This past weekend I attended a screening of short films, Pirate Utopias, curated by Sean Uyehara at San Francisco International Film Festival. The program, which was described as “a systematic approach to pleasurable non-productivity,” contained some of my favorite experimental filmmakers like Martha Colburn, Nathan and David Zellner, and Bill Morrison.

But I was unprepared for the last film, a Technicolor-like “epic orgy” featuring transsexual Lexi Tronic, Breanna Taylor, and other semi-naked trannies engaged in “pleasurable non-productivity” at a beachside cottage. The film was Guy Maddin’s The Little White Cloud That Cried, a tribute to Jack Smith’s legendary film Flaming Creatures (1963), which gained notoriety when Jonas Mekas and others were arrested and found guilty on charges of obscenity for simply showing the film. Flaming Creatures helped bring the issue of censorship to the fore and continues to be revered for its irreverence. But while Flaming Creatures was shot on expired black and white film stock, making it a blurry, silent cinema-style montage of drag queens and naked bodies, Maddin’s film was shot on high contrast 16mm color stock, giving details a vividness that approached another iconoclastic queer filmmaker, Kenneth Anger. By adding a 1950s Billboard hits soundtrack, Maddin (unconsciously, he says) married Anger’s pop aesthetics with Jack Smith’s radical queer cinema. A Jack Smith/Kenneth Anger love child was born.

Flaming Creatures, 1963, Jack Smith

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Art & Boats is my ongoing series of interviews and stories about artists who build boats, sail, explore and challenge themselves on the water. For background on Art & Boats, read the first entry.

It’s hard to believe that just 100 years ago there were still world maps with areas marked “unexplored.” I recently read that the only uncharted places left on earth were the ocean floors. With the exception of those places under water or ice, every corner of the planet can be observed via Global Positioning Systems. Sophisticated vehicles and satellite devices make adventures, like those of legendary Amazon explorer Percy Fawcett, a romantic notion of the past. Even Fawcett's mythical lost city of “El Dorado” now shows up on Google Earth.

Tide and Current Taxi: The Hutchinson River with Mary Walling Blackburn

Artist Marie Lorenz is a modern day explorer, though the territories she traverses are not uncharted, just neglected. Lorenz accesses commercial or disused waterways around New York City in her own custom-made small wooden boats. She visits the canals, rivers and uninhabited islands that form the invisible, industrial and archeological backside of the city. Traveling with one other passenger, Lorenz encounters more freighters and barges than fellow leisure craft. Her journeys have taken her along the Harlem River, Bronx River, Gowanus Canal, Coney Island Creek, and to abandoned islands like North Brother, where the infamous Typhoid Mary was quarantined in the early 1900s. This interview took place by email, the week of March 21, 2010.

Andrea Grover: Your Tide and Current Taxi series involves taking another passenger on a tide and current-driven, boat trip through the industrial watershed and backwaters of New York City, and documenting the shared experience (in photographs and text). Tell me some of your most unusual encounters.

Marie Lorenz: I am always in awe of how the city changes when you drop down below street level into the water. We can be at a busy intersection with cars honking and a few minutes later be drifting along in total silence. So that is always unusual in terms of normal city life. But the thing that jumped to mind to tell you when I read that question, was the unusual amount of naked people I see down by the water when I am out in my boat. I guess because we are floating along, people don't see us coming or never notice us at all. But I am telling you now, there are large numbers of nude sunbathers all around Manhattan. They climb down to spots along the water, invisible from the street. I try not to take pictures of them, because I want to observe the privacy that they have managed to wrest out of their busy city lives. It is always great to see them. You would never expect it.

Tide and Current Taxi: The Hutchinson River with Mary Walling Blackburn

AG: The impulse to explore comes through strongly in your work. Are you fond of tales of exploration by sea or any authors in particular?

ML: I love Conrad and Melville. Most of my art projects will kind of startwith literature. and then sometimes other kinds of writing. I did a project at Artpace in San Antonio that was all based on the journals of explorers like Robert Juet, and Meriwether Lewis. But my favorite book of all time, that  I think really sort of sums up the pathos ofbeing an artist and how it relates to navigation is "The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst".

Tide and Current Taxi: The Hutchinson River with Mary Walling Blackburn

AG: The areas you explore are not uncharted, but show little signs of humanity. Do you envision these waterways when they were more integrated into daily life, or is their present day entropy what attracts you?

