Join the Smithsonian American Art Museum for our fifth annual Women Filmmakers Festival. This year, the festival is presented exclusively online in March in honor of Women’s History Month. This programming also serves as prelude to Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, an upcoming exhibition that highlights how film and video artists incorporate musical strategies, themes and references into their work. This year's highlighted filmmakers, Vivienne Dick and Alison O'Daniel, consistently bring this same synergy to their cinematic offerings.
Attendees are encouraged to ask the following questions: How does music communicate and create community? How do changes in our surroundings and in ourselves impact the soundscapes of our lives? How do relationships to people, formed through music, and relationships to sounds and sense, evolve?
Alison O'Daniel
Vivienne Dick
Alison O'Daniel
Alison O’Daniel (b. 1979, Miami, FL) is a visual artist and filmmaker whose work appears around the world in exhibitions and screenings. Employing various approaches to moving image, sculpture, installation and sound, her practice explores embodiment and layers of translation, communication, and access.
Virtual Film Screening with Artist Alison O’Daniel
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On Wednesday, March 1, 2023, artist and filmmaker Alison O’Daniel joined Saisha Grayson, time-based media curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, for a virtual screening and conversation. Watch their discussion about O’Daniel’s film practice that is also an experimental deep dive into sound, music, and communication systems from a Deaf/Hard of Hearing perspective. The live program discussion was sparked by excerpts from O’Daniel’s feature, The Tuba Thieves (2023), which premiered in January at Sundance Film Festival. The film spins off from a true news story about tubas stolen from multiple Los Angeles high school bands into a meditation on sound loss, re-creation, and transmutation across a series of historical and fictional narratives. This program was part of SAAM’s fifth annual Women Filmmakers Festival, which was presented completely online and ran from March 1-8, 2023, in honor of Women’s History Month. The 2023 festival served as prelude to Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, an exhibition that highlights how film and video artists incorporate musical strategies, themes and references into their work. The highlighted filmmakers, Vivienne Dick and Alison O'Daniel, consistently bring this same synergy to their cinematic offerings.
0:11 - I'm the curator of time-based media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC, the organizer of the Women Filmmakers Festival at SAAM.
0:19 - And I'm so excited to welcome you to the Fifth Annual Festival and this first screening
0:24 - and conversation with Alison O'Daniel. I'm so appreciative of my SAAM colleagues
0:30 - who helped make this possible, especially Gloria Kenyon and Chantel Jones Williams in programs, SIAV, who support the tech behind the scenes
0:39 - and of course, the participating artists. I'd also like to thank our live captioner and ASL interpreters tonight.
0:46 - The captions can be accessed through a link that is pinned in the comment section to your right,
0:51 - and they'll open in another window, and the ASL screen will be visible
0:57 - whenever we're speaking. And though we gather tonight online tuning in
1:02 - from different places, we gratefully acknowledge the diverse and vibrant native communities who make their homes
1:08 - where we each are, including for me here in Lenapehoking, also known as New York City,
1:14 - where I'm speaking to you from. To learn more about the Native Peoples and histories where you are,
1:19 - we're sharing links to the Native Lands Map and the National Congress of the American Indians list of current tribal representation in the comment area.
1:28 - For this year's festival, which serves as a prelude to my upcoming exhibition, "Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies"
1:35 - which will open at SAAM in June. I've invited two filmmakers who extend that project's theme
1:41 - and use their cameras to uniquely attend to the relationship between communities, soundscapes and music scenes,
1:48 - past, present, and future. And musicians and music are often in the frame,
1:53 - as you'll see, but the way the stories are told, the structures and aesthetics are also infused
1:58 - with abstract textures and sensibilities of rhythmic care that have affinities with music itself.
2:06 - To kick things off, as I said, I'm just so honored and excited to welcome Alison O'Daniel,
2:11 - who is in the midst of what can only be described as a triumphant theatrical rollout of “TheTuba Thieves,"
2:17 - her first major feature film, which has been supported by an array of prestigious grants
2:22 - and foundations are too long to name in this short intro. After debuting at Sundance in January,
2:29 - she just sold out the 400 seat theater at MoMA for the New York Premier this weekend,
2:34 - and it was really special to be in the room for that. This is a listening project that doesn't isolate
2:41 - the auditory and to see it shared with what O'Daniel described as her ideal audience.
2:47 - One evenly balanced between hearing and deaf and hard of hearing attendees was really,
2:55 - you could feel the joy in the room. And with the film still premiering in theaters having its international debut later this month,
3:02 - we are really thrilled that Alison agreed to meet us in cyberspace with excerpts that would allow us to dive
3:07 - into the work and discuss the many ways she's reinventing cinema by rethinking the relationship
3:13 - between seeing, hearing, listening, reading, feeling, and the meanings produced in her overlaps and gaps.
3:21 - This approach was first modeled in her MFA thesis film "Night Sky," which she's also generously made available
3:27 - for SAAM Festival registrants, and you can view that if you haven't yet, through March 14th with a link
3:32 - that we already shared with you. And in that 2011 piece, O'Daniel brought together her artistic sensibility
3:39 - and hard of hearing perspective to subvert cinematic expectations of linear clear narratives
3:45 - and complete comprehension. Continuing that exploration, "The Tuba Thieves" was actually conceived very shortly
3:52 - after she screened "Night Sky" when she encountered a strange local news story about multiple tubas being stolen
3:59 - from a variety of Los Angeles area high schools. This immediately sparked her next film,
4:05 - which she's been working on in the decade or so since. Uninterested in the thieves,
4:10 - O'Daniel was fascinated by a story that hinged on removing this loud instrument, often described as the heartbeat
4:16 - from a marching band sonic mix, and how this might offer a metaphor for how she experiences sound,
4:22 - and ultimately anchor a film that functions, as she says, like a game of telephone where inferences, tenuous ties and partial information
4:31 - expand imaginative possibilities. The result is a portrait of Los Angeles that spins out
4:36 - from this premise to follow Nyke, a deaf drummer with her friends and circle and family,
4:42 - and Geovanny, one of the high school band members in his circle. But people are really just part of the visual
4:48 - and sonic landscape that here includes wild animals living with city noises,
4:53 - neighborhoods impacted by airport sound pollution, and a constant flow of sea and traffic.
