Emine Mira Ava Hunter (née Burke) is an often-nomadic visual artist, born in Vancouver. She is a second-generation whirling dervish, an environmentalist, an optimist and she loves music, knitting and her disaster stray calico, Burak. She has spent the last decade touring the world at large with Mercan Dede, and is one of the original members of his performance ensemble Secret Tribe. She graduated from NSCAD University in Halifax, where she fell in love with her magnificent husband and primary collaborator, fellow visual artist Derek Hunter. She was awarded the Ellen Battell Stoeckel fellowship to study at Yale University, where she met Mary Mattingly. In 2009 Mira worked and lived onboard Waterpod™ project in New York City with Mary and Derek, among other artists, engineers and visionaries. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University in New York.
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07.10 >>A video from our Waterpod™ days. The Waterpod™ Project from Leyla Rosario of The Bronx is Building on Vimeo. "Is it possible to create a self-sustaining home on water? A group of scientists, artists, and engineers have been working together over the last three years to set the Waterpod ™ afloat. Leyla catches up to them when they dock at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx." Waterpod™ Interviews: Mary Mattingly, Ian Daniel, Jes Gettlerm Mira Hunter and Derek Hunter. <top>
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06.10 >>I just found this interview with Cuneyt Birol on Vimeo from the Breath Concert in Toronto, 2007. <top>
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05.10 >>There is so much beauty in the world, and so much of it is music. <top>
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04.10 >>Carlito Dalceggio made me the most beautiful coffin as part of his exhibition Death of Fear. "A shamanic trip to reset to the edge of love and perception to rebuild the world with magic and compassion. Love without Fear" says Carlito. April 29th - May 23 2010 at Galerie SAS in Montreal. We worked for weeks printmaking, collecting materials, postering, recording a soundtrack for the coffin, installing the show, whirling with peacocks, painting everything, convering every last exquisite inch with confetti. For the opening, I wore my very first tenure, complete with my very first sikke, which was given to me at the age of 16 by Sheikh Loras of the Mevlevi Order of America making me a semazen. I think everyone should lay in a coffin for a while. I didn't know how long I would have to be there, quiet and listening to the world around me outside. It was hot and humid. I had to still me mind to survive. I arose from the coffin and was lead in a procession through the crowd where I whirled. Then Carlito painted me. Then we danced all night.
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04.10
Another small treasure from love greg. 'Twice' by Little Dragon. <top>
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03.10 >>A little mix for March, music I am listening to around the house. It celebrates my ongoing crush on Fever Ray. <top>
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03.10
My father just forwarded me an article from the Washington Post by author Ali Eteraz. He writes:
'Sufism, generally referred to as the mystical or "inner" dimension of Islam, which tends to put a focus on one's individual relation to God through guidance from a spiritual elder, has been around almost since the beginning of the religion. It is worldwide. During the course of the 20th Century, Sufism made its way to America. Now it exists in orthodox and heterodox ways, in "drunk" and "sober" ways, in universalist and exclusivist ways, and even in the form of a female whirling dervish that dances to Turkish electronica... As for the electronica loving whirling dervish, I am still trying to meet her.' <top>
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01.10 >>I have posted new images of my latest installation in progress, Time Bomb. Using the bullet time camera rig from Time Machine wich was composed of 65 disposable cameras fixed to a 360 degree rail made from reclaimed lumber, activated by electromechanical solenoids. Time Bomb aims to be a new look at reparative/restorative potential in art. Inspired by Fischli/Weiss and Mary Mattingly's future human Navigators, it will playfully document a moment when nature and the common animal will raise a malakoff cocktail in the name of environmental injustice, through bullet time photography, stop motion animation, super 16 film, video and a rotating tripod machine. Derek and I have finished shooting the first sequences of the film installation part of Time Bomb and have completed the Rat and Bear puppets for the stop motion sequences. We are in the process of preparing for the bullet time camera rig captured fireball scenes. I think the resulting footage is going to be incredible. I am hoping the 360 degree view of the fireball frozen in a single moment will be the clmax of the film. <top>