ML: Both things interest me. I also think that the waterfront is the way that the rest of the world will look in the future. Water dismantles things so quickly, and everything on the water seems to be half falling apart. Then if you think that the ocean levels are rising, and more of the world will be water; new waterfronts created -I think that the view of the city from the water is like a window into the future.

AG: What's the historical significance to the style of boats you build for these journeys?

ML: I used to make boats that made me think of Egyptian or Phoenician boats. But when I started using fiber glass I was really just going for the easiest things to make with the least amount of material (it has to be light enough for me to carry). I studied boat building in Sausalito, California, but the things I learned there, though they really are a wonderful art form, are too heavy and complicated for me to make in my improvised studios (sometimes a backyard). Everything I make can be made from a local hardware store or even sometimes with scraps. I suppose it has a historic component in relation to exploration; making do with what you have.

The Inner Sea: Shipwreck

AG: Your sailboat capsized at Lido di Ostia, Rome, nearly drowning you and destroying the boat, but you managed to document the entire experience. What possessed you to keep taping?

ML: I actually wasn't really sure if the camera was taping. I thought it might be, and it was my fathers camera so I was rescuing it from the wreck. I had tried and tried to right the boat before eventually swimming away and I was very upset about losing it. I had spent months making it and the boat felt like my whole reason for being in Rome. I suppose that at some point I must have thought, ok - I lost the boat, this video had better be good. (I ended up finding the boat, buried in the sand about a mile from where it capsized)

Smithson Intervention, invasion of Robert Smithson¹s posthumous public art project, the Floating Island

AG: In your Robert Smithson Intervention, you and your accomplices attempted to board the Floating Island that was circling Manhattan, but the Coast Guard intervened on your intervention. I imagine this isn't the first time that you've been questioned about your actions on the water?

ML: I have been stopped by the Coast Guard, the Police, the Fire Department and I have even been driven home once in a Hazardous Material Safety Administration truck. Everyone I met out there has been great. They tend to understand the nature of the project - people out enjoying the water- after all, they chose to be out there themselves. Every time I am out in the boat in the New York Harbor, you can bet that someone has their eye on me. Other than that Smithson thing, most of the water taxi trips are completely legal. I think that is an important part of the project; that we are doing something that is available to everyone. That said, I am usually trespassing getting to and from the water.

AG: Any news of future trips you'd like to share?

ML: Yes! On April 2nd - 5th I am going to go up the Hudson from Tivoli to Troy, and hopefully stream the trip live. It will be a new kind of story telling for me - the post will be up immediately when I take the picture.

 Follow Marie Lorenz's Tivoli to Troy voyage on her website.

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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, Well...How did I get here?– Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime (1984)

Presently, I am having the above awakening. It's as though I aged from 14 to 40 in a flash, and all the memories in between were accidentally deleted from my hard drive. How did I get here? What am I expected to do? Whose house is this, and most importantly, who are these people in the house? They're freaking me out.

It's often assumed that artists are exempt from the social realities of adulthood, jobs, parenthood, finances, and civic duty. Not so. Increasingly, artists are grappling with the challenge of being creative persons with unavoidably uncreative roles within society. Few well-known Western artists have escaped dependence on civilization and the rules of participation. (Even Gauguin failed in his attempt to escape Europe for the perceived Utopia of Polynesia, where he ultimately found that societal laws applied there too– he died just prior to serving a three month prison sentence for breaking local ordinances.)

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Courtesy Postmasters Gallery

Titled "Co-Existing and Co-Llaborating" and curated by Mary Magsamen of Aurora Picture Show (the organization I started), a Fotofest screening of artist-made video will broach this subject and others, under the umbrella of "artists who are partners and collaborators." (The screening is derived from an exhibit of the same name that Magsamen curated for SPACES, a non-profit art space in Cleveland, Ohio, in Winter 2010.) Artists in the exhibit include Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Darrin Martin and Jamil Hellu, Potter Belmar Labs, Duke and Battersby, Voshardt and Humphries and Dana and Travis Hanmer.

Two of the best known artists of the collaborative partners genre are Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who will be featured and in attendance at the screening (along with San Antonio-based Potter-Belmar Labs). The McCoys are a husband and wife duo, who make art together, children, and meaning.

The work by "The McCoys" which is presented in this screening is titled, I'll Replace You (2008), described below.