4:59 - Hard to describe, I'm very glad that we can start by sharing two extended excerpts here.
5:05 - One will start with Nyke and her car, and her journey leads to other touchpoints throughout LA
5:11 - and then the final piece with Geovanny and his band at a football away game.
5:17 - So as I noted, because captioning and decisions about how information is conveyed is intentionally explored
5:24 - through the film, there will not be card or ASL during the videos, but it will return when we come back.
5:31 - So without further ado, let's enjoy this together. Let's play.
18:12 - - Thank you, hello Alison O'Daniel, welcome.
18:17 - - Hi, thank you so much for having me. - And I wanted to thank you for already jumping
18:26 - into the chat and starting to answer questions. And it was kind of the perfect question
18:31 - because I think it sets us up to talk about some of the really interesting ways
18:37 - this project has evolved, and I think that's a very good way of giving an overall sense of it too.
18:43 - So I was thinking that we could start out by talking about, yeah, the very many different ways
18:48 - that something called “TheTuba Thieves" has existed in the world and in your life, and how it has manifested in different ways
18:56 - that sort of lead out from that news story that I started with and then maybe come back
19:01 - into the feature film that is now premiering around the world.
19:08 - - Yeah, first of all thank you so much for having me, and thank you for your interest in showing this work.
19:15 - I think it's maybe important to say that I am, I'm,
19:21 - I really deeply love the moving image,
19:26 - and part of my love is not at all, I'm just, I have zero commitment to rules in cinema.
19:34 - Like I don't, [laughs], I mean, I really love and study film
19:42 - and the history of film, and I also I think am in a pretty like deep conversation about what can still happen in film.
19:51 - I think it's you know, it's a very young medium in my mind. It's only 150 years old
19:57 - and I just really believe there's a lot more that can be done and so I say that
20:02 - because when I started making "The Tuba Thieves," I made this decision that I was gonna make the film
20:08 - backwards, that I wanted to start with the musical scores and then truly like,
20:16 - I wanted to direct like a composer and have the composers of the film kind of have the role
20:21 - of the director. So, and part of the reason actually was just that I felt a little guilty about my relationship
20:29 - with my com, with the composer that I worked with on my first film "Night Sky" that's here.
20:35 - So Ethan Frederick Greene, whose music in that film is incredible, but I just felt like he kind of got like dragged along
20:41 - in the ending of the process and he was very generous. But I think I just harbored a little bit
20:47 - of guilt about that. And so when I started,
20:52 - I was driving in my car in LA, I started hearing these stories about thefts of tubas
20:58 - from high schools. I heard one story in the fall of 2011,
21:03 - and I just thought it was a weird story. And then a week passed and I heard a story
21:09 - about Tubas being stolen from a different high school, and then a month passed, and I heard another story from a third high school
21:15 - of Tubas being stolen. And I started keeping this notebook, and very quickly I knew I was gonna make a film
21:23 - called "The Tuba Thieves," but I was really curious about all these things that weren't being reported.
21:31 - For example, just like how does a marching band sound when it doesn't have that lowest register of sound?
21:36 - And what do the tuba players do in class if they don't have tubas?
21:42 - Are they just sitting there listening? And so you know just, I had these questions and I was really curious about them,
21:49 - made this decision that I was gonna make this film called "The Tuba Thieves," but I wanted to make it backwards. And so I, Istarted making the film
21:58 - by giving three composers a bunch of references, and then they responded to all of these references.
22:05 - And so it was like pictures, poems, news stories, many different things. And they responded, gave me three pieces of music
22:13 - and I started there. So I basically was just listening to the music, and then I was hearing different stories
22:21 - that people were telling me about, like different events and history. And it's basically became this kind of 10 year long process
22:28 - of building a film in this piecemeal way that for me really became a kind of exploration,
22:36 - a very deep exploration of my own identity and what it means to listen. And this thing that really inspired me,
22:43 - this question of like, what does it mean to listen without being tethered to the ears as like the vehicle
22:50 - for listening? And I have this tendency to sort of ask these questions
22:56 - and I don't feel like I necessarily have to figure out the answer. Instead, it kind of becomes like a methodology
23:03 - or something for building my work.
23:09 - - Yeah, that's so interesting. And I maybe it's helpful to back up for a second and mention that you come to film, as you said,
23:15 - with this love, but also with a practice of sculpture and performance and sort of a visual art language
23:22 - that says it's okay maybe to not answer the culminating question or fulfill a narrative
23:29 - and pose questions that are open-ended and invite collaboration in that way.
23:36 - And I think, you know, and that led to, as you were saying, sort of being able to iterate this process, you know, have parts of this come along in different forms.
23:45 - Can you kind of give a, a sense of what some of those forms have been along the way?
23:51 - - Yeah, well, so I, Istarted out,
23:57 - I mean, I did things hand in hand, kind of like parallel tracks of some things
24:03 - that were sort of traditional in many things that were not. And one of the traditional approaches was that I did actually write a feature length script.
