somehow missed this feature a few days ago:
Sentimental Construction (2007, 25.4MB, 6:31 min)Nathaniel Stern took a bit of a hammering in various quarters for this piece,
made on a residency in Croatia.
I think there’s an probably an element of you-had-to-be-there about this
although, that said, I think the video is rather magical &
does as good a job of summoning the kind of ephemeral spell this stuff can weave
as any I’ve seen.
Lastly it has to be said the reason Nathaniel is great is because
(1) he has a frightening amount of energy, more indeed, really, than his fair share –
he starts 5 ‘isms’ before breakfast
(2) he is bold, unafraid to risk looking ridiculous & therefore quite often as an artist
he goes to much more interesting places than most…
In general I’ll take a Nathaniel “failure†over quite a lot of folks’ “successâ€.
Thanks, Michael. Tom Moody came to this piece’s defense a day or two after Paddy’s pan (above), as well. This video has actually since been updated/edited (only had one day to do it in situ in Croatia), available here. Follow-up piece (passage) is here. Not sure what’s next, but it’s growing and changing as I ride it out, or fuck it and go in the opposite direction…