This film is an experiment in outsourcing everyday life. In it we hired 50 actors to take over all aspects of our daily routines and roles as parents, spouses, professors, artists and friends. The actors play opposite their real counterparts - our kids, our students, our friends, in our studio, presenting our work.–The McCoys

I'll Replace You, 2008

The following q and a took place by email over the weekend of March 26.

Andrea Grover: For I'll Replace You (2008), you hired 50 actors to play domestic and professional roles within your real lives, in essence, as stand-ins for your family. Tell me more about the genesis of this project.

The McCoys: This project stemmed from two separate threads: one from our work, and one from our lives. The first, learned from our work with genre, was the sense that life can be communicated and understood as a series of media constructions. In dealing with actors and improvisation, we weren't dealing with specific characters (or even the two of us seen as characters) but rather an idea that the actor could encapsulate and perform as a very generic type of "husband" or "artist" or especially, "parent". The second thread was our sense that we were (are) completely overwhelmed most of the time. Our multiple interests had at some point all taken on lives of their own and become multiple responsibilities. This leads to the disturbing feeling that one is just going through the motions and could easily be replaced by almost anyone. Certainly, by hiring an artists' assistant, a teaching assistant, or a babysitter, this replacement plays out concretely in many peoples' lives. The video was a way to test this idea.

AG: Did the actors perform entire days or just scenes from your lives?

MCs: They performed scenes that were then highly edited to cycle through as many faces and voices as possible.

AG: You've been working together for 20 years. How has the subject of your work evolved as your relationship evolved?

MCs: There is a certain sense in which our subject has really been the same the whole time but we have explored it through different media and directions. Funnily enough, this is interesting only because the world keeps changing. We have certainly made our work more personal and the idea of our collaboration has
become more central, but to say the work is autobiographical is also missing the point. The main subject of our inquiry has to do with how cultural production creates patterns of order in our thoughts and how these structures influence the stories that are told.

Every Anvil, 2001

AG: Some of your earlier work, like Every Anvil (2001), which breaks down shot by shot 100 episodes of Looney Toons cartoons and catalogs the shot according to violence and physical extremism, and Every Shot, Every Episode (2001), a collection of 10,000 shots from the Starsky and Hutch T.V. series arranged by descriptive category, presented a kind of interactive cinema, where viewers could choose from a database of video– a kind of collaboration with the audience. Does the social web and the potential for networked collaboration interest you?

MCs: Our version of interactive projects were involved in the creation of an archive. These projects also come from the idea that, in the electronic arts, there are artist-designed tools. The idea of networked collaborations is definitely happening, but we are happier to focus on our collaboration. Also, ten years ago we were very much involved in internet-based projects and at a certain point chose to change directions. That colors our actions today.

AG: I'm working on a database of artists' boat projects, and noticed your High Seas (2007) mixed media sculpture of The Titanic with live video output. I'd like to know more about this work.

High Seas, 2007

MCs: This project was a commission from the Addison Museum of Art who created an exhibition in which they challenged artists to work with their stunning collection of model boats. Part of our work has been (and the new work will be) projects that create a special effect in real space and time. Our intervention was to create a sculptural track around the existing model. A camera moves along the track following an up-and-down wave pattern. This effectively creates an animated image of a static, historical, object.

AG: What will you be doing while in Houston?

MCs: We hope to see as much art as we can!

Meet The McCoys at the screening of "Co-Existing and Co-Llaborating" on Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 7pm at Molly Gochman's Studio, 2442 Bartlett, Houston, Texas.

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I have a recurring dream that I discover a hidden room, floor or entire wing in my existing home. The expansive imaginary space defies Newtonian Physics, and the ornate architectural styles vary as wildly as Hearst Castle's. Ambling through these cavernous rooms in my sleep leaves me craving for secret passageways in my waking life, which is why the fabled “Celestial Suites” at Crowne Plaza Hotel near Reliant Center have become my own Holy Grail.

Hallway at Astroworld Hotel, courtesy Cathi Bunn

A few weeks ago I left a message for the manager of Crowne Plaza inquiring about their penthouse suites, and secretly hoping to arrange a private tour. No one called me back.

The Crowne Plaza Hotel (formerly known as Astroworld Hotel) was built in 1969 by the late, great Judge Roy Hofheinz, mastermind behind the Astrodome. The entire top floor of the original hotel encompassed the Judge's own apartment, known as "The Celestial Suites." For reasons that defy bottom-line logic, the hotel chains that succeeded the Astroworld Hotel have kept the penthouse intact. This act is highly commendable (go Crowne Plaza!) given Houston’s wrecker-ball history.