24:10 - So in 2012, I listened to these three pieces of music for seven months at a seven month long residency
24:17 - called Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. And so I was, you know,
24:23 - in basically kind of able to hibernate and just really focus and I wrote the screenplay, and then I was you know,
24:35 - I didn't really know how filmmakers who are not in grad school make films.
24:40 - I just, I mean, I didn't know how I did it, how to do it in grad school either, but I just,
24:46 - I don't know, I think like, so maybe many filmmakers are just constantly winging it. But I you know, I got out of school and suddenly I was like,
24:54 - how do you do this if you don't have you know, student discounts and if you don't have like a camera, like,
25:02 - what, how do you afford, how does anyone do this? And so I just applied to some grants.
25:09 - I won a grant that was $6,000. I had the script. I literally just like looked at the script
25:14 - and tried to figure out what could I pull out of the script that could, I could make for $6,000.
25:20 - And so I did that with I think the very last scene that we're gonna watch today.
25:27 - And I, so I made that scene for $6,000,
25:33 - and then I started, and then I did the same thing with away game, the section,
25:39 - the football game section that we just watched. And that scene is important because it's with one of the high schools
25:44 - that had its marching band that had its tubas stolen. And so I filmed I think three different segments.
25:53 - And then I was invited to have my first solo show in France,
25:58 - and I went to visit the space thinking I was gonna kind of set up a video installation.
26:04 - And when I got there, it was a, this concrete cavernous space with a curved ceiling.
26:13 - And it was, I mean, it was just a sound nightmare, like when I got in there, I, everything I thought I was gonna do
26:19 - just suddenly seemed really impossible. But then I actually had all these references swirling around
26:26 - in my head that I had given to the different composers. And so I mean, all of these references
26:34 - have all of these interesting stories, but basically one of the references was a picture of the visual artist Louise Nevelson.
26:42 - And I had asked Christine Sun Kim, the artist who was, who made one of the scores,
26:48 - she's Deaf, I asked her to be, to look at Louise Nevelson's fake eyelashes as a reference
26:54 - for making a score. And so you know, some of the references were really,
26:59 - really random and just pushing kind of like, what does the score look like?
27:05 - What does a score have to be? What does the shape of a score like, why does it have to be on paper necessarily?
27:11 - It could be eyelashes. And so I would have these studio visits
27:18 - and try and explain this to people, and I would try and google that image of this like, particular image of Louise,
27:24 - so that I had given Christine and little thumbnail images would come up of Louise Nevelson's sculptures.
27:32 - And when they're really small, I had this like, thought that they looked like soundproofing foam,
27:39 - like acoustic foam with the kind of jagged edges, or it kind of looked like a quilt.
27:45 - And so basically I was trying to solve a sound problem
27:50 - in this space, and I decided to make a quilt and to make a, to make a Louise Nevelson sculpture as a quilt and to make one as like out of acoustic foam,
27:58 - just to try and like you know, dampen the bouncing sound in that space.
28:03 - And so that became one of the kind of like legs of this epic project.
28:11 - So there's been films, there have been objects that are really like, meant to impact the sound where these films have been shown.
28:19 - There've also been performances where I've collaborated with either the marching band or various musicians
28:25 - or deaf skateboarders. And then those people who I've collaborated with then end up getting like pulled into the film.
28:32 - So it's, I like to think of it kind of like a call and response or a game of telephone
28:39 - where there's this like thing that's evolving and I'm both listening to it
28:44 - and kind of directing it at the same time. And I think you can feel that in the film
28:49 - that it's almost like a narrative that's come up and then like, I don't know, overflowed or something.
28:58 - - Well, it's so interesting because I've been, so, first of all, I saw, the first time I encountered the piece
29:03 - was at the Hammer where it had the Nevelson kind of sculpture there. And I didn't know why,
29:09 - but I was really intrigued by the pairing of that with the John Cage piece,
29:14 - the sort of callback to that historic moment, which is a history that I know really well.
29:20 - The, you know, the icon of John Cage's supposedly silent performance is really you know,
29:26 - looms large in histories of the sick 50s and 60s.
29:33 - And since thinking about your work more, I've noticed that you're using this score kind of legacy,
29:41 - the idea of, of generating through kind of open-ended instruction that is also sometimes
29:48 - associated with Cage, but in his context, there's very often this emphasis on chance,
29:54 - and it feels like in your work, there's a lot of interest in like the surprise affinities
30:02 - or proximities, but maybe where they don't quite touch, right? So there's like a proximity, but a space between,
30:09 - and I was curious what you find so generative about that and what that kind of structure for film allows.
30:16 - - Hmm. I like that you're using the word generative because I think for me, in my personal identity
30:26 - as someone who has it, I mean my identity is still evolving
30:32 - around like most recently I've started calling myself Deaf, and that means like d/Deaf
30:42 - just as one word. And sometimes I say deaf hard of hearing with a little d, capital D you know, slash hard of hearing.
30:50 - And I think for me, there was this moment where,
30:56 - and this was an early moment, this was really in making "Night Sky" where I was thinking so much about
31:02 - how we're always in conversations around accessibility. We're always very focused on everybody being able
31:10 - to get everything. And there was a moment where I was, I just was a little bit curious about the fact
31:17 - that I am every day not getting so many things.
31:23 - I'm always kind of wrestling with this feeling of what is missing.
31:28 - And I'm really hyper attuned to all the missing. And I think I just made this choice at a certain point
31:37 - to become really focused on that and interested in that. You know, there's this audiology test for a compensation
31:44 - and it's, it is the act of trying to like fill in the thing you're missing.
