DECEMBER - 12.16.12
Giomara Bazaldua of Zombie Bazaar approached me a few weeks back about making a video. Zombie Bazaar call themselves a "Tribal Fusion Dance Troupe." They are some of the hardest working artists in the San Antonio arts and cultural community. The footage below is a quickly put together teaser of our collaboration. These images are of the first location on the first night of our two night shoot. I love how the tequila bottle catches the light.
DECEMBER - 12.06.12
This little ephemeral piece was created to promote one of the free Windows Series shows at Jump-Start. I think it stands up pretty well on its own. Ordinary Windows was a collaboration between Ordinary Spaces and Jump-Start Performance Co. The free event happened on Friday, December 7, 2012, with two performances at 8 p.m., and 8:30 p.m. This unique site-specific work was a collaboration between performance artists Andrew Coronado, Sandra Dunn, Dino Foxx and Fabiola Torralba. I shot this footage during the Thursday night rehearsals and cut it to a short piece of music by Trans-Am.
NOVEMBER - 11.30.12
Back in September of this year I was invited to become a company member of Jump-Start Perfromance Company. It is a great honor, as I've been a huge fan and advocate of the work they do for quite a few years. I have worked with many of the company members before, collaborated on performances, staged several of my own works in the space, and even performed on the stage. It is, however, with Ebenazio: A Winter's Tale of Old San Anto, that I have first found myself working on a main stage presentation as an official company member. Ebenazio is an historical farce written by Kim Corbin, Robert Rehm, and Chuck Squire. I created two video elements. A dream sequence (this is the video clip below), and also an effect where a retablo with painted figures of six saints comes to life, with video faces of actors interacting with the live character of Padre Paddy.
NOVEMBER - 11.02.12
Mty friend Seme Jatib teaches dance at one of the local private schools. Whenever we have an opprotunity to merge her dance work with my video stuff, we go for it. She asked me to provide a video design for a long, multi-sectional work she created for her students. The piece is entitled "Boundless." The video below is the design in total which was projected onto the rear of the stage while the dancers performed. This work was presented November 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
OCTOBER - 10.31.12
I love the W-I-P. It stands for Works-In-Progress / Wednesdays-In-Performance. It's a collaboration between Jump-Start Performance Company and the San Antonio Dance Umbrella. It's monthly and has been going strong for years. At five bucks, it's one of the best entertainment deals in town. Mostly what is presented is dance and performance art. This means the audiences are usually sparse. (What can I say? People are idiots.) I've been a presenter at the W-I-P on five occasions. Once in a dance / video collaboration. And the other times presenting short staged monologues with live cinema. Usually I let trained actors do the work on stage and in front of the camera. However, for the Halloween show, I decided to do it all myself. Not the best decision. But there were only about fifteen people in the audience, so I didn't do too much damage. Here's the performance on heavily compressed video which I ripped from a DVD. The thumbnail image is a screen grab from the video I was triggering whilst on stage. I was thrilled to work with the amazing Susie Hamilton.
OCTOBER - 10.27.12
Noche de Recuerdos (Night of Remembrance) is an annual festival / event created by Proyectos Locos, a group of three San Antonio artists -- Ramon Vasquez y Sanchez, Deborah Keller-Rihn, and me, Erik Bosse. The center-piece of the evening are the floating, illuminated altars created by the public, which are set adrift for the night in the casting pond across the road from Woodlawn Lake proper. We worked with the cultural non-rpofit group, American Indians in Texas, to stage this event in 2010. This year marked the third year. The three of us organized the evening for the first two years. This year Ramon did most of the work himself. However, Deborah and I were able to participate as artists with our floating cloud. Here is a short video with a couple of still images of the cloud on the water, as well as the video which was projected onto the cloud from the shore.
OCTOBER - 10.22.12
My friends Annette Landry and Gil Lopez are both accomplished photographers (ZAGGA Photography). They have two beautiful daughters. I worked with their youngest, Gracie, in this short video vignette which was supposed to be incorporated into a larger work; but, alas, for a few reasons, it didn't fit in. But I think, even as a quick, rough edit, it's beautiful. Gracie's warm and soulful, and Woodlawn Lake has never looked so expansive and inviting! I love working on small and ephemeral projects like this.
