A Fence and An Actress

I went to my usual spot the other morning to gather video footage. I was so happy to have a clear sky after weeks of rain. When I arrived, the plaza, unlike the sky, was not clear. There was a fence and some machinery sitting behind Phoenix Rising. Recently I was told that demolition wouldn't begin until late in the summer. So why the equipment? Not only did the fence confuse me, it spoiled my frame. But that quickly changed. After a few minutes, I began to really like the design of the fence in my frame. I liked how it carried the center of the frame to the right and created an odd sense of balance. I couldn't help but think of my previous post about Tilted Arc and the fence I found surrounding Federal Plaza. It appears that I cannot escape fences with this project. Fences are the new public art. For some people, fences make good neighbors. For me they make good actors.

At the end of this video, there is a girl. She inquires if I am making a movie. This scene is staged. In all the time I have been filming at Dilworth Plaza not a soul has asked me what I was doing. Not even a Police Officer to ask if I have a permit to film. People and Police just pass through my frame, carrying themselves as if no camera is present. Perhaps their nonchalance is their form of acting - trying their best not to indicate. This day, three people asked what I was filming. I could have told my friend to stay home and sleep in. Instead she woke up early and rode her bike from West Philly to City Hall to ask me if I was making a movie. Life imitating art.

The staged scene and the questions, "Are you making a movie? What is it about?" have begun to haunt me. What movie am I making? What is it about? Some days it seems crystal clear while other days I cannot say. I have never made a documentary before. Part of the novelty is exciting while the other part is maddening. It is mostly maddening. I want to refrain from making a voice-over heavy piece where I discuss myself. The constant drumming and droning of "I think this, I remember this, I see this, I feel this, I, I, I" is a frightening thought for me. It's not that I dislike personal documentary filmmaking. It is fine but I demand something more. Something that is even more personal but stands just outside the use of "I, I, I."

This film is about a visual connection I made years ago between a sculpture and a building. Between Emlen Etting's Phoenix Rising and Cesar Pelli's Cira Centre. The film deals with their physical presence in the city. How do they fit into the landscape? How do they define the landscape? Do they? Can they? Are these two pieces in fact a single design that symbolizes Philadelphia or the Philadelphian? What do these two works communicate to those that live here and those that pass through? Apparently Phoenix Rising communicates very little. One can sit for hours on end, day after day, filming the piece and no one stops to ask what you are doing. One has to ask a friend to ride her bike 2 miles just to create the illusion. 

The other night I asked my wife and my closest friend what their two favorite buildings are in the city. One old. One new. My wife chose Horace Trumbauer's Philadelphia Museum of Art as her old structure while my friend chose William Strickland's Merchant's Exchange for his. For the newer, more modern, both said Pelli's Cira Centre. I was told that part of that had to do with my years of attempting to cinematize the structure. That my obsession with filming it had somehow left a mark. That it made the building more interesting or more prominent. The fact that Cira Centre is so far removed from the downtown area and stands only 435 feet tall (over 100 feet shorter than City Hall) makes viewing the building difficult unless you walk toward it. Cira Centre, unlike the horrific Liberty Towers and the other downtown skyscrapers, sits quietly on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, just outside William Penn's and Thomas Holme's original plan for the city. Cira Centre does not scream, "I, I, I" but rather, "We, We, We." It is a building for a city and not an architect's nod to architecture. It is not an International design that can be removed from Philadelphia and dropped in another city and remain effective. Similar to Serra's Tilted Arc, if Cira Centre was ever removed, it would lose all meaning. Cira Centre, as Pelli stated, is tied to the history of the city, to the people, to the culture, and to the climate.

If Phoenix Rising is a similar form does it carry the same message as Cira Centre? Is Phoenix Rising a sculpture that carries the history, the people, the culture, and the climate of Philadelphia? We know from Etting's biography that he did. Perhaps I should separate the work from its maker for a moment and ask that same question again. If the answer is "Yes" then how could the removal of Phoenix Rising be good for the sculpture and the city? How can we shift our public works around and maintain our history and culture? I suppose because Philadelphia is a "City of Twos." It was designed in 1682 by two men, Penn and Holme, and was designed to sit between two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Oddly enough the Schuylkill empties into the Delaware down at the Navy Yard. I went there to film but the spot is inaccessible and the confluence invisible. It is best viewed on a map.

I was told that Phoenix Rising is being relocated somewhere along the Delaware River.  I think that is perfect. It will tie building to sculpture, river to river, and a Philadelphia form to the city's history, culture, climate, and people. It seems only appropriate to quote architect, Santiago Calatrava: " Architecture and sculpture are two rivers in which the same water flows." 
 

Etting as filmmaker

Yesterday I incorporated the work of Eadweard Muybridge. He is the filmmaker that most fascinates me. The impact of his work is still obvious – the techniques that Muybridge originated over 100 years ago are still used today. Watch any instant replay or breakdown of any play in any sport and you’ll see Muybridge’s touch. Watch the films of Peter Greenaway, Ken McMullen, Hollis Frampton, or any handful of music videos or TV commercials and you’ll find Muybridge. Whether or not Muybridge is the inventor of cinema is still debated. Most say Edison. I always say Muybridge.

Muybridge created his famous Animals in Locomotion in Philadelphia between 1884 and 1887. Cinema is native to Philadelphia.

Muybridge’s work represents one end of the cinematic spectrum. Siegmund Lubin, Philadelphia’s Polish immigrant optician, represents the other. Lubin opened his first shop on 8^th St in 1885 just as Muybridge photographed a nude woman tossing a handkerchief. 