31:49 - And like you know, I'm always several steps behind. I'm always kind of like, I think I'm with,
31:56 - I think I'm with the program, I think I'm like participating in a conversation and then I'll do something or participate in a way
32:03 - where it becomes clear. I just really missed like a whole bunch. And I felt like I knew that so well
32:14 - that in some ways I could work with that as almost like a material in the work.
32:19 - And so I really, really enjoy watching someone
32:24 - come into a gallery and try to make sense of why they're looking at a, you know, colorful Louise Nevelson like sculpture.
32:35 - That to be honest, I have no idea what Louise Nevelson would think of that sculpture. You know, like I have no idea what John Cage
32:40 - would think about these things. Like I'm, it's not necessarily reverence or like an absolute like gaga love of modernism.
32:49 - I have questions about all of these things, but I think it's all like there for the absorbing
32:54 - and the hearing and the listening to, and so I really, yeah, it is this space
33:02 - where like everything is kind of a potential generator of,
33:08 - I don't know, a new experience and I'm not so afraid in some ways of playing with the reality of Deaf and hard of hearing people's lives,
33:16 - which does include this like separation arm's length, exclusion.
33:21 - And those things can be like absolutely infuriating and when they're institutional especially.
33:28 - But I think it's really interesting to hear what Deaf and hard of hearing people have to say about those experiences. And so I've kind of just started talking about them,
33:37 - started a while ago. - And yeah, I think that you know, and you touched on this a little bit,
33:43 - working with collaborators is really important to that process of sort of, really a lot of this comes down to communication
33:50 - and maybe the fact that much communication is not fully transparent or maybe none you know,
33:56 - we never fully know what the other person means when they say things, even when we're ostensibly speaking the same language
34:03 - and then what happens through these language translations. And that's opened up through collaboration too.
34:10 - And so I was wondering if you could talk about the two scenes with Christine Sun Kim and sort of how you collaborated with her,
34:16 - how she became part of the film and originally as a, making a composition as a score,
34:24 - and then also kind of featured in the film? I should say Christine Sun Kim is
34:29 - in the Musical Thinking show. And so another kind of point of connection that's been interesting to see.
34:36 - - Yeah, we met, we, let's see, we were,
34:45 - well, I think a few people had started telling me about her
34:51 - and telling her about me. And we were both in grad school at the same time. And then Lisa Reynolds, who was a sign language interpreter
35:01 - who wrote the sign language accompaniment that goes with "Night Sky."
35:06 - Whenever "Night Sky" is shown as like in a theater, I always show it with either live sign language
35:14 - accompaniment or live music accompaniment. And Lisa Reynolds wrote the sign language accompaniment,
35:22 - and she introduced me to Christine right at the final moment when we were just trying to like do the final rehearsals
35:29 - of the sign language accompaniment and actually she introduced me to Christine
35:35 - and Lauren Ridloff, who, if anyone knows who Lauren Ridloff is, like she is also at this point now like you know,
35:41 - a very famous actor. And so the two of them, and Douglas Ridloff, Lauren's husband.
35:48 - So the three of them basically gave us feedback at, in 2011 when we made this sign language score.
35:57 - And after we finished that, I just really loved all of them, and we had a really fun time.
36:02 - And so then as I started to decide that I wanted to make the film backwards, I knew I wanted to work with Ethan
36:08 - who had made the score for "Night Sky." And then I asked Christine if she would be willing to do it,
36:15 - and she was, and she said that she had been really interested in the way that "Night Sky" was like flipping back and forth
36:20 - between privileging her experience and then putting, like, as soon as she felt kind of excluded,
36:25 - then she felt pulled back in. And so she was really interested in that play and became interested in what it would mean to you know,
36:33 - make me a piece of music that she would never have access to. And so she, I guess, trusted me and said yes.
36:41 - And then, and then, so she made me the piece of music
36:47 - and then really she was not part of it. I mean, I basically like took the music
36:52 - and went from there and then, and then shortly before,
36:58 - so I started filming in 2013, that was the first scene. And then in 2018 I was in Maiden LA
37:05 - and I filmed the scene with her. So you know, five years or so went by
37:10 - before I like pulled her back in and basically like what Christine performs
37:17 - is the final scene written in the screenplay. And I really wanted that scene in,
37:23 - but I just couldn't like afford to do the full live action filming
37:28 - and asked Christine if she would, if she would just sign it and so she did.
37:34 - And then I really loved her notes that for the teleprompter, like she translated the English script
37:42 - into just shorthand sign language notes for the teleprompter. And so I think we're about to watch this,
37:47 - but when you see it, so she's performing her notes and then you'll hear Steve Roden,
37:54 - the third composer reading her teleprompter notes, so.
37:59 - - Okay, great. Well, let's watch that and then we can come back and talk some more. - Okay.
42:43 - - I love that scene. I think of it as a plant rave.
42:50 - - Yeah I actually, I was, I was driving in Provincetown listening to Christine's score
42:57 - as I was writing, and I happened to just drive behind a truck that was open in the back and had all these stacks of plants
43:05 - and they were just shivering really perfectly with Christine's score. So that's where that comes from.
43:10 - - I hadn't heard that story before. That's really wonderful. As I said, it's like these, the serendipity stop way of making is really, really cool.
43:20 - I also think both of those scenes really do so much to kind of teach an,
43:26 - the audience kind of how to engage the film overall. This idea of listening with words and watching with ears.
43:35 - Like you know, once you see the plant shivering, you can sort of feel a whole orchestra of sounds
43:40 - that maybe you don't have access to, but now you can imagine. And I was thinking yeah about you know,
43:48 - so as you shift tactics through the film, is it all towards kind of an embodied cinematic experience
43:54 - you've talked about? - A lot of it. I mean, again, I just always go back to thinking of this
44:00 - as a listening project. And so even with when I first started this film,
44:06 - I had this goal to not have any captions in the film at all.