'Faith and music are both invisible. It is difficult to imagine two more potent influences. I feel that they both have the rare ability to force a cathartic opening of the human emotional senses. Music seems to play directly to my subconscious. The impulse to respond can feel irrepressible. There are some rhythms that demand my body to whirl, and there is some music that brings my humble act of whirling to places I don’t know how to talk about. I find it difficult to imagine a spiritual impulse without music inherent to it. I feel that spirituality is not specific to religious orders, but permeates all aspects of existence. I think it is more reliant on perception and awareness. In Sema (the ritual practiced by the Mevlevis or whirling dervishes), the musicians are not considered separate from the whirling, everyone wears the same tall felt hat that indicates their common spiritual identity. There is a communication between those whirling and those making the music. The length of the compositions can shift, or the spirit of the solos can take on another character. Though my father, Raqib Brian Burke, began studying Sema before I was born, it was his intention for my sister and I to be raised without any strong religious links so that when we were older we would be able to make our own decisions on faith without a nostalgic bias. Therefore my imagination, music and nature became outlets for my early spiritual experiences. My father made me my first mix tape when I was three years old. I had a dress that had been made just for dancing, with a large flower print skirt. I think then it was Paul Horn and his golden flute, the Penguin Café Orchestra, and the last track was a recording of my mirrored ballerina music box. By the time I was twelve, the mix tape included King Crimson, Led Zeppelin and Roxy Music. Every profound ecstatic experience of my life has been somehow connected to music.'
<top>
-Photos of Mira Hunter at age 4 dancing in her first tennure made by Jinny Rhodes, one of her sufi moms from Murat Yagan's tekke. <top>
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12.09
>>Three mixes made on the site 8 tracks. Rare and beautiful. Check them out. Make your own : "8tracks believes handcrafted music programming trumps algorithms. Think radio in the 1970s, mixtapes in the 1980s, and DJ culture of the 1990s through today. DJs share their talent in taste making, providing exposure for artists. Listeners get a unique blend of word-of-mouth sharing and radio programming — long the trusted means for music discovery — on a global scale." <top>
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11.09
>>In Der Rechte Weg (The Right Way) a bear and a rat explore the dark forests, treacherous ravines and snow-swept glaciers. With no real aim in mind, the bear and the rat wander through a folk tale of their own devising, wondering what they should do and where they should go, enjoying nature together, foraging for sustenance, getting lost, fighting, joking and discovering music along the way. Both monumental and intimate, serious and hilarious, Der Rechte Weg suggests how any way – whether straight, crooked or both – may be made into the right one. <top>
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09.09
On September 25, 2009, Mary, Derek and I gave a talk on Waterpod™ at the Roundhouse theatre in Vancouver, BC. Mary joined us from onboard Waterpod™ in New York via Skype, during it's final public weekend.
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09.09 >>I am sitting in the beautiful corner room I helped build, powered by solar, onboard the good ship Waterpod™. It is a wonderful feeling. I wish I could share it with everyone. The garden has matured and is starting to die down as the season changes. There are eggplants, tomatoes, kale, lettuce, squash, corn. It is cooler now and we are sleeping under blankets again. Artist Alison Ward has been preparing elegant dinners for us Pod people. We gather by candle light at our great wooden table, eating tomato salad, sauteed kale with sunflower seeds, squash lavender sage soup and basil frittata. We are currently docked in Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx. The park was originally an industrial concrete factory, that first started operation in 1945. The Transit Mix Concrete Corporation built the silos hoppers, and conveyors that still stand today. As part of its transformation from an industrial site to park land, salt marshes have been reestablished on a riverbank once strewn with trash and tires. When we arrived, we noticed that there are large crabs living in the brackish river, and families of green tropical parrots are nesting in vines around abandoned telephone poles at the entrance to the park. We have also seen herons, cormorants, ducks, white swans, fish jumping and rabbits hopping through the grass at night. It is a brand new park (opened early to host Waterpod™), and we have watched the local community gradually discover this beautiful little urban sanctuary. In our absence, Artist Mary Mattingly rescued a kitten who has been affectionately dubbed Pod Kitty. This might be the most wonderful way to live in New York City: always in your garden, always on the water front, always exploring. It has been a truly unique adventure so far. As the project is coming to completion at the end of the month, we have begun to talk about the future of Waterpod™. What will happen now to our small ecotopia? How will we remember it? What have we learned? Has Waterpod™ made a positive impact in the communities we have visited? What will Waterpod™ 2.0 be? Good night, Waterpod™, I miss you already. <top>
-The outside of our bedroom, photobooth self portrait inside our room, night and the first greywater tank, little Pod Kitty lounging in the shade of James Case Leal's radio tower/squash trellis sculpture installation. <top>
It is near the end of August already. Derek and I are preparing a grand return to Waterpod™ in New York City. I have been working on my mother's small farm in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, helping with the harvest and making preserves for the winter. I made a beautiful amber-colored mountain ash berry jelly, which has a strong medicinal flavor and is supposed to pair well with wild game and yogurt. Today I will be making plum jam and drying herbs for tea and bath salts.
