Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Minnesota Original
is made possible by
The Arts and Cultural
Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
On this edition
of Minnesota Original:
celebrates
a University Avenue neighborhood
in his public art installation.
Tom Nechville's custom banjos
tone and projection
than traditional models.
And jazz singer
Christine Rosholt performs.
now on Minnesota Original.
electronic music plays
acoustic guitar plays softly
This is just east of 280.
There's 250 photographs on the
avenue right now along 6 miles,
from a block west of 280,
where St. Paul starts,
of the state capitol.
The Midwest Hotel,
they kicked me out of there.
My name is Wing Young Huie,
I'm a photographer,
the cultural landscape
for the last 30 years.
Avenue and University Avenue
intersection in Minnesota.
It's the epicenter
of University Avenue.
The University Avenue Project,
this will be a 6-mile exhibition
of photographs that I've taken
of the people that live,
work, go to school,
worship, and play
in the neighborhoods connected
by University Avenue.
large-scale project.
organization
like Public Art St. Paul
magnitude is really incredible.
This part of the project,
we've sort of come to call
The Projection Project.
Wing wanted to have an
opportunity
to have someone experience,
in a sense,
the totality of the project
at one time,
and then, of course, encourage
them to take that 6-mile walk,
along the avenue.
But it's kind of a locus,
and so part of the
conceptual issue was
how do we draw people's
attention to the spot?
What we did was, we built
a model that was fairly simple,
the main components together.
the components,
which in this case
are the shipping containers,
in a manner that actually starts
to have some presence
on the site.
of the exhibition
nightly projection
onto a 40-foot screen
metal shipping containers.
It's about 8:19.
starts about 5 minutes,
the show goes on.
After doing Lake Street in 2000,
which was a big chunk
of my life,
something like that again
because it takes so much
energy and so much money.
Now 3 years later, here we are,
a large-scale project,
than Lake Street, in fact,
because there's
so many partners involved.
with the chalkboard essay,
since we could use any of them.
That makes sense, huh?
The Minnesota Historical Society
is publishing this work
as a 2-issue magazine.
that we've laid out,
magazine number one.
would be very accessible,
that would really flow
from what the exhibit is.
sort of raw presence,
sell it for $12.
University Avenue is,
it's a microcosm
of what we're becoming.
You have one of the most
diverse populations.
You have communities that have
been here for many generations.
slice up urban living,
it can be found somewhere
on University Avenue.
There's nothing to know.
There's no one to miss.
The longer I'm home
the colder it gets.
with a hole in my chest
the size of my head...
Well, the chalkboard questions--
were ambiguous and open-ended.
How do you think others see you?
What don't they see?
What advice would
you give a stranger?
What's your favorite word?
changed you.
How have you been affected
by race?
acoustic guitar plays softly
A lot of what I do, I'm alone,
and I interact with
thousands of people,
but I'm an independent artist.
collaborative process,
because you think about
all the people
who are behind the scenes,
you're really collaborating
that I photographed.
that are involved
with this photography exhibit,
so to be that connected
to that many people for,
I can't say it's
a single purpose,
but for something like this is,
I just feel very fortunate.
Growing up in Minnesota,
where are you from?
I'm from Duluth.
where are you really from?
I'd say really, I'm from Duluth.
It's an innocent question,
but it implies a lot.
I must be a foreigner.
where my family or myself
a true American.
I wasn't a true Minnesotan
growing up in the
land of Lake Wobegon,
I am and how I'm perceived
bumps into the perceptions
of what Minnesotans are
on a regular basis.
like me,
of thousands of people
who bump into this,
the myths of the state.
do is create a new iconography,
one that fills the gap
of who we are and the reality.
When I'm photographing,
I'm just reacting,
whether this is good or bad
there's just life,
I'm just trying
to translate what I see
of photography.
The meaning of a photograph,
I think, is changes.
They change as the person
looking at them changes.
Most people think
of a photograph as a window,
window into the world
photographer's eyes.
I think they're just as much,
if not more, a mirror
because people only see
what their life experiences
enable them to see.
they want to see.
exhibition is a mirror
to itself
and to the larger world,
at it to decide what it is.
(Wing)
know what's going on here?
(woman)
No, I'd like to know.
(Wing)
I worked on for 4 years.
changes that are happening
with light rail coming through,
coming through,
no one really knows
all the full impacts.
be the last record
of what University Avenue
was like.
be a social space.
(woman) Did you say every night?
(Wing) For 6 months...
(Wing) Every single night
for 6 months until the end of
October. (woman) No kidding.
(Wing) We started on Saturday.
You gave them the chalkboard.
What did you tell them to write?
Well, I came up with
a series of questions
not be easily answered.
And so the questions are--
What are you?
How do you think others see you?
What don't they see?
a stranger?
What's your favorite word?
flute plays softly
(Tom Nechville)
called Keep on Playing.
A lot of parts in a banjo.
that the banjo
an inefficient machine,
turning back in the early '80s.
How about a banjo head that
screws on like the cap of a jar?
kind of banjo rather than
trying to copy the banjos
that had been around for years.
Here we are in the Nechville
shop
letting it dry.
mahogany, and rosewood
various purposes,
necks and tone rings.
banjo when I was 17,
became a tinkerer and a builder.
I built my first traditional
banjo back in the early 1980s.
The main difference between
this and a traditional banjo,
it's not only aesthetics,
but it's mechanical.
has traditional drum hardware,
and this has been around
for probably 150 years.
design to keep everyone's banjo
more ready to play.
