Welcome Message (14 sec. 2001) Directed, shot, and edited by Lester Alfonso to convert into a looping gif for the Original Plastic website landing page.
Welcome. I dug deeper than usual today, Day 44, into my Vimeo archive. I actually found something that I don’t even quite recognize. The file was named 14sec. and it looks like something that I turned into a gif for the landing page of the Original Plastic website I used to have until 2010. I found this low-quality file with a message that I had apparently written although its meaning is now lost to me.
The video comes with no sound, no date, and no other information. From what I remember, I shot that footage of the moon from a moving car probably in summer 2001. I definitely remember using the same footage for a live performance of Tammy Foreman’s Comes From the Sun for one of our Hijack events (pop-up art take-overs) in the Autumn of that same year.
There is a kind of cringe I get from reading this message. I have a discomfiting sense of an open probing without the need to obtain my individual consent. It’s a kind of invitation to an open house — an invitation in motion. What would the surrealists say? It’s a landing page opener, it’s a pun, and it’s fun.
I tossed it into my black box only to come back to me almost twenty years later. Twenty years later… I’m letting that sink in for a minute. The world was so different then. Now is finally the time again. I’ve arrived to begin the work I’ve always been meant to do.
In the Museum of QuickTime files, this is a genuine artifact — worthy of an exhibit — an antique! In the Museum of QuickTime files, there are banks of computers from the 1990s and one could walk down the aisles, pick a random station, and start clicking with the computer’s mouse to play the stamp-sized movies.
This website is now my fancy filing cabinet.
This website is a multi-media museum. This is now my fancy filing cabinet. I can organize it all here one day at a time and you can even follow along as I do it. I’m discovering as much about myself in the process because I’m daring myself to write a 500-word memoir to accompany each file.
I’m making progress. I’m a work-in-progress. I don’t think this series could ever end. It would probably take at least a thousand pages to make a dent into my archive. Maybe it will take a thousand and one (Arabian) nights, something like that.
It’s a mystery of hundreds of pages, definitely something to be read in several sittings. A book with moving pictures and unnumbered pages to be read at random. Welcome. This book will find you! It’s called Chapter Nowhere because it’s always Chapter Now Here. Right? More soon! — LA
P.S. If you’re liking these daily posts, perhaps you can consider becoming a monthly donor for a year or making a one-time contribution. It would seriously help a lot. Your money goes directly into supporting an artist committed to continually become the best version of himself. Thank you so much! Much love, LA