I have been working intensely from a far on Waterpod™, creating the online archive and promoting our exhibits and workshops in the form of our massive website. It also functions as a communication tool within the group, as many of the primary artists, designers and engineers have left to work on other projects. The overall public response to Waterpod™ has been positive, which is wonderful as it is continues to be such an incredible and curious experiment and source of pride for both Derek and I.
During construction at the GMD Shipyard in the Brooklyn Navy yards earlier this summer, we were the first artists to move onboard. We would often start work before 7 am and continue far beyond midnight, eating standing up, on gifts of food from volunteers. The Navy Yard was so beautiful, especially at dusk. We used the shelter of a decommissioned crane to house our borrowed jambalaya of tools. A temporary coop was built when the chickens arrived, and Carissa Carman and Logan Smith (Waterpod™ Living Systems Designers) kept hundreds of vegetable plants in every kind of container you can imagine all over the work site until they completed the onboard garden beds. We would climb the crane ladder to the top deck, looking out over the water to Manhattan, drinking coffee out of mason jars. During that period I would climb the crane to pirate Internet in order to update the website.
By the time we had moved to our first public pier at the South Street Seaport, we were beginning to recover from the final construction push and began to see our farm schedule/ public center daily pattern emerge: Rise early and feed the chickens. I have these old, tall green Hunter rubber boots, and when the hens would see them approach their enclosure they would get excited. I loved tossing in half cherries (a gift from one of our most generous benefactors) or strawberries that were past their prime and watching them chase each other around the chicken run. Then the morning watering followed by a rush to make breakfast and wash before our public hours would begin. Afternoons were spent working on barge improvements, general maintenance, talking with visitors, creating community alliances, local foraging and seeking free internet. The chickens would be fed a second time around 4 pm. The evenings were quickly consumed with more watering, returning emails, web design and updating, making dinner and hopefully a walk with Derek around the marina to reflect on the day. <top>
-Mira in the Waterpod™ coop having lunch with the chickens, carrots from my mother's farm in British Columbia, my mother and I and the raspberry harvest.
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08.09
>>To celebrate my 3rd wedding anniversary to the most wonderful human being of all time, I am posting a link to our online wedding album archive.
To my greatest love,
I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,
in the arc of your mallet when you work,
when you visit friends, when you go
up on the roof by yourself at night.
There's nothing worse than to walk out along the street
without you. I don't know where I'm going.
You're the road, and the knower of roads,
more than maps, more than love.
-Rumi.
I am forever yours,
thank you for loving me.
XO
M.
-Polaroids from our 2007 wedding at my mother's farm in Roberts Creek, British Columbia, Canada.
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08.09
>>Waterpod™ was conceived as a showcase for grassroots attainable sustainable technology through a cross-disciplinary artistic lens. It is a floating sculptural structure constructed from repurposed materials, that will travel the New York waterways in the summer of 2009 and act as a home for a small number of visual artists. As one of the resident artists l will be focused on the restriction and transformation of personal waste, the creation of collaborative innovative projects and ideas, the active caretaking of the nourishing onboard eco-system, and will be documenting my trials, successes and explorations to share with the public sphere.
As tangible evidence of the ensuing global warming epoch becomes visible in our daily lives, it is up to us to examine our habits and look for innovative ways to creatively tackle tomorrow's pressing environmental challenges. Waterpod™ is an accessible self-reliant eco-habitat, exhibition and living space, constructed with the advancing sea levels in mind.