Muybridge Motion Study

Lubin saw Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. Shortly afterward, he began making and exhibiting films. Lubin started a studio in Center City where he turned out film after film. He even opened a studio in Los Angeles. Lubin made over 100 films. However, by 1917, Lubin and his studio system were finished.

Lubin Studio with Glass Roof

Lubinville

A documentary about Lubin: www.kingofthemovies.com

In the 1920's, Philadelphia saw the birth of the American avant-garde. A group known as The Cinema Crafters of Philadelphia was founded in 1928 - their goal was to "pioneer experiments in the new field of photoplay production." One of the Crafters, Lewis Jacobs, began Experimental Cinema magazine. Other Cinema Crafters included Tibby Lear, Jo Gerson, Betty John, and Louis Hirshman.

The Cinema Crafters of Philadelphia (1929)

Etting's first film, Poem 8.

Etting's second film, Oramunde.
 

Etting’s Phoenix Rising and Cesar Pelli’s Cira Centre have a cinematic quality. Phoenix Rising works like an early magic lantern – the sun hits the peculiar form and casts a slowly animated shadow on its circular base. The base looks like a roll of celluloid.

Pelli’s all-glass tower appears like strips of film stacked on top of another – each window a film frame. The viewer can watch the office workers move in Muybridgian fashion; an ordinary (Muybridgian) task becomes cinematic wonder: a woman carrying a stack of papers, a man answering a telephone, five people walking toward the conference room. 

The earliest forms of Cinema have never left Philadelphia.

And then there was one...

Finally! After four days of filming at rush hour and roughly 1000 passers-by, a man stopped to read the Richardson Dilworth plaque and photograph Phoenix Rising.

I posted 3 videos of Phoenix Rising in the past 2 days. All were shot from the same exact spot. All that is about to change. I promise.

This video features original music by Adam Di Angelo.

Peopling the Plaza

Over two past weeks, weather permitting, I have been filming. I shot some nice footage of Cira Centre, the Delaware River, and Phoenix Rising. I also spent time at the Urban Archives at Temple University where I found some great photographs and news clippings. So far I am pleased with my footage. 

I tried making a film about Phoenix Rising two years ago. I insisted on shooting black-and-white photographs of the sculpture as opposed to color photographs or video because I felt then that the plaza and the sculpture were too filthy. I also insisted that no person be present in any photograph. I would stand in the sunken plaza waiting for passers-by to clear my frame. Other times I would reposition the camera so that a person would disappear behind the sculpture’s pedestal. One woman I simply Photoshopped out of the picture.

Part of me wants to apologize to that woman. I feel guilty for having removed her from my frame. A bigger part of me wants to ask her to walk by Phoenix Rising again because my film is completely different now. It is reliant on people – on the public.

The past few mornings have been incredible. Granted they have been cold, but that hasn’t bothered me entirely. I arrive at Dilworth Plaza by 8:15 and set up shop. I plop myself down on the steps just in front of the fountain. Two tripod legs on the lowest level and the back leg on the first step. If the light is decent, I leave the lens naked, no filters, and if something needs to be enhanced, I add one of my filters. Then I hit record and watch.

When a camera is static, unmoving, one has the tendency to overcompensate for the lack of dynamic filming. That is an enormous error. One begins zooming in and out, touching dials, adjusting exposure, swapping out filters, adjusting the frame. When you get home and look at your footage, nothing is useful. Shots are too short because you changed so many things so quickly. No shot lasts longer than 15 seconds. While I learned that lesson years ago, I am still unable to resist at times. My first day at Dilworth Plaza I changed the color temperature of the image, making it a bit more orange than I should I have. At the time, I thought the shot oozed style, now I see it oozes ooze – it oozes overkill.

Viewing my orange footage at home I realized just how perfect the people were.Where I thought I was documenting the sculpture, I was in fact recording beautiful movement in a public space.

I returned the following morning with clearer intentions. I left the color temperature alone. I set the frame, hit record, and observed. The people were amazing. I was mesmerized by their motion, their movement in front of the camera. I recognized some people from the previous morning. One woman I even recognized from two years ago when she walked through my frame. I still have the photo of her. Her backpack and short blond hair are burned into my brain. 

 

My fascination with Eadweard Muybridge came back to me all at once.  There I was watching people cross from one side of the frame to the other – a simple gesture – yet every person did it differently. They carried themselves in such a way that it became a true spectacle for me to watch. I found it impossible to focus on the sculpture. I forced myself look at the sculpture. I was the only one. No one looked at Phoenix Rising. One person walking past my camera looked back to see what I was filming. He seemed genuinely surprised to find a sculpture. I was hoping someone would ask me why I was filming the sculpture. I even hoped a cop would ask me if I had permission to film. Anything to stir up a conversation about Phoenix Rising. Not a word. 

The first morning, I noticed that Phoenix Rising dwarfs the people that walk by it. Since I had never filmed the sculpture with people before I had no sense of scale – no sense of proportion or size. The piece is massive. Looking at the news clippings I copied from Temple’s Urban Archives, I wonder whether the reports of the sculpture standing 28 feet tall are correct. Other clippings say it is 20 feet. Originally I estimated it was roughly 20 feet.  Now I am not certain. I measured out 28 feet in my apartment and thought that it seemed too big. But seeing it with people I question its height. It appears the Philadelphian nature of the work is making itself visible in text and image – the city of twos – 28 feet or 20 feet? I need to find my friend and ask her what she thinks.

There is another option. I can ask the men who soar well above 28ft. I imagine they have a good sense of height.