44:11 - And I was gonna try to always show the source of a sound.
44:16 - So this is like this grand plan I had, and then I made the plant scene.
44:22 - I actually, I showed it to Christine, like a, an edit that was getting pretty close to the end,
44:28 - and she was just really unenthusiastic about it. Like she, I mean, she wasn't like negative about it,
44:34 - but she was just like, all right whatever. And I was like, okay, this is not, I don't think this is accessible at all,
44:39 - like it's just not landing. And so I had this feeling that I needed to have
44:46 - like a separate vocal track, and I asked her if she had it, the vocal track separate.
44:52 - She did not and so then I asked if she could remake it, and she was like, no, I can't hear it, so I can't,
44:58 - I don't even know what it is really. And so I would turn the volume up
45:04 - and like try and recreate the sound she was making, and I started writing notes in order to give her these notes
45:11 - so she could recreate the sound, because I thought there was some technical problem. And then I read the descriptions that I was writing,
45:18 - and the descriptions were like you know, the tongue is at the, like against my teeth
45:24 - and I can like opening the throat. And it was like these descriptions of sound
45:30 - that I felt like answered everything that had been missing when I'd been watching films
45:36 - and relying on closed captioning and closed captioning has just so historically been so bad
45:43 - that I just, I really had like a kind of lightning bolt moment where I was like, oh, of course, of course,
45:49 - hard of hearing people are excellent at writing captions because we've been exposed to such like subpar captioning
45:58 - for as long as we've been using them, and also been watching the, like, technological development.
46:03 - Like I used to really kind of love YouTube AI captioning that was just like you know,
46:09 - like it wasn't anything, but it was funny except for when you need it. So it's like both frustrating and kind of funny.
46:17 - And so, yeah, I just really gave myself permission to fully caption the film
46:24 - and to be the person who captions it. And um...yeah.
46:36 - - It was interesting. So I came to the screening at MoMA after actually spending eight hours editing captions
46:42 - for the videos that'll be in Musical Thinking, because it matters, right? That's, it's big part of the show.
46:49 - And what we were getting back wasn't what I thought we needed, but, you know, you said something about hearing captioners
46:56 - maybe just misunderstanding or you know, so I did want to ask you know, what do you think that hearing captioners misunderstand
47:04 - about what's desired or possible in this space of communication?
47:10 - - Ooh, big question. Okay, I'm just gonna plug a page on my website, which is called How to Caption.
47:17 - - I've been there. [laughs] - I've, I had so many people asking me this
47:23 - that I finally just made a page on my website and that just says how to caption
47:29 - and it gives explanations of how to do it. And I think okay, but what you're asking me though is the misunderstanding.
47:35 - And I would say that the misunderstanding is that like,
47:40 - just having something on there, I'm hearing some fuzz,
47:46 - maybe that wasn't me, okay. That just having like something on the screen
47:52 - means it's accessible and that's just not true. Like for example, a music symbol is not accessible.
47:58 - That is infuriating. It's not like it just shouldn't even be there.
48:04 - It's so, it's the rudest caption ever. And so I think sometimes the misunderstanding is that
48:12 - if you just have something available for us to read, that thatsolves it,
48:17 - but that doesn't give any of the nuance. It doesn't give, you know, so here's another way to sort of describe this is
48:23 - I remember having this moment watching like a very famous film, and I was crying and I hated the film,
48:32 - and I just remember having this moment of like wow, the soundtrack of this film is so powerful
48:39 - that even though I don't like this film, I'm having all the emotions they want me to have
48:44 - because they're designing through sound and through music. They're telling you what you should be feeling.
48:51 - And so I think captions can be that powerful. Like they should be that powerful. They should be, you know, communicating.
48:58 - It's a form of communication and I think that's the misunderstanding. It's like people think that access is just like
49:05 - giving you some explanations of sound, but actually it's an art, it's an art.
49:11 - I mean, it should be an art, just like the soundtrack is an art you know, that's totally driving my emotional response to the content.
49:18 - And so captions should do that, and they should do that in the same, I mean,
49:24 - and then I can get into the technical stuff you know, like they should take as long as the sound takes, they should you know.
49:30 - - Well, one thing that I thought was really comes through in watching the whole feature, which again,
49:35 - I'll plug as soon as that's possible, everybody out there should do that. That the fact that the relationship between the captions
49:44 - and whatever they were captioning or capturing was not wrote,
49:49 - opened up this kind of whole vein of cinematic interest. So that like, instead of following a trite relationship,
49:56 - you're kind of following the relationship between these two modes of communication. And like similarly, the relationship between landscape
50:04 - and soundscape by those not being given suddenly it's a driver of narrative interest,
50:13 - if you wanna call it that. Like, that's what keeps you hooked to the screen through these very long segments of just kind of exploring
50:20 - a space or letting the space be something that's you know, worthy of just constant attention.
50:28 - It was really powerful, I found. - Thank you.
50:34 - - The other thing I wanted to touch on, and then we'll watch our last clips for this
50:39 - that we're running out of time, so maybe we'll shorten this. But I wanted to ask about what the role
50:45 - of the historical kind of call outs are. There's three moments in history that you recreate
50:52 - or point to in different ways and what the importance of those were for the overall project?
