It was a strange week of going through the motions with a strange kind of stoner consciousness. A delirium possibly due to just pure information overload: classes, appointments, TAship, urgent communications from students, faculty, staff, and far away project contacts, an exponentially growing TODO list, plunging into grant season, herding the cats of my thesis committee, pitching the project to museums for next summer, creating a project prospectus, and prep for four exhibitions in the next four weeks. Whew! The end result is a sort of frenetic forgetfulness, missed meetings, late assignment, fevered and troubled sleep, and regularly walking into rooms or getting on the computer to do something that I no longer remember what.
Storeboats lashed together near Louisville, Kentucky
Time for some deep breaths. Breathe. Breathe. And time to forgive myself for a little scatter-brainedness while I do an excitingly impossible number of things for a project I find inspiring and meaningful.
I did manage to pull together my undergrad research group that is working exclusively with me on the Secret History project. The independent study is titled “Post-modern History and New Media Production” with readings from Zinn, E.P. Thompson, Georges Lefebvre, and possibly Jean-Francois Lyotard and George Rudé. The project group will be working together to accomplish the ambitious goals of the project this quarter, including assembling the research archive, mapping out the new media component, and cutting together possible minidocs. Right now, the project group is also helping me organize and transcribe the archive.
My shots are already reasonably organized. Though with the secondary (environmental, detail, and establishing) shots, a more detailed catalog should be made. I’ve gotten a start on it, and it is an arduous task.
Ed Hoffman owner of Ed’s No Name Bar interviewed in Winona, MN
One fun thing I did is update the project blog a few times. I did some gentle research on historical flatboats on the river and a post showing some of the faces of the people I interviewed for the archive.