And this is the main invention
that really sets Nechville's
Banjos apart from the others.
There's really only 2 kinds
of banjos in the world.
There's Nechville Heli-mounts,
traditional banjos.
The head goes in.
as the cap of a jar.
want to screw this on,
we have to have something
to screw it onto.
This would be considered
that screws in.
something
in-between there, the tone ring.
a metal and wood
with a Teflon strip.
And we pop that in place.
that screws in.
We turn that,
get that started,
then once that gets started...
then we have wrenches like this
to tighten it up with.
I don't have to tighten
each individual hook and nut.
one mechanism
that tightens
the whole
banjo at once. plunk
If I had all the parts in front
of me, I think I could
together in just a few minutes.
The standard design does require
a lot more time
equally tight.
You don't hear the hardware.
was made to make the sound.
banjo plays softly
And the tone that
comes out is a pure sound.
edgy sound. It's fuller.
soft buzzing
whirring
fingerboard off here,
like after it's finished.
the Dixie Chicks, Keith Urban,
some major country bands.
When I delivered the banjo
to the Dixie Chicks,
delivering the banjo to Emily,
play it through the mic
setting up the stage,
Nechville, I love you,
for him to EQ the banjo
and get it sounding right
over that big
auditorium sound system.
The banjo has gotten
stereotyped and pigeonholed,
and so now the sound of
a banjo is often cast off
as well, that's hillbilly music.
of a good artist,
the banjo can really
transform your emotions.
This is an armrest,
and I will buff
one of these out.
I love the creative process
because I'm not expected
of previous builders.
I've been the Lone Ranger
in the field of banjo design.
on the Nechville
gives the player more choices
of where his action should be.
that's the distance
off the fingerboard.
notice how it slipped forward,
and then tighten it back up,
that the strings have
from the fingerboard.
I love all kinds of music,
but I certainly like
in new environments,
is to see the banjo
incorporated into ethnic
musics of different cultures.
We see the banjo being used
played by orchestras.
as it's growing and changing.
laughs Something like that!
electronic music plays
(Carl Flink) Good, all right.
Yes! Great! Great!
I am Carl Flink, and I'm
the artistic director
of Black Label Movement.
Today we're going to be working
on a piece
that is being built from
scratch.
examining the idea
moment of torture,
maybe rough places,
and we'll see what happens.
with the idea that,
let's say whoever
that one person collapse,
land on top of them.
Okay, so Brian,
if you're that person...
Okay, we land, I'm gonna push.
Actually, if Crystal and Pat,
in this moment if you could have
a kind of rapid, deep exhale
us, that gives us the cue. Okay?
(Pat) Cue to go up?
(Carl) Yup, cue to go up,
I'm gonna push you this way,
and then I'm going to
come back to this person,
and I'm going to
try to stand on her thighs.
you see in Black Label Movement
are people who, when I first saw
them as dancers or performers,
that I saw them as a creature.
that attracts me
is a person who's very in
contact with their inner animal,
quality to their movement
rather than one that's very
head, then do; head, then do;
who just do things.
find is a little bit of a sense
the central figure
doing this around,
but eventually
it also becomes
having their encounter,
leading in some ways.
Like what is the tension
between not only this trio,
who are the questioners?
I feel like the concept of dance
of social baggage with it.
flowing gowns, on point shoes,
to be just coming at this
as a practice of movement.
to turn it into necessarily
refined and crafted as dance,
but is more just embraced
for the sheer movement of it.
So going from this idea of
there's this really gentle,
it's so wonderful,
and they're pulling it out,
and then let's give them, so we
get the tension on their body,
then we're gonna
twist that hand up,
slide down, put the hand in,
and then torque it.
with the movers,
that other body
the information I'm giving them.
So I'm not looking to see
what I had in my mind.
here's a set of problems.
How do you wrestle with it,
and how do they then
I say oh, I see.
I can go with your body.
but the idea isn't tantamount.
It's not the one that's trying
into a certain box.
to change my ideas.
play in dissonant tones
was as an athlete.
I was a very
serious soccer player.
in the fact that in sports,
and that kind of danger
is very acceptable, it's just
part of the process of playing.
It's not from
a macho standpoint,
of the process of playing.
And in the dance realm,
in many areas that's not an
accepted part of this world.
And so one of the things that
Black Label is trying to do
is bring that kind of physical
dialogue into this space safely.
in dissonant tones
featured on Minnesota Original
anytime on mnoriginal.org.
(Hunter) Seeing my grandfather
that he is
has helped me see what I can be
and go even farther beyond that.
of who she's become.
bass plays soft jazz
playing jazz blues
Don't tell me
that time is a healer.
heal this broken heart.
And when April comes along,
I'm not strong,
to the start.
There's laughter, and maybe
for one moment,
I'm back when all
the days were good.
Then quickly as it came,
I call your name,
lost in the wood.
Will you come tonight
when I am feeling lonely?
dreams if I should sleep?
will you dry my eyes,
till the night dies?
Just say you will
heal this broken heart,
heal this broken heart.
the sun is shinin'.
and brand-new starts.
The world, it moves along,
in this bubble
is where I belong,
a broken heart.
play call and response
when I am feeling lonely?
dreams if I should sleep?
And when I cry
will you hold me tight,
until the night dies?
Just say you will.
(Alec) This is my first show
at the Walker, and it's
if I can make it here,
sort of thing.
It's that version for Minnesota.
It really is an elite thing.
electronic music plays
CC--Armour Captioning & TPT
(woman)
is made possible by
and Cultural Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
orchestral fanfare