The number of New York City families officially designated as 'homeless' has risen from 5,192 in 2000 to 9,720 in 2008, imagine how this number will expand as more land is lost to the rising tides. This new era will be defined by climate refugees, and Waterpod™ will be an available open source manual of creative solutions and a platform for dialogue.
I am a visual artist and an environmentalist. I am one of the primary conceptual artists involved in the imagining of Waterpod™. For me, Waterpod™ is not just an architectural study, or an environmental experiment or an art installation, it is an exploration into an idea of a shared future condition.
Waterpod™ is a place and an idea, it is a warning and a foundation for magic. <top>
-Waterpod™ being tugged from the South Street Seaport in Manhattan to Sheepshead Bay Marina in Brooklyn. If you look closely you can see Derek and I (wearing pink life jackets) standing on the tugboat.
Photograph by Mary Mattingly. <top>
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07.09
>>What is Waterpod™ anyway? To be honest Waterpod™ continues to be an elusive and complicated thing to define, even for the primary workers involved. Is it a social project? A public science center? A gardening experiment? Perhaps the simplest answer is that it is a complete human living system built onto a rented deck barge. But when you are there that description falls short. It was created by a large group of professional and non-professional volunteers, and it means very different things to many of the primary individuals involved. I first became involved out of a long time artistic friendship with Mary Mattingly. Mary and I met while studying visual art at Yale in 2001. She approached me with the basic concept several years ago while we were shooting film in the desert. Her idea has had more momentum than I think any of us imagined. For me the key concepts that I found the most exciting initially were the artistic (as Waterpod™ acts as a space for artists to collaborate and perform) and the environmental aspects (as a long term project it would certainly be able to provide shelter and nourishment for a small number of people). <top>
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05.09
>>TALE OF A BARGE: MAY 2009
The Waterpod™ team has encountered many unexpected challenges during the progression of the project. Our first barge, a donated massive aging deck barge named 'Uncle Leo', didn't survive the long New York winter and ended up being sold for scrap metal. We considered a 1983 Hopper Barge, but given the delays were not able to invest the added labour and resources it would have required to create a level deck. Luckily for Waterpod™, we were saved by Weeks Marine. This isn't the first rescue for Weeks Marine, they are the company responsible for lifting the US Airways flight 1549 airplane from the Hudson River in January. Our current acquisition is a solid though smaller, 98' x 31' tanker barge, which was once employed for the transport of petroleum. The barge has been restored in preparation for its next incarnation as the foundation for our installation. This of course required Mary Mattingly, Derek Hunter and Gabe Krause to focus on reorganizing our design plans to accommodate the new barge dimensions. We are currently building Waterpod™ at the Brooklyn Navy Yard with a devoted team of gifted volunteers lead by Derek Hunter.
-Waterpod™ under construction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
<top>
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04.09
>>A mix to make even the most difficult conversations sweet. Thank you lovegreg. I happen to be a September baby too.
xo
M.
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03.09
>>This is a small, beautiful glimpse at Philip Guston, one of my favorite painters (and born in Montreal).
I have just rented a studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with painter Stephanie Dedes, who I studied with at Yale. I am off to Pearl Paint tomorrow to pick up supplies.