OCTOBER 10.11.12
This one needs a bit of contextualization. My friend Aaron Richmond-Havel recently turned 21. He'd planned this grand night of queer performance art scattered around the Hampshire College campus. The event was advertised as "Penny's Big 21: Rites of Passage & Pleasure," with Penny being his drag alter-ego, Penny Musky-Sausage. One of the entertainments was a fictional marriage ceremony, with Penny getting married. This video is where Penny's mom (played by actress Pamela Dean Kenny) sings tearful and drunken karaoke (and is there any other kind?), trying her best to support the choices her son / daughter has made on the path to "The Man You've Become." (Head over to Aaron's Vimeo page, where you will find a complete documentation of the evening -- two parts, over two hours! -- as well as assorted video goodies.)
OCTOBER - 10.06.12
"Women are Water" is a performance art piece commissioned for Governing Bodies, an art show benefiting Planned Parenthood Trust of South Texas, curated by Carina Gors & Kathy Armstrong at Gallery Nord, San Antonio, Texas, in October of 2012. This video was projected while Laurie Dietrich, Anna De Luna, Mellissa Marlowe, and Marisela Barrera performed a movement-based ritual in an outdoor fountain as the video was projected on a rear wall as well as themselves. Words by Dietrich, with Spanish translation by De Luna. Cinematography and video design by Erik Bosse.
And I'd also like to post this video below. On October 23rd, Laurie, Anna, Mellissa, Mari, and I returned to Gallery Nord to recreate the Women Are Water performance so we could document the piece. It was a blast. We went through the piece twice in the otherwise empty gallery and courtyard. I shot once through the window (which explains the reflection of the red Exit sign). And during the second run-through I had to get in the water with the women. Or, as I wrote on FaceBook that night: "All I can say is sometimes you gotta strip down to your chonies and plunge into a fountain of women to get that perfect shot." I mean, really, it looked like too much fun. This is the sort of project I love being involved in. Several very talented people who enjoy one-another's company making quality work very quickly. And, in this case, with no money.
SEPTEMBER - 09.21.12
A LIFE EPHEMERAL (Eight Months in 300 Instagrams) and ASCENT are two short video / photo collages created for A Personal Journey, a group photography show which opened at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas, on Friday, Sept. 21, 2012. The show was curated by Deborah Keller-Rihn and was part of the city-wide annual FotoSeptiembre celebration of photography. These two pieces were presented on a digital frame, and played, back-to-back, on a loop. Together they have a total run time of just over 3.5 minutes.
SEPTEMBER - 09.14.12
The 2012-2013 season of Jump-Start Performance Company opens on a strong note with Billy Muñoz's excellent play, ¡CARPA! I provided about half a dozen video vignettes. Below is a short promotional teaser I cut together from some of my work for the play.
AUGUST - 08.25.12
I've known Aaron Richmond-Havel for a few years. A film he directed while a student at the NESA Cinema program won best of show for the 2009 Josiah Youth Media Festival (which I was running at the time). For the last two years he's been interning at Jump-Start Performance Company during his summer breaks from college. I've been hoping to collaborate on a project with him, but the scheduling has never worked out. However, with only a week before leaving for the Hampshire College Campus, he decided to put together a quick video invitation for his upcoming 21st birthday party. We shot it Saturday morning. I did a quick edit Sunday. It's an ephemeral bit of fun, cut to Hungry Eyes (as popularized in the film Dirty Dancing). Aaron's performing in his persona of Penelope Musky-Sausage. Enjoy.
AUGUST - 08.15.12
I'm providing the video portions for a new play coming to Jump-Start Performance Comapny. CARPA! is an original work written by Billy Muñoz. It will be staged September 14, 15, 21, 22, 28, 29 of 2012. Below is a slideshow of some photos I took for promotional purposes of cast members Billy Muñoz, Dino Foxx, Sheila Sisler-Currie, and Amanda Silva. The play will also feature ST Shimi and Sandy Dunn.
JULY - 07-28-12
The Hays Street Bridge is one of the downtown restoration projects done right. A beautiful industrial-era structure was repurposed into a lovely public bike and pedestrian bridge, retaining the aesthetic integrity of the original construction. It has been my pleasure to shoot several video projects at this public space. But now the city of San Antonio (clearly not the wisest steward of this historic city's public assets) is in the process of transferring a section of the bridge into the hands of the private sector -- in this case, a proposed micro brewery. This propaganda video is my little offering to try and save the bridge as a wholly public space. I'd like to thank my friends and fellow artists who helped me on this: Amanda Silva, Mari Barrera, and Deborah Keller-Rihn.
