It’s easy to notice that Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin are funny.  Watch the first 45 seconds of this interview for proof.  But if you pay attention, you’ll discover they are also serious and profound thinkers.

Adam and Andrew are artists who focus on collaboration, competition and masculinity.  The first piece they did together, Dance, was a video of Andrew physically dominating and humiliating Adam during a wrestling match.  Dance made me afraid to be a part of their team building project.  I didn’t want to end up humiliated.

Adam and Andrew – or Type A – were commissioned by the IMA to create something for 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park.  They decided to work within the basic methods of Experiential Education and create a team of IMA staff (at least one member from each department of the museum) to team build.  The sessions included games, discussion, and a high ropes course.

My mind was off and running.  I imagined a reality television competition.  Coworkers dressed for the office, running through a challenge course.  I thought they would try to make us compete against each other or prove that masculinity exists in the office, too.

During the first meeting in spring of 2008, I got a bitter taste of experiential learning.  Each member of the team received a card with an image on it.  Without speaking or looking at anyone else’s image, we had to place the cards in order so they told a story.  It was like playing charades, but the person guessing the answers can’t speak either.  I was frustrated and caught off guard.  Type A was taking this team building seriously.

Even though I realized this, I didn’t “get” the project until our team vetoed the design for Type A’s sculptural installation.  Team members argued the design had nothing to do with our experiences.  I remember thinking, “They are the artists.  Why are we arguing with them about their work?”  But Type A wanted our input.  They wanted true collaboration.

Over the next few months, we played games, solved problems and talked about work and art.  The games loosened everyone up and led to honest discussions.  We started with small ideas.  “What should the goal of this game be?”  And let them grow.  “What are your work goals?  Your life goals?”

One of my work goals was to make a documentary.  In 2007, my coworker Dan Dark was busy making Maya Lin:  Above and Below.  I wanted to direct the next one.  We thought Type A would be the perfect subject.  Their art and career deserved to be closely examined.  We were already recording tons of team building footage, and we knew Adam and Andrew would be natural on camera and give us tons of access.  We asked Type A if they were interested, and they agreed to let us make the film.

In the end, my initial fears were wrong.  I didn’t end up humiliated (although you can jump to 22:30 on the film to see me looking foolish).  Type A approached the project in a completely sincere way.  They truly collaborated with every department in the museum and allowed team discussion to have a real impact on their final sculpture.  I approached this project a skeptic (and a little paranoid), but they won me, and the rest of the team, over.  I’m proud of the documentary they helped make.  Thanks to everyone involved!

Please enjoy the documentary below:

The subject of this film, Mark Hogancamp, almost had his head taken off by a pack of bullies in a bar.  But Hogancamp lived to create a painstaking, war-torn, one-sixth scale universe called Mar-wen-col (a word combining his own name, and the names Wendy and Colleen, two significant women in his life).  Marwencol is overrun with punk-i-fied Barbies and Nazi G.I. Joes, enacting a cycle of torture and love.  Hogancamp’s bird’s eye photos of Marwencol are worthy of a New York gallery show.

Watching the film is like unstacking a set of Russian dolls, revealing ever weirder scenarios combined with spectacular pathos. The Boston Globe critic Ty Burr calls Marwencol “a strange and very beautiful documentary about the gray area between obsession and art — about the compulsive need to create something when the world leaves you with nothing.”  (Read his full review.)

Any art museum is a haven for objects of embodied power: a Buddha statue, a Bidjogo mask, a painting of the Virgin Mary.  The dolls he created to live in Marwencol are just as effecting for Hogancamp – and for viewers of the film.

My IMA colleague Lindsay Hand went to the South by Southwest film festival last March, and this was the standout film that we had to bring to the IMA.  The screening’s co-presented by our friends at the Indianapolis International Film Festival.  After the film, we’re going to skype in filmmaker Jeff Malmberg for a virtual post-film chat in The Toby.

Marwencol is also showing this week in Toronto, Minneapolis, and San Francisco.  We’ve brought it to Indianapolis for your viewing pleasure—if it pleases you to have your mind blown.

The details: Double-Shot Music Documentary Day at the IMA
Saturday, March 13
1-5 pm
The Toby

Wug Laku, local artist and member of ArtsWORK Indiana fills us in on the events taking place this weekend as part of Disabilities Awareness Month at the IMA:

Director Chris Paine, via NUVO.net

@mitchmaxsom: Happy or sad, well-told stories that better help us understand another perspective or circumstance are beautiful and necessary

@joanofdarkknits: I watch them, but I hate them [at the same time]. I still have images burned into my brain from one on animal cruelty and one on child cruelty.

@raypawulich: They can be powerful, but if I’m going to invest my time in sitting still and watching something, I choose to be entertained.

