CHANNERTV:
Harold Channer had me as a guest yesterday. Nice thing was, he has a wide-ranging and free-roaming mind. Fun to talk to. An hour or so, no hurries. I noted, to his pleasure, that his show was his take on New York and New Yorkers who interested him. So showed a clip from my WTC video, the baseball promo and pitched KhadiShop. Huckster that I am, I even wore a jacket. MNN is a nightmare of disorganization. The producer kept yelling and I am sure her impressive lungpower is somewhere on the soundtrack.
How did I feel about it? A few things:
One, I have a fat neck. Gotta do something about it. And I cock my head when I talk. I really must watch my TV/videotape appearances more often and get over this problem I have of watching myself. If it wasn't for watching the tape with Tom and Mike, I may not have seen the whole thing.
Next, Harold says, Your work is very political isn't it? Damn right it is, but nice to have someone like him see it.
And then, I botched up his question about my optimism for the future. I should have talked about my amazing friends doing amazing work. And the future as I see it in interconnectivity. But just as well, as I am getting to be a bore on the subject. In my defense, it was towards the end and I was a little eager to finish it. Talking for an hour is really quite a long time and the sound of my own voice was becoming grating.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
ABOUT THE FIELD TRIP @ ASIA SOCIETY
Manuel says he can't believe I am actually getting a public program to show my home footage. I took that as a compliment.
But though I had tried to set it up with the folks at the Rubin Museum before I left, we never connected. They know so little about the region, they have no idea how little they know. Lisa actually smiled when I said noone was teaching Northeast india at any university nor had any museum made it a focus. I could only smile back when she suggested I check in with Gene their inhouse expert, as we had already talked.
So when Ralph suggested we expand the brown-bag lunch for the Rockefeller foundations into a public program, he had come to the same conclusion as I had. We just made it for arts professionals and boy, 100+ people showed up. Funders, Tibetologists, dance people, film folk, baseball fans. No academics. No Indians showed up inteerstingly.
The presentation yesterday was Rachel, Ralph, me, then Zette, Bonnie, Yoshiko and Mike. Cute that they all jockeyed for prime-time, so to speak. I would have too! They were all great.
Went well. Very well. I did PowerPoint, Zette did slides, as did Bonnie, Yoshiko her edited footage on DVD and, as piece de resistance, Mike showed the baseball trailer. Hot damn.
The first time a program on Manipur had been done at TAS. Went to a Burmese restaurant afterwarsd with TAS and Manipusri folks.
Manuel says he can't believe I am actually getting a public program to show my home footage. I took that as a compliment.
But though I had tried to set it up with the folks at the Rubin Museum before I left, we never connected. They know so little about the region, they have no idea how little they know. Lisa actually smiled when I said noone was teaching Northeast india at any university nor had any museum made it a focus. I could only smile back when she suggested I check in with Gene their inhouse expert, as we had already talked.
So when Ralph suggested we expand the brown-bag lunch for the Rockefeller foundations into a public program, he had come to the same conclusion as I had. We just made it for arts professionals and boy, 100+ people showed up. Funders, Tibetologists, dance people, film folk, baseball fans. No academics. No Indians showed up inteerstingly.
The presentation yesterday was Rachel, Ralph, me, then Zette, Bonnie, Yoshiko and Mike. Cute that they all jockeyed for prime-time, so to speak. I would have too! They were all great.
Went well. Very well. I did PowerPoint, Zette did slides, as did Bonnie, Yoshiko her edited footage on DVD and, as piece de resistance, Mike showed the baseball trailer. Hot damn.
The first time a program on Manipur had been done at TAS. Went to a Burmese restaurant afterwarsd with TAS and Manipusri folks.