I played this video to the San Antonio City Council during the Citizens To Be Heard portion of the August 2nd City Council meeting. There was a long and spirited series of presentations by interested parties representing both sides of the Hays Street Bridge debate. Sadly the council voted in favor of the micro brewery's development proposal.
JUNE - 06.27.12
Jump-Start Performance Company and the San Antonio Dance Umbrella co-sponsor the W-I-P (Works in Progress / Wednesdays in Performance). This is a monthly presentation of dance and performance art works which are still in an early stage of development. The June W-I-P closes out the season (W-I-P takes off for a couple of months in the summer), and this final W-I-P is site-specific. Usually the performers set up outside in various areas within the Blue Star Art Complex. But because my piece had elements of live cinema, I needed a space with power and preferably a dark wall to aim my video projector. Then I realized that Joe Blue's Bar would be perfect. I could situate my actors at tables with drinks, and I could present my video clips on one of the bar's large TVs.
Little Altars Out the Passenger Window is a short theater piece. Actors Hector Machado and Anna De Luna (also featured n the video) performed live as I keyed various video clips off a laptop with VJ software. The audience of about 40 were seated at tables throughout the bar. The work was performed on Wednesday, June 27th, 2012.
(Music in the video clip: Bear in Heaven, "Ultimate Satisfaction (the field remix).")
JUNE - 06.08.12
Jump-Start Performace Company initiated a new theater festival which I hope becomes a yearly tradition. The Summer Sparks New Works Festival. When the call for submissions went out, I sent in a proposal of a new work with ST Shimi. It was accepted, and Night Bloom was staged on June 8th, the opening night of the two day mini festival. It is one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever shot. True, the subject (Shimi) is breath-taking. But the lighting she provided with the LED finger lights added these lush, deep, saturated colors. I could shoot images like this all night long -- poignantly epic in slow motion and situated in over-grown fields of sunflowers or on urban rooftops. What fun! The piece was projected as Shimi danced live on stage. Check it out!
JUNE - 06.08.12
I was thrilled when George Cisneros asked me to work with him on a project. His work crosses most all disciplines, and I find everything he does rewarding. For this project he'd been asked by the San Antonio Office of Cultural Affairs to create an opening performance for the annual Americans for the Arts conference which was, this year, located in San Antonio. I was just a small part of this twelve minute piece which included the poetry of Carmen Tafolla, Native American drumming by Isaac Cardenas, singing by Bett Butler, keyboards by Ricky Hernandez, trombone by Ron Wilkins, drums and dancing by URBAN-15 ensemble members, live performance by actor Eduardo Garza ... and film work by Erik Bosse.
It was an intense couple of weeks putting those twelve minutes together. For me one of the challenges was to create a piece to be projected as a four-channel presentation. And these were powerful, massive projectors. The piece was amazing. And, if I do say so myself, the video was stunning (thanks, in no small part, to the incredible A/V crew who pulled the technological bits together so effortlessly (or so it seemed to me)).
The piece was titled "So Now That You Know." Below are two screen-grabs.
MAY - 05.30.12
I was honored when asked to restage my live cinema performance piece, Michelangelo Antonioni is Dead, for W-I-P Créme, a showcase of some of the more remarkable works presented during the 2011-2012 season of W-I-P (Works in Progress / Wednesdays in Performance -- a montly staging of dance and performance works jointly produced by Jump-Start Performance Company and the San Antonio Dance Umbrella). Once again, I worked with Hector Machado, who deliverd the staged monologue. Performers in the video are Amanda Silva, Marc Daratt, Carlos Pina, Gabe Carmona, and Jack Clarke. The piece still exists only as script and a series of video clips on a laptop to be keyed live to a video projector. Below is my teaser / trailer I cut to promote the original staging of the peice back in September of 2011.
MAY - 05.05.12
Dance Immersion into the Light is a three-channel dance video which was installed at HemisFair Park, and which premiered on Saturday, May 5th, as part of the 2012 Luminaria Arts Night in San Antonio. The piece was produced by Proyectos en Movimiento. Choreography and performance by Seme Jatib. Cinematography and editing by Erik Bosse. Below is the video portion of the piece.
