex while the festival was running. It was energizing!
More soon! — LA
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