Michael Harren on animals, grief, and his multimedia marvels 🐓😭🎹

Both of our bellies full of watermelon, I sat down with Michael Harren to talk about The Animal Book, the book that archives The Animal Show, which in turn archives Michael’s multimedia artistic stylings, animal activism, and the culmination of the two: his vibrant, evoking artivism. I was eager to hear about the melding of such diverse methods, but also what lies behind them—the man, the emotion, the existential uncertainty. Michael shared his grief and joys with me in a humorous, self-effacing way.

Cover of The Animal Book by Michael Harren. The cover features a photo of a chicken perched on a person's arm in front of a wire fence. The title and author's name are written in white text at the bottom right corner.
The Animal Book by Michael Harren
Read More

We are masked artists and poets in quarantine and solidarity

I reached out to the artists and poets I’ve published to see how everybody is doing during the pandemic. Some of us are creating, some of us are crying, and some of us (most of us?) are somewhere in between, depending on the day. The state of the world is a lot to process. But we are here. We are well. We are wearing masks. We are hunkering down and taking the situation seriously. I thought it would be fun to share photos of us all masked-up, socially distanced, and going about our days. Here we are, the masked artists & poets of bd-studios.com

Read More

“Invocation” music video

Premiered yesterday on The Justin Wayne Show, my video for Michael Harren‘s Invocation (the second single from #TentativeArmor) features my “journey” meditation walk. I documented this performance art piece during my trip to Iceland last year, which is also when I created all the other footage that appears in the video. For me, Michael’s music and the visuals I paired with it are all meditative in nature and reflect the spiritual elements of the Tentative Armor project as a whole.

I’d love to hear what you think! Leave a comment on the video or drop both me and Michael Harren a line on Twitter (@lukekurtis and @MichaelHarren).