50:59 - - Well, I mean, my answer is the same. It was, again, it was like a listening project. And so there's this synchronicity of every, literally,
51:09 - I think almost every single thing in the film is because it kind of just came to me in a way that,
51:15 - and so one of the references that I gave to the artist, Steve Rodin, who made one of the scores,
51:21 - I gave him a photo of the Maverick Concert Hall and the Maverick Concert Hall.
51:29 - I, like, I happened to have a book that I found at a flea market that was just hippie Woodstock architecture.
51:35 - And there was a picture in the book of the concert hall in Woodstock called The Maverick Concert Hall
51:41 - that was built in like 1918 has had summer concerts, still does.
51:46 - And so I sent Steve this photo, it's this really beautiful building, and he wrote me back and he said,
51:52 - you do realize that's where John Cage premiered 4'33, right? And I didn't know that, and I was embarrassed.
51:58 - And to make a long story short, I was, he was like, you have to do something with this because you're Deaf.
52:05 - And you know, 4'33 and 4'33 is for anyone who doesn't know is this, you know,
52:11 - avant-garde music piece from that was premiered in 1952 where a pianist sat at a piano for four minutes
52:18 - and 33 seconds and didn't play any keys. And so the history of that
52:23 - and the impact of that is really this opening of what music is, what music can be.
52:29 - And I love that, I love all those ideas, but there is this kind of like dogged mythology
52:36 - that 4'33 is about silence. And I happen to go and visit the Maverick Concert Hall
52:43 - and realized it's actually a really noisy place. It's like, it's kind of like an open barn in a way. And so what you're hearing when you're there is the forest
52:51 - that it's set within. And so it was at that moment when I realized there's a mythology about deafness,
52:57 - that it's about silence and it's wrong. It's not at all an experience of silence. And deaf people are really attuned
53:04 - to the sounds going on around them. We may not hear all of them, but we are you know,
53:11 - hypersensitive to the culture, like to many things. And so that scene got pulled in
53:18 - and then basically right around the same time somebody told me about the Deaf Club in San Francisco,
53:25 - and I was fascinated by it and started doing research and felt like there was a similarity where all the anecdotes
53:33 - I could find were from hearing punks. And so this is before, you know, the ADA had been passed
53:40 - before the American Disabilities Act had been passed. This is before there was any attempt made for things to be inclusive or accessible.
53:48 - And then much later, several years later, I found out about the Prince concert.
53:56 - So Prince on his Purple Rain Tour in 1984, specifically wanted to do a performance at the Blind School
54:04 - in Washington. And then Gallaudet, the Deaf university in your city
54:12 - hosted him. And so there was a show for the blind and the Deaf, these two schools.
54:17 - And I found this really incredible like, Facebook group of all these Deaf people
54:24 - who had been at that concert just talking about it. And so all the dialogue from that scene comes from the Facebook group.
54:30 - And so it really, it's this, it literally from the very beginning to the very ending, this is a listening project,
54:36 - it's really all just been this kind of thing absorbed into the sponge of this film and.
54:44 - - Well, it's wonderful to see how you sort of recreate or deal with the different moments in history too.
54:50 - So we'll watch three short clips from little sections of each and then, and then come back for audience questions.
54:58 - So I'm just gonna put out there, if people wanna start thinking about what they wanna ask Alison, we'll open up.
1:00:13 - - So I'm appreciating there's a robust conversation in the chat about the frustration of captions again.
1:00:22 - Do you have anything else you wanna say to that while it's happening?
1:00:27 - - No. - But we do appreciate it and it is you know,
1:00:33 - I will say one of the things I was adding was Spanish language captions for songs,
1:00:38 - 'cause it was, would say it just felt you know, ridiculous. Her mouth is moving
1:00:45 - and they're just in Spanish language anyway. But yes, so that's, but to go to the punk scene to start,
1:00:54 - one of the things I just love, I'm sure people do is the women kind of having this card game and conversation
1:01:03 - and kind of going about their normal club routine that evening. And it reminded me of when we first talked,
1:01:10 - you shared you know, an interest in replacing hearing loss with Deaf gain as a term.
1:01:17 - And was this a moment where you thought like, I can show that, or help people understand
1:01:23 - what I mean when we're talking about that? - That one is not actually, I just was,
1:01:29 - I mean we did such thorough research on the Deaf Club and had been told by a lot of punks like,
1:01:37 - you have to get this punk moment, right? It's like, it's before it became really aggressive and macho and it was still kind of arty
1:01:43 - and it's West Coast punk. And so I was, which ironically we filmed it in New York, but I, yeah, I was really just trying to get it right.
1:01:53 - I wanted to really replicate that experience, including you know, like I had everybody take their hearing aids out.
1:01:59 - So we had 60 Deaf people in the scene and 40 hearing punks
1:02:04 - and I asked everyone who was Deaf to just like, take off their technology 'cause it was,
1:02:10 - it would've really looked like 2015 when we filmed it. And we didn't have any interpreters there.
1:02:16 - I mean, we did have interpreters on set, but not in the film you know, just really trying to create that sort of distance
1:02:21 - between the two communities that were there. And yeah, there was, I mean, the stories
1:02:28 - about the Deaf Club is just that you know, this hearing band manager came into the band,
1:02:34 - into the club, thought it was a club, and then went in and it was actually a Deaf Club.
1:02:39 - And then he was just like okay, well, and wrote on a napkin that supposedly,
1:02:45 - I mean, this is the story you know, wrote on a napkin that's asking if you know,
1:02:51 - they could have a performance there. And then interestingly in 2016,
1:02:57 - I did a re-staging of the Deaf Club at the Knockdown Center in New York.
