SEPIA SATURDAY: Shattering Bubbles of Time

Every moment is a bursting bubble of time, gone even as it happens.

This concept has fascinated me -- and Landron -- for a very long time. The Shattering of Time.

Nothing embodies this concept more than "A Trip Down Market Street", perhaps the most important film ever made in and about San Francisco.
I was pleased that 60 Minutes chose to feature it and the recent conclusion that it was not made in 1905 -- as was long assumed -- but in April 1906, likely days before the great earthquake and fire if not the day before. In 12 minutes of real time, we see people, buildings, vehicles and animals, many of which likely perished shortly after the film was made. The only familiar sites are the street itself and the ferry building in the distance that at first looks like a painted stage set and then becomes increasingly real as the camera nears.
It's at the ferry building, in the final minute of the film, that things become truly fascinating and the images are closer, more fleeting and transcendent. The man in the Eureka - California wagon appears for less than a doezen frames, but I find myself wanting to know his story.
The car driving erratically with a group of men in bowler hats equally fascinates me.
As we arrive at the end of Market and seem nearly to crash into the Ferry Building, men gawk and women seem to either sneer or demure. Who is the woman in the cape? The woman on the left seems equally dubious about being captured on camera.

Suddenly, this cheeky fellow on the right races in, seemingly aware that this is a chance to be caught for posterity but not aware of the fate facing him mere days or hours ahead.
Finally the cable car and the camera rest for a moment, but not the action. We see this trio of men standing near the ferry building's corner stone.

The camera is motionless, but the old man's long gray beard dances in the Pacific breezes. Just a few years earlier audiences were fascinated when they witnessed trees and grass blowing in the wind in films by the Lumiere brothers. The very concept of capturing the action of wind was completely revolutionary. Seeing this old man, the emotion of his eyes only faintly shadowed by the brim of his hat, I wonder if he could have been part of the gold rush less than 50 years earlier.

Finally the camera pauses, then rapidly pivots to give a reverse, westward view, the final miles of the continental U.S. before the Pacific. A sea of news boys jump and wave -- a joyful, sunny moment in the early 20th century spring sunlight. It's as if they are shouting "We were here!" across more than a century, and for a few seconds we are there with them, and then it's all gone. A bubble of time forever captured. People caught and unaware of tragedy looming. Joy pressed in a book forever, like dried flowers whose petals and colors we may distinguish, yet we'll never experience the exact aroma and freshness.

Each moment, already over just as it has begun. I don't know how many frames are in "A Trip Down Market Street" but I want to explore each one, champagne bubbles forever holding the moment in amber.

10-10-10 The Shattering of Time

Happy 10-10-10 everyone. How have you celebrated this important day? I went to see four films at the Exploratorium that seemed to embody the concept of Landron's "The Shattering of Time". The bedrock of the series was Charles and Ray Eame's 1977 classic "The Power of Ten". The Eames were primarily designers and we've come to know their airport chairs to the point where they have become as ingrained as Monet's calendars.

"The Shattering of Time" is often falsely labeled as an attack on Proust's "Time Regained". Landron always loved Proust, although he always felt time cannot be regained. Like rain drops it shatters as it happens, breaking into particles that are an energy force that is doomed to self destruct.

Charles Eames once claimed that no one has improved on plate design after the adaptation of the banana leaf as a place on which to serve food. I always loved that their simple, modernist case study house in which they lived was not a museum piece like Phillip Johnson's glass house but stuffed with books, memorabilia and junk.

The last film in today's series was by Charles and Ray's grandson, Eames Demetrios, called "The Power of Time" that was sort of a deconstructionist approach to the 1977 film. I love that even his name is sort of a deconstruction of his family line. My grandson is named Thief Jonktariaus. His film truly took on the concept of desconstructing time as he explored picoseconds, femtoseconds, attoseconds and even smaller slices of time in which movement ceases to be real and becomes increasingly abstract. Time is a construct of abstracts that we delude ourselves into believing is reality and can be regained or held.

I've been increasingly drawn to the work of Gertrude Stein as well as writings of others about her. I think Stein is one writer that people have read more about than of. She was often called a cubist writer, but I think that is just a boxy way of saying deconstructionist. I love photos of her and Alice B. Toklas with their dog Basket. When Basket died he was replaced with Basket II. I wonder if this influence Michael Jackson naming his youngest child Blanket. If Bow ever lets me adopt another dog, I think I'll call it Towel.

Who is Landron?

Conceptual artist Landron will not be celebrating the New Year.