>>The tour was wonderful. The last performance in Bab Al Shams for the Dubai International Film Festival at a site in the desert more than an hour outside the city, was magical. It was the night after Shebi-Arus and Mercan Dede played a third song during my final performance. I whirled for more than 30 minutes, and left the stage with a sense of elation I haven't experienced since I was young. I could have kept walking into the desert. It was hard leaving my new friends in Istanbul. I will greatly miss the time I spent cuddling Nilly, the feisty mosque garden calico, and I would have loved to have been their for Biggie Smalls, the large tabby who moved into our apartment hallway, when she had her litter, or to see Baklava, the neighbourhood puppy and gem of Cihangir, grow up. I will be back there soon. <top>
-The view from the house in Roberts Creek in the snow, Mira Hunter with her love Alexa Fábrega, Space Invader graffiti in Beyoglu, Biggie Smalls the pregnant street cat who lives in the apartment hallway in Istanbul. <top>
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11.08
>>Basel is a beautiful city, dressed for Christmas. I have loved spending the evenings watching the strong current of the Rhein from my hotel window, illuminated by a nearby decorated stone bridge. Stimmhorn was incredible tonight. Balthasar with his massive and ecclectic collection of wood, animal horn and metal wind instruments that he designed including 2 large alpen horns, and Christian on a custom mandolin-like stringed instrument, a unique accordian and voice, yodeling and throat singing. The soundscape was magical and primordial. At the end of the concert, we received several standing ovations. I had the wonderful opportunity to see our Swiss booking agent, Yann Aubert, who came to the performance. He and his wife Jacquie have added a third bunny to their diverse family, named Pom Pom. Hopefully on Monday we will have the chance to visit their small house in the French countryside, near the Swiss border.
-Basel, Switzerland: Hotel Krafft, Mira Hunter backstage at a performance with Stimmhorn and Mercan Dede, Mira and Jarret finding Christmas in Switzerland, Mira with a golden carrot and the view of the Rhein River from her hotel room. <top>
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11.08
>>WATERPOD™ UPDATE: WE HAVE A BARGE. Eve K. Tremblay is working from Berlin on the Seed Salon Scenario, Mira Hunter is meeting with the Istanbul MOMA to discuss a possible exhibition before heading out on a tour through Switzerland and the Middle East, while Mary Mattingly is in New York generating more architectural sketches, updated with the new barge proportions. D is on his way to NY next week to begin transforming it into a sustainable floating world, an exhibition space and an exhibition about the future of the environment. For more on Waterpod™ >>
-The first photographs of the first Waterpod™ barge in Queens, New York. <top>
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11.08
>>Thank you, Servet! The gift was so sweet and beautiful. And thank you to Burak, the magnificent ney player who is watching my street kitten Nilly while I am in Switzerland. <top>
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11.08
>>Tonight I performed with Mercan Dede at the Koç University's small concert hall. The floor was flat and smooth and open, perfect for whirling. The show had sold out months in advance. It was a beautiful night. Everything felt uncomplicated. I felt effortlessly connected to the music. The backstage was flooded with people. Our magnificent ney player Burak gave me the sweetest compliment. He looked in his small Türkçe/Ingilizce dictionary, but couldn't pronounce the word so he wrote it down on a paper bag: Angel. <top>
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11.08
>>Fatih Akin and Mira:You can watch award winning director Fatih Akin's acclaimed documentary on the musical culture of Istanbul, Crossing The Bridge: The Sounds Of Istanbul, which features a very short interview with yours truly. It streams from the google video website in Turkish and German with English subtitles. It is a gem of a film that follows some of Turkey's most influential musicians, hip hop artists and even street performers. Worth checking out. <top>
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11.08
>> Top 10 Songs of All Time (not 10, a work in progress and for the moment):
Kraftwerk | Computer Love
Penguin Cafe Orchestra | Salty Bean Fumble
Broken Social Scene | Pitter Patter Goes My Heart
Erlend Øye | The Black Keys Work
Enigma | Voyageur
The Books | S is for Evrysing
Thievery Corporation | The Heart's a Lonely Hunter
Mercan Dede | Falname
Ludovico Einaudi | Ancora
Bjork | Unison
Beirut | My Night with a Prostitute from Marseille
Led Zeppelin | Going to California
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Michael Brook | My Heart, My Life
John Lennon | Oh Yoko
Keith Jarrett | The Köln Concert, Pt. 2b
Freezepop | Tonight
Umut Gökçen vs. Baba Zula | Cecom
The Talking Heads | This Must Be the Place (naive song)
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11.08
>>It is after 2 am in the morning in Istanbul. I can't sleep. The song is For The Time Being by Phonique featuring Erlend Øye. I did a private show at the Istanbul Modern earlier this evening, and we were going to celebrate by heading to Babylon for their Oldies But Goldies night (one of my favorite nights out in Istanbul), but due to a terrorist warning in our neighborhood we decided to spend the night painting at the apartment. We ordered fresh pomegranate juice, ayran and tost from Bambi.<top>
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11.08
>>I am back on tour with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, and perfectly homeless for the present. My entire life is in boxes and suitcases. Currently on a brief hiatus from performing, I am staying in an apartment in Cihangir, Istanbul. At the end of week we are doing a show at the Istanbul Modern Museum. I have a small studio set up, but am having difficulty getting any compelling work completed. I finished one small animation puppet, but have had little success painting. In lieu of any real art practice, I have been furiously knitting a midori lace scarf for a Christmas gift. After the tour D and I are on our way to Brooklyn, NY, to work with Mary on the Waterpod™ project, which is due to float May 01, 2009. We already have a barge. <top>
-Istanbul from L to R: root puppet, spice bazaar, fresh nar juice at Bambi, Nilly my current adopted street kitten in a mosque garden in Cihangir.
