Matthew Geller - Foggy Day

Matthew Geller's urban earthwork Foggy Day (previously discussed here and here) was vetted by the blowdried fascisti of Fox News last fall; an online video of the broadcast can be viewed at the Creative Capital website. As discussed previously, public funds paid for approximately 10% of the project so the conservatives swooped into action--first with a denunciatory cover story in the New York Sun, and of course the Fox broadcast features the obligatory thinktank intellectual in a book-lined room (who hadn't seen the piece) gassing on about the proper use of tax dollars. Fox did Geller a tremendous favor, though, not so much with the faux-controversy as with the camera work for his portfolio. Because the network keeps things fast-moving and fast-cutting so the couch potatoes won't wander away from their screens, it turned Foggy Day (a temporary, artificial fogbank with stands of bamboo and simulated puddles in Chinatown's Cortlandt Alley) from a "romantic stroll in the park" into Gulf War 3, replete with jittery handheld shots, views from a speeding vehicle, and an embedded reporter emerging from the steam. (Creative Capital now has two groups of pages devoted to the project, one with text and pictures and one with video, text, and pictures.)

- tom moody 7-11-2004 6:58 pm