journey meditation walk

I first performed my journey meditation walk in 2011. I was deeply enmeshed in the Jordan’s Journey project at the time and the meditation walk video was a one-off creative experiment that I did while I was working on the Jordan’s Journey videos. In fact, the meditation walk video clip ended up being part of that trailer. I sat aside the footage and in 2012 first created the standalone journey video both as documentation of the original performance and as original video art.

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Yoko Ono’s Conceptual Photography from Flying Tiger

video still

In 2013, OR Books released Yoko Ono’s Acorn, a sort of spiritual follow-up to her landmark Grapefruit, which was first published in 1964. As a Yoko Ono collector, I was particularly excited about the special edition OR published alongside the standard edition. I was so excited, in fact, I made an unboxing video upon receiving it! It was something I did on a whim that turned out to be an important moment for me. Not only did OR love the video (they feature it on their main product page for Acorn to this very day), Yoko herself loved it and shared it on all her social media. That meant a lot to me! I see the video as a work of art in and of itself. If you’re at all familiar with Internet unboxing videos, you’ll notice how mine’s a bit different from the run of the mill fare. In particular I focus on hand gesture as I open and show the book on screen. It’s about a simple, everyday action (opening a package you receive in the mail) and elevating it to something visually interesting with formal properties that extend beyond then object itself and into a different realm of object-as-performance.

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“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).

INTERSECTION large print proofs

Going into the INTERSECTION exhibition for Massillon Museum, I knew it was going to be lots of hard work. Even before I conceived of doing the Kickstarter to help me get through it all, I had already put in months of work on developing the show and all the things that revolve around it.

But where so much of that work was digitally (and brain) based, things have moved head on into the physical plane now! I feel like the show is manifesting, bit by bit, right before my eyes. And never more-so than when I went to pick up the proofs for the two large pieces I made–with the help of my Kickstarter supporters–specifically for this show.

As they say, a picture is worth 1,000 words… so rather than write about it, I’m going to show you. In video.

A huge thanks goes out to my collaborator, Michael Harren. I love his music for this video!

Various Videos

The last I updated you here, my Kickstarter campaign was under way. If you didn’t already see the news, it was a phenomenal success. The project reached 100% funding before it was even halfway through. I’m so thankful for all of my fans and supporters who helped make it happen.

As part of the campaign I posted several videos featuring the Kickstarter rewards. I thought I would gather a few of those here.

The first video shows my We Are One People artist’s multiple. This is a new work I created earlier in 2013 but I debuted it as part of the INTERSECTION Kickstarter campaign. This limited edition boxed set contains my article “We Are One People” (originally published in Georgia Backroads) on a set of 12 cards accompanied by a set of 12 mounted digital chromogenic prints. This multiple is super deluxe and high end. See what it’s like in the video:

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