MIDNIGHT BILL This was a broadcast collaboration with Chris Campbell on Georgia Tech’s WREK, 91.1 FM December 18-21, 2011. The project was conceived as a radio program memorial that explored connections between archived letters, music, sound, and personal narrative. Hacking Radio Data Systems technology enabled the use of scrolling text to underscore the audio broadcast with historical information and questions arising from theories of memory and forgetting. Read about it in Creative Loafing, Radio World, or look further into the project at AlwaysMyLove. Video documentation of RDS live broadcast coming soon! [each segment is approximately 15 minutes]
Midnight Bill: Part 4, Water from Joey Orr on Vimeo.
MEMORY FLASH For a more extensive look at my work in this idea collective, please visit JohnQ.org. Our first project, Memory Flash, was a series of public performances, installations, and interventions that recreated past memories from archives, oral histories, and newspapers in order to create new memories by using the city itself as a memory palace. Discursive Memorials, our multi-media essay on this work can be found on Southern Spaces. Other John Q projects include Breakfast with Bill (Kibbee Gallery preview), Discursive Memorials (Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia), Policing Ourselves (Outwrite Bookstore happening and reading), and a specially curated issue of The JOSH (Journal of Sexual Homos).
RESEARCH AND DESIRE This project was a collaboration between Cyon Flare/Robert Mitchell and me. As a way of acknowledging the limited agency of my subjects within the context of my own research and cultural production, I tried to similarly locate myself for this presentation. Since Bill and Jack, the subjects of my research at the time, met cruising, I went to Boystown in Chicago cruising once a week. When I found someone with whom there was mutual attraction, I asked if this person would be willing to present my work at the Alogon Gallery exhibition, Discipline Problems, curated by Joseph Grigely. He knew very little about me other than a brief overview of my research project and whatever information he personally requested. The information was presented in my own absence, and the manner in which my project was framed and presented was completely out of my control. A transcript of the performance was the final chapter of my master’s thesis, Desire Palace. [video documentation is 10 minutes in length]