He also does not engage in the argument that the teens begin in 2011 not 2010. The question is both moot and mute to him. Though he would prefer to say that it is mutte, the Catalan word for beige.

"Time is a social construct," he would say and clocks, calendars and sundials should be used only as objets des artes not as guides for behavior and deadlines.

Landron has no deadline for his seminal installation The Shattering of Time which, as he says, "Will be complete when it is destroyed."

We would wish you a happy New Year, but that would upset Landron who says, "The New Year is old even before it is born."

Who is Landron?

This Landron installation -- Hound of the Holidays (2007) -- continues to delight young and old alike. Note basenji paws on the right.

Who is Landron?

The above triptych on a poster that has been appearing in the Mission has many to speculate aht it may be the work of conceptual artist Landron. A call to his studio in Bilbao this afternoon confirmed our hunch when he responded, "No it's not!"

It's easy to see why people might think that it was since it so obviously echoes the themes of his "avian millinery" installation at the Whitney Spring Biennial in 1997. The show got many mixed reviews with Landron's multi-media approach of ceramic, painting, silk screen and oil representations of birds in top hats.

Some thought it quaint and others looked for meaning that may have not been there.

Most did not fully conceive the qualifying script at the bottom of the program "an installation in progress" until its full folly was unleashed at 6 a.m. on Easter morning.

Landron and his countless apprentices and interns unleashed 6,500 baby chicks on Fifth Avenue just south of East 85th street, each outfitted in a tiny, handmade silk top hat. Though traffic was light it did wreck havoc and tragic, ironic carnage as entire flocks of yellow baby chicks were crushed by enormous Yellow cabs while little girls on way to Easter communion let out peeping shrieks not unlike those of the baby chicks.

Just after sunset, Landron projected images from a Tyson chicken processing plant where thousands of chickens met an equally cruel fate. "Can protest carnage be just when it exposes real carnage" read the headline in ArtForum's review of the installation.

The real impact of that exhibit is still unknown, thought it appears that shortly after it closed Broaster Chicken's logo added a top hatted chicken.

Who is Landron?

When conceptual artist Paul Reubens encountered legal problems in a fine arts cinema in Florida in the early 1990s, he immediately called fellow conceptual artist Landron from his bail bondsman's office.

"What film was showing when you were arrested," Landron inquired.

"The Sorrow and the Pity," Reubens replied.

Landron suggested that Reubens call Doris Duke. Duke funded Landron's 1987 exhibition The De-Monetization of Money on Wall Street at the time of that year's stock market crash and the premier of Oliver Stones movie of the same name. Landron projected images of bank notes from more than 80 countries on the Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney and other financial institutions' buildings. At midnight, 300,000 Deutsche Marks were dropped from the top of the stock exchange as thousands of people grabbed for them while Polaroids and 80-pound SONY mini-camcorders captured the insanity. Many of the photos were published the next day in the New York Post with the names and home addresses of those grabbing the bank notes.

Landron said that he did not object to people having access to the monetary value of these notes, but he was appalled that there was no mention of the portraits of the people on the bank notes. Landron felt that it was especially important to acknowledge that while US bills show images of monuments and dead presidents, German currency presents the likenesses of authors, scientists and musicians. The fact that the 1000 Deutsche Mark shows the Brothers Grimm is a testament to the fable of money itself.

The entire exhibition cost around $30 million, and Doris Duke invested $55 million. When her foundation called and suggested that an audit might be in order, Landron said that this was a mere nihilistic capitalist construct and slammed down the receiver. Doris called him the next day, apologized and flew him to her retreat. They had cocktails and bree on her veranda.

After Landron had given Reubens Doris' private number, he asked, "When I call, should I say that I am Pee Wee Herman or Paul Reubens?"

Outraged, Landron shot back, "If you have to ask that, you don't know Doris."

The next day, Reubens arrived at Doris' mansion with a great, private reception and kisses. Which name did he use? As Landron would say: "You do the math."*

* = Math is a social construct.

Who is Landron?

In his epic, multi-media installation The Shattering of Time, conceptual artist Landron assaulted all bourgeois concepts and institutions.

When asked about Christmas and holidays in general, Landron replied with what he calls one of his "affirming contradictions".

"Like time itself, holidays are a social construct," Landron said. "To attack Christmas gives credence to its very existence and its associated myths. To ignore it allows it to fester and burgeon into something greater and more powerful. To embrace it as an abstraction puts it into the proper context of fable and folly while eating samosas and sipping peppermint-coconut chai."

Landron was referenced by Bryce Digdug earlier today. Further sightings of Landron will likely appear here.