Jonn Herschend (US)
Installation photo, "The Exact Chain of Events", powerpoint presentation,
video projector and collapsible screen
PROJECT FOR DEADPAN EXCHANGE I
A Brief Introduction to Deadpan, PowerPoint performance with Brian Enevoldsen
The Exact Chain of Events, self running PowerPoint presentation, TRT 4 min, 2006
CO-ORGANIZER FOR DEADPAN EXCHANGE II
BIO
Raised in a Midwestern amusement park, Jonn Herschend is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the confusion of emotional truth through highly structured formats. His video work, photos and paintings have been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including the 2007 Stuttgarter Filmwinter Film festival in Stuttgart, Germany; and the 2006 Flaherty Film Seminar at Vassar College in New York. Within the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lives and works, his paintings and videos have been exhibited at Southern Exposure, The Lab, Intersection for the Arts, and the The Pacific Film Archive. He is a co-organizer for the 2007 Deadpan Exchange II Festival in Berlin, Germany and a co-editor and co-founder of the quarterly subscription based art project "The Thing."
STATEMENT
"As usual, I shall be a bad narrator, and as usual,
you will think my story is exaggerated."
-Goethe, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”
I like my stories badly told. I like what happens when someone gets off the subject and tries to figure out how he got there. I like the phrase, “Where was I going with this?” This is the moment when the story seems to rock between going over the edge or going back to where it was before it went off track. When it goes over the edge, the story is no longer about a plot. It’s about the bare elements of narrative. It’s about letting everything collapse into a grayness in the hopes that there will be a way out. It’s a little like that and a little like trust. But it’s not about relying on any pre-established structure for reading or writing. It requires the reader, viewer, listener to rely on his or her wits, which—politically—is the most important act anyone can be asked to do these days.
