In the run up to “Project Condor” Casey Farina and I talked about another piece he had composed, called “bitsmoke.” He needed a performance space and my small gallery space, Chicago City Arts, was going to be empty for a couple weeks for reasons that completely escape me now. The point is, I had the space, he had a video work.

A video piece in four quadrants. The idea was that performers of some type would be assigned a quadrant, so each quadrant had its performer(s) and they would interpet or rather it would act as their visual compositional notation. Casey already had 3 groups picked out: a percussion group, an electronic music group, and a group of horn players. My recollection is that I asked if the fourth group could be dancers (which was absurd given the size of the gallery) and Casey agreed.

Anyway, that’s what we ended up with. Each of the four groups would interpret the same 15 minute video piece that you can see below. To my delight people came to the show and most seemed to enjoy it. I sure did. In my short career as an arts promoter I learned fast that you better put your weight behind work you think is really really cool. Not just cool. Really really cool. You’ve got to be a geek about it so if five people show up you can take a breath, relax, and still smile.

To quote my current boss: “I don’t want you to say “okay,” I want you to feel it.”