Benton Franklin County Fair

So, about 10 days ago I worked the Benton Franklin County Fair beer garden as a volunteer.  We broke records of $5 pours of local wines and Coors products (booo... but at least I got to collect bottle caps...) in our tight red, rhinestone bedazzled shirts and fancy break-up boots (the two ladies I worked with were in their 70's and super impressed that I could use a winekey).

I couldn't remember the last time I had been to the fair, and there will be a whole blog on the fancy 4H rabbits and birds and the little girls asleep with their cows, but this first blog should be about how the fair relates to my work.

When I imagine a home for my work it's in a scenario like the county fair.  Where there are booths for information on everything from post-partum awareness to rural electric emergency preparedness, and strange collections of creatures and multi-cultural fried foods.  There should be lots of games with no particular rules but most of which utilize things like balloons or empty bottles or wind-up fish for which you win things like squid hats.  And rickety rides with hand-painted backdrops.  There should be scrip for beer.  There should be all sorts of strange flying light up insect replicas.  The belly dancing demonstrations could be right next to the get out the vote campaign.



This will be an interesting contrast to Platform Art Fair in L.A. at the end of this month, which I somehow think will not include me seeing how many elephant ears I can eat in an evening (3, so many different textures from the different booths- everything from crunchy like cracker to molten like sunken soufle to just the way it should be- stretchy, starchy, dough like fried pizza covered in partially hydrogenated liquid magic and covered in cinnamon that did not come from a fancy spice store.).

I walked around the fair after the beer tent closed, and because I was filming I felt like I was in this silent, still bubble surrounded by marvelous, vibrant, fast moving people.  I really need to get a comfortable tripod, or use the gopro in such situations, because I'm often standing on my tip-toes, which makes me have to rock around to get these shots.  Would it be less noticeable if I had a helmet camera mount on?



I'm not sure if I'm making art when I make little videos like this.  I'm certainly not in control to the extent that I would like to be to know for sure that it was "art."  I have so much to learn about how to make a good video.  Instead they are more like moving stills I would have stuck into a "sketch" book in college in 1999.



I went out for a beer with a technical engineer friend last night, and he caught the last little bit of the last upload. He said something like "I see the video, but I don't know what it means."  Which cracked me up- why does it need to mean anything?  Or do anything?  It's just a thing- a preserved idea. Oh, so much to think about how to premise.  It's meaning is the magic...