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07.08
>>I have been helping D work on the first draft of his MFA thesis this week. I have just sent off an email to Dr. Oruç Güvenc, to request his approval to include an excerpt of the track Allah, Allah, Allah from his album with Tümata, Ocean of Remembrance (which can be listened to and purchased through iTunes), on the promotional DVD documenting the Time Machine project. Much like my intention to harness the inherent capacity for restorative healing through the meditative act of Mevlevi Whirling, Dr. Güvenc's album was designed to cure mental illness. Time Machine is coming down this week. I have been busy researching the next film installment currently dubbed Time Bomb. So far I want it to be viewed from inside an artificial cave, though I am also considering a nest or an igloo. We are planning to film in Nevada, the Badlands of Alberta and industrial wastelands around British Columbia. The plan is to illustrate a playful revenge by Mother Nature on the future humans of the world, complete with vindictive moss with a mind of its own and animals crafty enough to fashion guerrilla incendiary devices. <top>
-Photos (L to R) 1. By lovegreg, documenting the filming of Time Bomb in Nevada, 2008. 2. Film still from Fischli and Weiss' 1983 classic Der Rechte Weg. 3. Photo of the Badlands/Drumheller, Alberta, taken from the CBC website. <top>
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07.08
>>Time Machine, the end of something beautiful (it was all recycled):
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07.08
>>The opening for Time Machine was exceptional, several people reported or witnessed tears as they watched the piece from inside the yurt. Derek, my father and I stayed up all night finishing the rounded central bench, cleaning the space and working on the details. It turned out to be a really wonderful space to simply be in. Derek managed to nap for half an hour inside the yurt before the opening, while I had the exquisite luxury of a true nap at our tiny red house after a great breakfast at Seb's. I made a tiny animation sequence called The Happiest Molecule of All, that could be viewed from the outside of the structure, as if you were peeking into a small Sema (the traditional Mevlevi whirling ceremony). The stop motion animation minatures were roughly crafted from packing tape, floral wire and paper. Several people, even established artists, mistook the animation for a film of a real Sema, which was surprising. <top>
-Film stills from the Time Machine installation, 2008.
