Share Your Thoughts on Public Sculpture

So I went to college awhile ago. I don't really know what I did there? I know there was lots of reading, a lot of film screenings (1. Go to the first day of as many film classes as possible. 2. Get the syllabus for the class. 3. Compile schedule of all free class screenings for the whole semester. 4. Enjoy!) and pages and pages of writing, all creating a section of my brain that I rarely access nowadays...I mean, when was the last time I needed to know what Deleuze thought about anything? For me though the one thing I did take away from the whole experience was the exposure to entirely new ideas.

I took tons of classes out of my comfort zone (art, science, gender studies) all things that crossed eachother and laid bare connections I would never have seen. One area I grew intensely fond of was that of theater, the precursor to the movie world I already had grown to know and love! I especially favored the Epic Theater of Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright who paved the way for a politically motivated stage and created his own artistic language in the process. So, when I saw Brent Green's short films for the first time my post-college Brechtian-brain started firing in all directions: the meta-ness, the exposing of the hand, the fictionalizing of history, the political tension, even the title cards!  I saw constant parallels between Brent's work and that of Brecht! So many parallels that, years later, I decided to write about it over here at One + One Filmmakers Journal, a budding politically leaning film publication based in Britain! (The rest of the new One + One issue is pretty stellar, including pieces on George Kuchar, Kubrick and the nature of animals on film! Absolutely awesome!)

As I get further away from college I value the academic less and less, thinking that talking in circles in a made up language of theory that only a few can speak is just plain nonsense, but I realize that it is the discussion, the thinking, the hope, that these kinds of writings bring that can inspire change which should be the reason for creating anything at all. But then again, academic essays like mine, the renegade platform Brent has created for himself and the long standing legacy of Brecht can reach the same end too. Using whatever means we have we should all motivate eachother for the better and open our eyes to the world around us regardless of what road we take to get there.