Searching for the corpse of the Corpse Flower, biking through Brooklyn, and falling asleep under a Beach Tree. Stranger interaction #2 with an old man wearing clip ons and sucking on a lollipop. We passed each other on the dirt path of the Japanese Pond Garden and he came back to find me. His NY curiosity found me staring down some plein air painters across the pond- I was trying to project myself into their landscapes- and he asked me about my camera. He related the Civilian Body Cam to his own experiences wearing another type of head cam when he ventures out to the Berkshire Mountains. I mention that I am doing a 30 day experiment wearing the camera in public space in light of our political upheaval. Video B (37:39) He says, "What politics... I can't even pronounce... you know its just overwhelming...” At the end he compliments how the camera headband compliments my hair do. Video B (44:12) I sit behind a plein air painter who stops to look what she has done. I think of the quiet space of the listening angels in the Wenders movie Wings of Desire. I begin to feel invisible. I fail to find the Corpse Flower; they put it away after it passed its rotten bloom. I wonder where they are keeping it? Today is a Millions March in NYC to end police violence. I am thinking about the confrontation that is happening there and my meditation here- they are connected.
30 Days Being A Civilian Body Camera
I will wear a body camera for the next 30 days, documenting all the time I spend in the public realm. The camera will be dismounted and powered off while in my home, with my family, in other private residences, and in the place where I work. Every night I will post the video unedited to this blog as a document of my experiences as a civilian, as a woman, a mother, a brown body wearing a body camera. I will include a link to texts that I am reading while being recorded. These texts will provide a social and political context for the public space that is being documented, and will have a relation to self surveillance, protest, new technologies, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and any other subject relating to what it means to be a body on the streets in this present moment.