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06.08
>>David Michalek's Slow Dance Project is touring (including the Venice Biennale). For information on the project, or to see profiles and images of the contributing artists (including Mira Hunter) go to slowdancefilms.com, the official website. <top>
-Film stills from David Michalek's Slow Dancing project, featuring Mira Hunter. <top>
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04.08
>>It was in the afternoon, Derek and I carried the camera arc into Stanley Park in Vancouver. We chose an area away from the public foot paths, that had been cleared by the catastrophic storms of 2006. The camera rail that the 65 cameras are attached to, was designed to separate into 4 sections. I walked ahead of Derek, balancing a section of the rig on each shoulder. I was already wearing my sikke (tall Mevlevi felt hat) and my tenure (traditional Mevlevi dress for whirling) under a grey jacket. We wanted to shoot in Stanley Park, as I thought it was a place in Vancouver that needed help. Time Machine relates to an earlier project that Derek and I worked on with her father, my whirling teacher, Raqib Brian Burke. The Public Whirling Project, was about bringing the restorative charactor of the practice of whirling to places in need of it. The original session took place in Vancouver's Lower East Side, a neighbourhood mired by human hardship. It was documented by my brother-in-law, photographer Jordan Junck. An original form of whirling in Turkey was thought to have been practiced by nomadic tribes as a healing ceremony. In the tradional whirling posture, both arms are raised, with the right palm facing up, while the left palm faces towards the ground. Divine energy is believed to cycle through the right palm, heart, exiting out the left palm into the physical universe. After the storms levelled much of the city's great park, both Derek and I had wanted to whirl there. I was born in Vancouver and spent much of her childhood exploring the duck ponds, rose gardens and seashore of Stanley Park. We chose a hidden place in the woods to set up the camera rig. The ground was uneven from all the degrading fallen branches, upturned trees and thriving underbrush, but I managed to whirl anyway, tearing holes in the soles of my traditional winter Muslim prayer slippers. My shoes filled with earth as I moved in a careful circle, surrounded by the cameras. A pond had formed where a large tree had been uprooted. Skunk lillies had started to bloom out of the mud. During our session, we saw two Canada Geese fly through the trees and perch on some high branches. We could see their long necks through the greenery. Then they were disturbed, and took to the air making a lot of noise. On a return pass over our clearing, we could see just 30 feet above our heads, that they were being pursued by a large bald eagle. An hour later, they returned alone to roost in the same tree. <top>
- Public Whirling Project, featuring Mira Hunter and her father and teacher Raqib Brian Burke, photos by Jordan Junck.
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04.08
>>It was a warm, windy Sunday. D and I had decided to go down to the industrial park near the Neptune Coal Terminals on the North Shore of Vancouver. We had borrowed a truck. As the cameras are assembled in a circle, the locations have to be carefully chosen, as to provide some cover for D to hide while each shot is being taken. The sessions are often laborious, as each shot is just a fraction of a moment compared to the time that it takes to forward all of the 65 cameras to the next frame. We chose a location near a large series of grain elevators. There was also a slag pile great enough to conceal the truck, and a bundle of oil soaked track lumber that D could hide behind. Beautiful, green, wheat grass was sprouting along the train tracks, and had attracted hundreds of birds. Among them were several mating pairs of Canada geese. They would fly from down the train tracks, where they were grazing on the new grass, over where we had set up the camera rig, to a shallow pond of water that had formed in the uneven gravel of the industrial park. I was excited to try to get a shot with the great birds. I had meticulously pressed all my ceremonial clothes the night previous, which we didn't always have the chance to do. Everything was set up, everything ready, but nothing would work. We tried for hours to find which connection was faulty, but were eventually escorted out by the port security before we could take a single picture. It was weeks later when it had stopped raining that we could return to the location. This time D had gone over every electronic component to make certain it would work. My brother-in-law, Jordan Junck, came to help document and subsequently act as a magnificent bird wrangler. He took some incredible pictures of the shoot, and even managed to coax the bathing Canada geese to fly through the shot. There is one series where you can just see them flying behind my whirling silhouette. <top>
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06.07
>>I am in New York until tomorrow morning working on Waterpod™ Project with Mary Mattingly. Also for anyone in the Manhattan neighborhood, I will be a small feature in David Michalek's Slow Danceproject at the Lincoln Center starting Sunday July 10 - 29, 9 pm to 1 am nightly. The footage which was recorded earlier this year is stunning.<top>
'Lincoln Center Festival presents the world premiere of Slow Dancing, an outdoor, multi-channel video installation of hyper-slow-motion video portraits projected nightly on the facade of the New York State Theater. This free installation captures the beauty of the body in motion, depicting movement of dance icons that include Trisha Brown, Wu Hsing-Kuo, Wendy Whelan, Shen Wei, Eiko and Koma, William Forsythe, Judith Jamison, and Bill T. Jones, astonishingly captured at 1,000 frames per second. The installation consists of an ever-changing trio of dancers, each over 40 feet tall. Over each 10 minute cycle, what at first appears to be a series of “still” photographs unfolds, gesture by barely-perceptible gesture, into an elaborate choreography, with the viewer allowed to choose to focus on one dancer’s complete “performance” or observe the interplay between the three. This awe-inspiring digital installation will run nightly during the Lincoln Center Festival, from 9:00 pm until 1:00 am.' <top>
