This unique touring event provides deep insights into the ongoing struggles in New Orleans two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The immersive project is a multimedia exploration of the human situation in New Orleans seen through the lens of a changing world of independent media production, video art, and primary source journalism.
This is a unique project. It really gives a person a sense of optimism during a time when optimism is rather tough to sustain. -- Zola Munford, curator, Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival
THE EVENT INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:
Video Art Screening: Katrina Ballads/ CNN mashup: Who Are You Angry At?
This video-art installation features a looping film edited by Farrah Hoffmire combining a performance of a piece from KATRINA BALLADS with the original CNN footage that inspired the composition.
KATRINA BALLADS, which had its world premiere at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, SC, is a collection of songs inspired by the tragic events surrounding Hurricane Katrina.The work uses primary-source texts to paint a rich musical portrait of that devastating and telling week in September 2005.
Using the words of flood survivors, relief workers, politicians and celebrities, New York composer Ted Hearne creates a cutting-edge musical experience and a vivid look into America’s darkest hours. Performed by Yes is a World and Charleston’s New Music Collective, the music is rhythmic, theatrical, and American to the core, possessing an edgy, post-minimalist drive and a deep jazz influence. It is a moving performance, challenging us to remember and reflect upon our own history.
This portion of the campus event includes a daylong exhibit of a video-art installation of the project with interpretive materials and an on-site curator.
Documentary Film Screening: Falling Together in New Orleans
SOLO JOURNALIST & DOCUMENTARY ARTIST Farrah Hoffmire was inspired by grassroots organizing and volunteer efforts in the weeks and months after Hurricane Katrina. She has traveled to New Orleans numerous times to create a solo work that is part art-vignette, part documentary film and part grass-roots journalism. In stark contrast to the failure and corruption stories that have dominated mass-media coverage, Falling Together introduces us to powerful people fighting to save lives, preserve culture and bring a sense of well-being back to New Orleans.
Conceived as an ongoing project that will follow events in New Orleans as they unfold over the next few years it also explores the ongoing complexities of rebuilding in areas of the city still severely damaged—such as the Lower 9th Ward. The film features music by Ani Difranco as well as top New Orleans musicians.
The film series has been featured at the:
- Oral History Association national conference (Little Rock, AR)
- Langston Hughes African American Film Festival (Seattle, WA)
- Lake Eden Arts Festival (Asheville, NC)
- Zeitgeist Film Series (Tulane University, New Orleans)
- ConvergeSouth Film Festival
This portion of the event includes a 75-minute screening of the film.
Documentary Film Screening: Social Dress - 730 Days After
Takashi Horisaki and a small team of volunteers were working 20-hour days in the 100-degree heat when OPP found them completing an art project in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Working on a largely abandoned block of the city, they worked with a mission to remind people of "what is still happening" in NOLA two years after the floods.
Takashi's ambitious media project involved the laborious process of covering the surface of the shotgun-style house in latex and cheesecloth to create a replica that itself could be "displaced" as a sculpture.
Falling Together in New Orleans: Vignette 4 looks at the process and motivations and then visits the artist and the sculpture at it's first home in New York City's Socrates Sculpture Park.
Takashi hopes to displace the sculpture across the U.S. and world to raise awareness about the still displaced people of New Orleans struggling to return home.
This portion of the tour presents a multi-media virtual tour of the sculpture with interpretive materials and on site curation.
OPP Media Circus exhibit and discussion
Our relationship to mass media is immersive and constantly in flux. The Hurricane Katrina Media Tour uses art, a looping slide presentation, and during selected performances can include a presentation by Mitchell Davis and a group discussion with audiences at one of our screenings.