Sure, they can really open your eyes. But sometimes, they just tell you to keep on keepin’ on. For example, I’ve been on an save-the-planet documentary kick lately, but I’ve always been pretty passionate about the environment. I don’t eat meat, I recycle, ride my bike a lot, I’ve worked for an environmentally-conscious local newspaper, and now an environmentally-conscious museum. All good things, but I have to admit, just like anyone I get lazy (I forgot my reusable grocery bag at home. Again. Oh well.) and stray from the path. Sometimes I just needed a jolt of reality to reaffirm my tree-hugging beliefs. That’s not a bad thing, right? Do what you gotta do to stay motivated.

Here are the last few documentaries I’ve seen that have done just that.

Watching those movies reminded me why I chose my way of life in the first place. They didn’t change my opinions, just made me aware again. Given my interest in all things ‘green,’ it’s probably no surprise to you that I really dig the Planet Indy speaker series here at the IMA. Tonight, you can see Who Killed the Electric Car? by director Chris Paine… here’s the trailer:

The aforementioned local paper, a.k.a. NUVO, recently interviewed Paine:

NUVO: Why did you think electric cars would make a good documentary?

Chris Paine: The mainstream media didn’t cover the story of why these 5,000 cars were all re-possessed and destroyed. We were shocked. And we thought, well, why is that? Then later, in the midst of a production at a television station in Michigan, someone there said, “You know, one of the reasons the story wasn’t covered was that so many of the TV stations got burned by covering the Firestone rollover stories earlier in the ‘90s.” Everyone had their advertising budgets pulled by the car companies. Car advertising is so critical to so many media outlets it usually pays to not do highly critical stories of the auto industry. So it created this vacuum for us.

Here’s a little info on the event: In the four years since filmmaker Chris Paine released the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, electric vehicles have been revived. In that film, Paine documented the corporate leaders, government officials and consumers who embraced SUVs over electric cars, exploring the larger story of our car culture in the process.

See Who Killed the Electric Car? at 5:30 pm, then at 7:30 pm hear Paine discuss the latest progress on electric vehicles, the relationship between good design and sustainability, and new ways of thinking about mobility. After the program, see an electric car up close and get information about companies making electric vehicles in Indiana. How did we get that electric car in the building? Glad you asked…

So will you leave the Toby feeling depressed and hopeless? Maybe. Maybe you’ll feel outraged. Or maybe, like me,  it will just get you back on track. When NUVO asked Paine what people interested in seeing more electric cars should do, he gave a really simple, but brilliant answer:

They can keep motivated, keep asking questions and keep taking risks.

Have you seen a film or documentary that has changed your opinion on social issues? Has a film ever inspired you to make changes?

My first idea was to do simply what I described above. I searched around a bit for a Flickr app, but I haven’t found one written by the Flickr team and I don’t really want to give my information to yet another third party. It seems, however, that Flickr has a really nice mobile web interface. Paired with the ability to email photos to Flickr from the phone, I think I have all I need to take that route. However, in the meantime I found that uploading photos with the Facebook app is really easy. This, along with the fact that the iPhone camera can’t compete for image quality with my digital camera, has led me to decide that the iPhone will fit the bill for the sort of in-group photojournalism that my close friends would appreciate, as I capture photos of my pets (and theirs) and other humorous things while I’m out and about. Some might argue that this is a waste of digital resources, but hey… what’s life without a little whimsy?

My discovery of the Google Earth app’s integration with Wikipedia and Panoramio, however, rekindled my interest in contributing high quality geotagged content. Contributing content to these resources is something that could have been done before, but the iPhone (and other devices that utilize both GPS and wireless networks) provides a new level of exposure. Rather than needing to research a travel destination beforehand, it is now possible to whip out a device like this and find interesting features nearby, or learn more about your current surroundings.

I decided that it would be quickest to try out Panoramio. After signing up for an account, I uploaded a couple of my photographs (one of them taken here at the 100 Acres) and found the process to be very easy. I could really see myself getting addicted to uploading new images and waiting in great anticipation to see if they are deemed Google Earth worthy, at which point they should show up on my phone. There are also thematic contests that are very easy to enter, so I couldn’t resist adding my photos to those as well. We’ll see if people think they’re any good.

I might also try out Wikipedia. After signing up and reading the newbie documentation, I’m a little concerned about finding what they would call “notable” subjects (among other qualifications, things of more than just local interest). According to the guidelines, I can’t write about the IMA, so I’ll have to find other local gems… seems like a good challenge.

I believe that these new devices could open up an era of increased engagement with our surroundings. It will be interesting to see how these tools handle the increasing amount of geotagged information as more people contribute content. Hopefully the result will be high quality resources that educate and inspire the people who use them.