- The Squealer -

Fall 1999, Squeaky Wheel Media Resources

"Buffalo has the greatest source of electricity in the United States. If you want to see the falls and you don’t want to spend a fortune there is a variety of ways to do it. It is better from the Canadian side but it costs $14 to park. I let people off and drive around for 20 minutes. " said Meg Knowles on a recent summer night out on her porch on Livingston Street. What was actually taking place was an interview with the Termite TV Collective. It seemed strangely appropriate that this interview should begin with a talk about the falls. Post cardisch thinking often entered the Termites’ heads. From across the street one could see the 1964 school bus, white like an elephant. Everyone suddenly wanted to go to the movies.

24 hours later:

Meg: I guess we want to talk about the kitsch of the old and your bus idea. Why a bus, why now? Why not a van -- why not a mini van?

Dorothea: Well, we would never get a mini-van. But why a bus is a very interesting question. And why across the country? Well, Carl, I think had said or written something very interesting...

Carl: I think one of the reasons we decided to go on this trip was in reaction to all this stuff about the information highway and "traveling on the internet." In their commercials all these internet companies say crap like "where do you want to go today" or "travel to Egypt at the click of a mouse" and of course looking at some images mediated by some website supported by some corporation is not like traveling at all.

D: For me it’s a question about the kinds of information you get about America. If you watch most mainstream TV, you totally get a twisted picture. You’d think the United States would consist of smiling white heterosexual people who have no accents…

M: It's interesting that because of all these stops you make related to the bus: gas stations, repair shops, you meet people.

Meg: It makes me wonder what you see your relationship to technology as being, because while you have this throwback bus concept and you're getting out and meeting people, you have this super-duper non-linear editing system and the mini-dv camera...

A: Yes, I think that's one of the most exciting things. Digital video technology allows us to inexpensively produce broadcast quality work. We’re carrying our DV editing set up with us in the bus, so that we can edit shows along the way. The fact that we’re using this new equipment to record traditional oral histories, people’s life stories, is exciting to me. It’s about using the technology to create more effective videos, not in terms of slickness and special effects, but in terms of intimacy and immediacy. It’s about exploring this territory that lies between the old and the new. It's an important time to think about that because of the millenium.

Meg: Is the millenium a really critical point to think about our relationship to technology?

A: I think it is. The millenium and the Y2K crisis, the emphasis on numbers, focuses everyone's thinking on technology right now. It will just get stronger as we get closer to the millenium. It definitely has a relationship with technology.

Meg: We just checked our technology and it's working. This recorder looks like a transistor radio! So how does this all relate to the theme of the termite?

Mike: What's interesting when you think about analog vs. digital is that analog has that…

Meg: Oh it's not working!

Mike: (Starting again) I guess it's because we are travelling across the country in a bus and it will be like tracing a termite trail . In that sense, physically travelling can be seen as an analog experience. The analog signal has potentially infinite resolution and depth and finally reaches chaos. There's always a level of uncertainty. With digital, and this is the appeal of it, you know exactly what it is you are getting. It's very clear.

C: It's on and off.

Mike: Yes, It's on or it's off, but you lose the information stored in the noise of analog. But then, our bus trip, that's sort of ambiguity is interesting and it's the termite way to not exactly know what is happening and actually just experiencing it and reflecting on that. Just like travelling in this bus. The bus has specific problems, like breakdowns. Then you meet someone...so in that sense, you have a more direct experience than just communicating with people over the internet or computers, where everything is very controlled. The intrusions of the outside world, whether it's hot or it's cold, raining, just don't come into play online. That's the termite aspect of burrowing across the country.

Meg: "Termite tapeworm fungus moss art moves always forward eating its own boundaries and likely as not leaves nothing in its path but the sounds of eager and industrious unkempt activity." Manny Farber

Mike: There's some kid who sent an e-mail to our website asking how the flagella get into the bodies of the termite. These are organisms that break down the wood. Well, an entomologist also contacted us, so we sent him the question and he said that these organisms are inside the termites and whenever the termites molt, that part of their guts molt off. Since they don't have the organisms anymore and they can only get them again by eating dead or excreted stuff from other termites. That's how they replenish those organisms.