1:03:02 - And, but this one, I tried to flip the script and so this time it was really like everything
1:03:09 - was accessible. We had interpreters, we had, we basically had ASL storytellers,
1:03:15 - deaf storytellers with punk bands performing. And so then it was like a performance version of the film
1:03:21 - that we had made and an article was written in the New York Times about it.
1:03:26 - And Daphne Hanrahan, who was the person who went and wrote that on a napkin to the bartender,
1:03:35 - wrote me and was like, who are you? Why are you doing this? And I was just like, here please watch the film that I made.
1:03:41 - And she wrote me back and said, you know, I'm crying. Like this is, this is so, it feels really authentic.
1:03:50 - And I like, of all the things that have meant you know, a lot to me, it's when anyone who was actually there
1:03:58 - or was like really a part of these historic events has kind of, you know, given me their blessing in a way.
1:04:05 - And so maybe that's just like the filmmaker in me,
1:04:10 - but it's. - That's super cool. I'm curious, you said you were able to find a lot about the Gallaudet show from people
1:04:17 - who are there on this Facebook group for the punk scene,
1:04:23 - the legend or the lore was through the hearing punks, but were you able eventually to find people who were there
1:04:30 - from the Deaf community or that just never, that was like a lacuna? - Yeah, I wasn't, but actually there's a Deaf filmmaker
1:04:37 - who's making a documentary about the Deaf Club, a feature length documentary. His name's Delbert Wetter, and he has talked to a lot of Deaf people who were there.
1:04:45 - So he's found them. I think I'm really excited for whenever his film comes out,
1:04:52 - because then that will be like, you know, answer many more questions. And then Daphne has like, you know,
1:04:58 - tons of information about it still that she sometimes tells me new stories and I'm just like, oh wow, incredible.
1:05:07 - - That's very cool. - Yeah. - So I'm looking through here, one of the questions is how can we watch more of the movies.
1:05:14 - I don't know if you wanna give a teaser or have a you know, schedule in your head?
1:05:20 - - Yeah, well it just had its world premiere at Sundance in January and then this,
1:05:27 - the last few days we just had our New York premiere. So basically the second screening of the film has happened
1:05:34 - and our international premiere is happening in Copenhagen on March 21st.
1:05:40 - And basically like you know, when a film comes out, you have your first premier and then usually you do like a year of film festivals
1:05:46 - and then hopefully it gets picked up for distribution and so "The Tuba Thieves" is going to be,
1:05:53 - it will be on, a version will be on PBS. So at some point in 2024 it will be like very accessible
1:06:01 - through PBS, but it'll probably be a shortened version. And then hopefully the version that's been at festivals
1:06:07 - will also be available, like just everybody, please keep your fingers crossed.
1:06:13 - That's what happens during this film festival part is like trying to find a home where everybody can then see it.
1:06:19 - - Okay well, so we'll say stay tuned. Maybe follow Alison's website or her distributors,
1:06:26 - so we can put some links in the chat for that. I maybe, I, there's, I know that you started to answer
1:06:34 - the question about kind of how the different characters relate to LA's soundscape,
1:06:40 - but I think that there's generative questions there in terms of what it was about LA's soundscape in particular
1:06:47 - and different relationships to it that you were exploring in the film that maybe we can go a little deeper with?
1:06:53 - - Yeah it's well, specifically LA is the home of this film
1:06:59 - because the tubas were stolen from high schools across Southern California. So the film really starts with the first tuba theft
1:07:06 - and then it ends with the last tuba heist. And so there were 12 schools that had their tubas stolen.
1:07:13 - And I was, I just became very interested in really thinking about all the sounds of LA
1:07:21 - it's a place where, so within the film there, when I say I'm interested in the sounds of LA
1:07:27 - there's musicians who are LA based musicians who are in it. There are news reporters like I think so many people
1:07:35 - spend so much time in their car that you get this kind of relationship with the reporters
1:07:41 - and the DJs of the city you know, like. - Very LA. - Yeah, in a way that I think maybe doesn't happen as much
1:07:48 - in other cities. It's just like very particular there. And so I was really thinking about all the sounds of LA,
1:07:55 - how sounds move out into the Angeles National Forest and go into animals' habitats,
1:08:00 - how there's like this really vibrant Deaf community in Los Angeles as well as like in New York
1:08:05 - where I am sitting right now. And so I was thinking about like who owns the sound?
1:08:12 - And then also just that when you're in Los Angeles, there are these, the way that sound travels in that city
1:08:19 - because it's, you know, this kind of like rolling hill landscape. And so there's, and there's all these helicopters and planes
1:08:29 - and then there's so much traffic and then on one side there's the ocean. And so it's just like, there's this kind of like low,
1:08:37 - almost melodic rumble. And that's really why, I mean it's also my home.
1:08:44 - And so I'm just like intimately aware of the sounds of that city.
1:08:51 - And did I answer your question? - Yeah absolutely. - I feel. - And I think, you know, there's ways in which
1:08:56 - being attentive to the sounds of a particular city also led you in really interesting directions
1:09:02 - in terms of sound as another maybe often less attended to
1:09:08 - pollution space or, you know, something that has differential impacts on socioeconomic neighborhoods.
1:09:15 - And the way that opened up the film was also really provocative for,
1:09:23 - and for me reminds me what happens when actually somebody who, as you said,
1:09:28 - sort of attends to sound maybe more because it's not sort of a given,
1:09:34 - can help those of us who maybe take it for granted to think about how much sound is shaping spaces
1:09:42 - that we're in and ways we're interacting or ways the city we live in is shaped.
1:09:48 - And so I found that really you know, smart and not maybe what was expected when based on what I had already seen, right?
1:09:55 - That was a new layer to the film when I watched the full length one. - Yeah, yeah absolutely.