Judge Hofheinz and his wife, Mary Frances spent over one million dollars creating the most expensive suite in the world to house all of their many treasures collected over the years. Harper Goff, art director for Disney's Academy Award winning, live-action film, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, designed the Judge's million dollar suite. In 1978 the Guinness Book of World Records listed the Celestial Suite as being the most expensive suite in the world (from the Crown Plaza website).

Roman Bath, courtesy Cathi Bunn

Like the box seats at the Astrodome, each room in The Celestial Suites was named and furnished in a different theme. The entrance to the suites was known as The Foyer of Fountains, named for Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth. Suites included The Acapulco Patio, P.T. Barnum Room, The Fu Manchu Room, The Adventurer Suite, and The Roman Bath, to name a few.

Crusades Room, courtesy Cathi Bunn

In Geoff Winningham’s 1975 documentary, The Pleasures of This Stately Dome, Winningham asks Hofheinz if he agrees with people who think the Astroworld Hotel suites are gaudy and ostentatious. The Judge pauses for an uncomfortable amount of time due to the after affects of a stoke, and finally breaths, “They’re memorable.” I couldn’t agree more.

Astroworld Hotel was just one of the Judge’s big ideas, but by far the biggest was the Astrodome itself–the single structure that put Houston on the map, as a city of the future where no feat was too large to accomplish. For decades, it was the largest stage in the world.

Dubbed impossible to build, and described as a geometric nightmare by steel workers, the Astrodome was completed on schedule, with all 53 skyboxes sold before the grand opening. It was the most lush and pampered stadium in the world (one reporter wrote, ”Upholstered seats for sports fans? Are they crazy?”).

Hofheinz, who became a lawyer at 19, a state legislator at 22, a county judge at 24, and Mayor of Houston for two terms, reportedly was inspired to build the dome after a visit to the Circus Maximus. When the Astrodme opened in 1965, it contained five restaurants, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a barber shop, a medieval-style chapel, a Presidential suite, 60,000 plush seats, and exclusive clubs and skyboxes with unique decorative themes like Tahitian Holiday, Southern Plantation, Spanish Provano, and Captain’s Cabin. It even had it’s own weather station on the roof.

The Dome reigned supreme on many fronts:

THE FIRST DOMED STADIUM IN THE WORLD
THE LARGEST INDOOR ARENA IN THE WORLD
THE LARGEST CLEAR SPAN BUILDING EVER CONSTRUCTED
THE WORLD’S LARGEST AIR CONDITIONED ARENA (cooled by a 6600 ton system that cost $4,500,000)
THE WORLD’S LARGEST SCOREBOARD (472’ across, and 4 stories high)
And THE WORLD”S FIRST ARTIFICIAL GRASS: ASTROTURF

Even the staff at the dome wore futuristic uniforms. The men who vacuumed the Astroturf were called Earthmen and looked more like spacemen, and the women who greeted guests wore gold suits with domed-caps, and were called Spacettes.

Elvis performed there, Ali boxed there, Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in “The Battle of the Sexes,” there, Evel Knievel jumped 15 cars with his motorcycle there, Billy Graham preached there, the Guru Maharaji sold “knowledge: there, and so on.

According to architectural historian Stephen Fox, ''the Astrodome is one of the great monuments of American hubris in the 1960's in this sense of no limits.” What’s more is that the dome contributed to the desegregation of public facilities in Houston. A 1999 NY Times article titled “Last Innings at the Can Do Cathedral,” states “When a second bond referendum to build the dome was facing major opposition, the judge lobbied the city's growing, if largely disenfranchised, block of black voters, promising that blacks could attend all events at the Dome and also could work there.”

They say a child who has many nicknames is well loved, and the Astrodome had many:

"Eighth Wonder of the World,"
"Can Do Cathedral,"
"Taj Mahal of Sports."

In 2000, a mere 35 years after its spectacular unveiling, the Astrodome had become a relic. In 2001 on the same complex, Reliant Stadium was built—Houston’s first retractable roof football stadium, with about 20,000 more seats than the Astrodome. Today, the Astrodome is vacant and its fate is unknown, though there’s a proposal to convert it into a movie studio. I ask, What Would Judge Roy Hofheinz do?

 P.S. If you have access to "The Celestial Suites," send me a sign.

 All Images Courtesy Cathi Bunn, www.ghastlyghosthunter.com

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