“SAME DAY” — a Photographic Performance for Right Now

SAME DAY, ver. 003 — Tuesday, Oct. 17th, 2017, 7PM, Emory University, White Hall

“An ongoing work-in-progress, SAME DAY is a photographic performance for right now, a slideshow exploration at the crossroads of global politics and an American family. Looking for connections in the banality of the everyday, SAME DAY exercises at the edge of what’s believable, merging a personal, photographic archive with the ongoing unreality of state-sponsored espionage, thwarted investigations, and a hacked Presidential election.”

I presented the first version of SAME DAY on Thursday, May 25th, at Fall Line Press. Here’s a timeline of the various versions, as presented:

• 20170525 — presentation at Fall Line Press (ver. 001)
• 20170527 — video (ver. 002)
• 20171017 — presented in an evening of “photologues” with Nicholas Muellner and Jason Francisco. (ver. 003)
• 20171102 — ver. 003b (audio sync’d with slides), presented at “Picturing Justice” lunch & learn.

Ver. 003: “Reviews” & Audience Images:

20171102 — ver. 003b at “Picturing Justice” at Atlanta Legal Aid — Audio + Sync’d Slides | Annotated Transcript

ver. 003 at Emory University, with Nicholas Muellner & Jason Francisco — 20171017 (photo © Hope Cohn)

Thanks so much for the “photologue” last night. As the momentum developed within the piece, and as the inquiry became more complex and absurd, there were moments when I started to lose perspective and I realized you were taking us through the looking glass, and then you made these abrupt shifts to your family and very intimate observations and somehow I was struck by the fragility of it all. The performance is able to articulate that sense of fragility so powerfully — the realization that everything important and valuable is actually hanging on the farce playing out on our collective screens and devices. The only thing giving us hope is your sense of humor, but even that is suspect because it’s always twinged with a slight fatalism. Your role as a kind of character within the performance is interesting in that sense — we know where your allegiances are, but it’s unclear whether or not you think we’ll actually make it out alive.

— SAME DAY “review” of ver. 003–20171017

Audience-made collage of ver. 003–20171017

Ver. 002: Recorded two days after ver. 001:

Version 002 of “SAME DAY,” recorded May 27th, 2017

Ver. 001: Audience pics and “reviews”

SAME DAY at Fall Line Press — 20170525, photo by Billy Howard

SAME DAY “review” of ver. 001

20170512 — MDM, updated 20180424