1:10:00 - And also it's the home of Hollywood where sound is always kind of second to image.
1:10:06 - And so I think. - Yeah, and also crafted, right? That the understanding that in Hollywood
1:10:13 - there're you're encouraged to think of something as naturalized or that you don't pay attention to it,
1:10:19 - but it's hyper, hyper crafted to, as you said, kind of create these emotional responses.
1:10:25 - - Right. - Somebody in the chat asked Annette, asked how folks from the community spoken up about the film.
1:10:31 - I don't quite know what you mean, Annette, in terms of spoken up in what way. So if you wanna further gloss that,
1:10:38 - but I guess what is the reaction from what you consider the community of this film?
1:10:45 - - I'm assuming that question means the Deaf community maybe? - I think so.
1:10:51 - - And yeah, I mean, when I went to, well,
1:10:56 - maybe two examples of that, I think somebody also posted, yeah,
1:11:03 - somebody did post an article that came out in the Hollywood Reporter.
1:11:08 - So up here, this quote that this Gloria posted at 3:39, and you can read that article, it's by a Deaf writer,
1:11:15 - actually, it's by Del Wetter who's making. - Oh yeah. - Documentary on the Deaf Club. So it's, yeah.
1:11:22 - And I like, love this article and it's, I think it's, you know, a definitely a Deaf perspective
1:11:31 - on the film. And you know, this last, on Saturday we had a screening
1:11:38 - that was really like very evenly split between half Deaf and half hearing.
1:11:43 - And that was a really, like, that's for me my dream of how the film is intended
1:11:48 - to be seen. So when you ask me that question about like, how does the community I, for me,
1:11:56 - there's, it's not like this film is intended to be seen mostly by hearing people. And then I hope that Deaf people like this film
1:12:03 - is very much like made by a lot of Deaf people
1:12:08 - for Deaf people also, like, for hearing people. I think it's like really intended to do this like
1:12:14 - integration thing and a little less separation while not being, I'm not very afraid of that separation.
1:12:21 - I think it's a reality in our communities and I think it's kind of yeah, fascinating.
1:12:28 - But I will say that at our Q and A at the premiere at Sundance, I had three Deaf actors there
1:12:36 - and three hearing performers from the film. And the Deaf actors were just like,
1:12:44 - owned the platform that they had and spoke you know, very passionately about how wonderful it was
1:12:51 - to be a part of this film. So I'm quoting them right now, which just like was wonderful for me.
1:12:57 - Of yeah, I mean, it is, it is also, it's a film where I really wrote it with a lot of the people
1:13:05 - who were in it, especially Nyke, the main actor. I mean, she was really a huge part of the collaboration
1:13:10 - of writing her role. And then even Geovanny who's hearing, but was, you know, 16, 17, he was also really writing his part.
1:13:18 - So I was thinking about listening in like a collaborative way as well.
1:13:26 - - Well, I think that's a beautiful place to end. I think we're at a good time.
1:13:32 - It's been really wonderful to see, not just questions, but a lot of comments and sense of participation
1:13:39 - in the comments section too. I think this strikes a chord, as you said, as something that is very much intended to welcome in
1:13:48 - and acknowledge these experiences and that they have differentials and that can be part of what becomes interesting
1:13:55 - in this space of storytelling. So thank you so much for joining. Thank you to everybody who joined us tonight.
1:14:02 - I want to encourage you to meet me back here next week at 5:30 again on Wednesday, March 8th,
1:14:09 - I'll be with Vivienne Dick, who is an incredible filmmaker from,
1:14:14 - well, she's still making incredible films, but she's very well known for having been in New York
1:14:20 - during the no-wave 80s post-punk scene and making incredible films with those musicians.
1:14:25 - So come back and thank you everyone. Have a good night.
Vivienne Dick
Vivienne Dick (b. 1950, Donegal, Ireland) is an internationally celebrated filmmaker and artist, credited as both “one of the most important filmmakers Ireland has produced” and the defining moving image artist of the No Wave era in New York. Her experimental feminist films explore the catalytic convergences of urban and creative life, sexual politics, and self-presentation— and more recently, climate change, capitalism, and relationships of reciprocity in the digital age.
Virtual Film Screening with Filmmaker Vivienne Dick
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On Wednesday, March 8, 2023, filmmaker Vivienne Dick joined Saisha Grayson, time-based media curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, for a virtual screening and conversation about Dick’s wide-ranging career, starting with her earliest films from the 1970s through her recent film New York Our Time (2020). Dick captured the birth of the No Wave scene of the 1970s and 80s by focusing on magnetic women rockers from New York’s gritty downtown scene. Since then, her films continue the powerful assertion that another way of seeing and living in the world is possible and necessary. In New York Our Time, she returns for conversations with the remaining icons—performer Lydia Lunch, singer-songwriter and bass player Felice Rosser, band members of the Bush Tetras and photographer Nan Goldin. Dick’s interviews and archives meditate on time, memory, and feminist generations, contrasting a recalled wild, rough city with steely images of its gentrified present. Clips from Dick’s films Guerilleres Talks, and Staten Island have been removed from this event recording. This program was part of SAAM’s fifth annual Women Filmmakers Festival, which was presented completely online and ran from March 1-8, 2023, in honor of Women’s History Month. The 2023 festival served as prelude to Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies, an exhibition that highlights how film and video artists incorporate musical strategies, themes and references into their work. The highlighted filmmakers, Vivienne Dick and Alison O'Daniel, consistently bring this same synergy to their cinematic offerings.
Watch the Trailer for "New York Our Time"
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Cinematography by Declan Quinn.