MAY - 05.05.12
Hoop Loop is another in the series of collaborative pieces between ST Shimi and myself. This video installation premiered at the 2012 Luminaria Arts Night in San Antonio, May 5th, in HemisFair Park. Hoop Loop is a two-channel projection onto a small historical home situated in downtown San Antonio, Texas. Choreography and performance by ST Shimi. Cinematography and editing by Erik Bosse. Also, during the night of Lumiaria, Shimi provided three live dance performances as the projections ran. The video signal was split and run to two projectors, each positioned in such a manner as to throw an image on two ajoining exterior walls. The two projectors covered all for outside walls of the building and gave the illustion of Shimi dancing in a continuous circular path. Below is the video portion of this installation.
APRIL - 04.19.12
I was asked by Atta Girl Productions to supply about 15 photographs to accompany a staged apadption of poet Laurie Ann Guerrero's collection of poems, A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying. Lisa Cortez-Walden directed it, and it starred Jesse Borrego, Selena Sue Navarro, and Monessa Esquevil. Live music by Marco Cholo Quintet. It was an amazing staging, with two perfrect performances. It is always an honor to be asked to collaborate with such talanted people.
 
APRIL - 04.07.12
Well, our little narrative film for the Neighborhood Fim Project not only didn't win any prizes, it also didn't screen at the Guadalupe Theater. I had to create my own screening opprotunity. With the help of Angela and Rick from Slab Cinema and the folks at G2E, we put together a nice outdoor screening event for several of the excellent films which, for various reasons, also didn't make the cut.
Here's the Cucuy Club:
APRIL - 04.07.12
I was also involved in another short submitted to the Neighborhood Film Project. My friend Hector Machado scripted, directed, and edited a wonderful and personal documentary on a neighborhood dear to him, that stretch of Nogalitos between S. Flores and Zarzamora. The piece is titled Nogalitos. I'm proud to have been asked to do the camera work. Check out a short teaser below (or see the full version on Hector's Vimeo channel).
MARCH - 03.10.12
Luminaria got rained out. I had mixed feelings, both as an event organizer as well as a participating artist. On the one hand, it felt like we were letting down the entire city; however, I was personally relieved, because the two large-scale projects I was involved in could certainly use some more work. The night wasn't a total loss. The fine folks at Atta Girl Productions in concert with G2E Creative Space put on a great Luminaria-Is-Rained-Out party. One of the high-points was a screening of the finished edit of Bombatasta's music video I shot, Robb directed, and Gustavo edited. The band was there playing and getting everyone moving in the small space. Check out the finished video. It was a blast working on this project, and all the great artists who made this happen are some of the nicest people I've ever met. I'm very proud of my involvement in this video.
FEBRUARY - 02.17.12
February 17th was the submission deadline for the 2012 Neighborhood Film Project. This is a contest sponsored by the San Antonio Office of Cultural Affairs. The idea is to help promote cultural tourism by having local filmmakers create short films (three to eight minutes in length) to bring attention to several art and cultural regions of the city. I chose to do a film on the south side. My piece, a narrative titled The Cucuy Club, features Marisela Barrera, Gabe Carmona (aka, Gabe the Babe), Carlos Pina, Victor Payan, and Noi Mahoney. Below is a short (1.5 minute) teaser. The film will screen with other submissions at the historical Guadalupe Theater on March 31.
JANUARY - 01.22.12
This screening with live performance was staged at the opening night (Jan. 20th) of the 2012 Sans Souci Festival of Dance Cinema held at the AtticRep in Trinity University, San Antonio, TX. The piece, in a slightly modified version, premiered in July of 2011 at the Macondo Foundation's fundraising event, La Luz. Produced by Erik Bosse and ST Shimi. Camera and editing, Erik Bosse. Choreography and dance performance (live and taped), ST Shimi.
JANUARY - 01.07.12
I had a great time shooting this experimental short film with my friend Amanda Silva. I cut it to a piece of music composed by Lisa Arnold (AKA Falling Lisa). Titled "Sunrise," it was created for the 2012 Jump-Start Performance Party, and it screened to a packed house!
JANUARY - 01.07.12
For the 27th anniversary of Jump-Start Performance Company, I was asked to work with company members to create a short video for their annual Performance Party. This year's theme was higher education. "Jump-Start U" is something of a recruiting video for the fictional Jump-Start University. Enjoy.
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