Anula: But what does that mean?

Mike: Maybe it is part of our collective's process to dig in other people's excretia.

Meg: and then you slough it off only to eat it again?

That's really deep.

Dorothea: But what does that mean in terms of video?

Meg: Well don't you think that there is this relationship that you have to the media -- that you can also claim to have to technology, that you're not taking for granted what is fed to you and instead you are making something that's a little different from the normal offering. you see the world around you in a slightly different way than what you digest on tv.

Dorothea: Yes.

Meg: Yeah, that.

Dorothea: Like the one woman (name?)in the audience at Squeaky Wheel said, we have our own mapping system.

Carl: Yes mapping system: our own way of looking at things.

D: A lot of other people have collaborated with us, like the people in Buffalo. We had our production meeting today at Cybeles, which was really interesting. We met a number of people who are really interesting and have a lot to offer, and we've come up with a production plan. Hopefully this will happen in other cities too. I’d also like to say that there are certain themes that we do feel strongly about. It's not all this sort of chaotic, let's see what happens kind of thing even though I think that it can come across like that. We do pursue certain topics and work consistently on them, such as the mapping of the urban landscape - we have done a lot of segments that have something to do with that. Or issues related to being a foreigner, which is another theme that keeps coming up in our programs. And then maybe, I think, trying to see the humor or absurdity in situations that otherwise could seem very desperate. The humor of the every day or not so every day struggles in life is another one of our themes, I think.

Meg: Well, there's something really refreshing about a program that shows you these small moments in people's urban experience which is part of their reality everyday, but which is never addressed. you come home and look at tv and it's full of these sitcoms that have these homogenous, expectable experiences, but they don't have too much to do with the kind of stuff you are dealing with everyday, like paying your taxes, which is not touched on outside of the local news. This type of program. is important.

Dorothea: Yes, but I am more interested in the question that Julie Zando asked at our screening in Buffalo, about the romantic or Utopian notion of going on a bus.

Carl: What was she saying -- that collectives went out on buses, starting with this romantic notion, that then dissipates, and it's over.

Dor: Yes, on the one hand, certain cross-country trips have had a kind of Utopian context or goal. For example at the time of the revolution in the Soviet Union, there were these Agit prop trains where filmmakers showed educational films to the working masses. This was very Utopian and romantic, and it failed miserably, but I don't think we have this Utopian motivation.

Meg: You don't share that Utopian hope?

Dorothea: I don't know, maybe a little bit.

Carl: No I don't think so at all.

Anula No

Dorothea: Well maybe it is Utopian that everyone can collaborate and everyone's ideas are important or something, there's a little bit of that.

Carl: But is it important other than that?

Dorothea: I think we are totally opposed to preaching but that's different. There is something Utopian about sitting around with people, like today, people we have never met before, and thinking that you can do something really great with that.

Anula: But I guess, it’s not really Utopian because the termite philosophy is not to worry about trying to create a masterpiece. The end result doesn't have to be perfect. What’s important to us is to try things out and see if they work. It they don't then that's fine too. It's more about, just the process.

Carl: Well, I don't know, if the show is bad, I'll be disappointed.

Meg: Do you have bad shows?

Carl: I've been disappointed with some shows. But I agree, for me that one of the things about this trip is that it really offers this great opportunity to really practice or develop this idea of using the camera as a sketchpad, of working quickly — how do you produce tapes every other or every few weeks and still have them be interesting. What is the equivalent of a quick pencil drawing in video? But on the other hand I definitely don't want to make something I think I could just shrug off — emphasis on the process doesn’t mean I don’t need to be responsible for the product.

Mike: It's a matter of priorities. We obviously want to be making the best work we can, very creative, but at a certain point, a certain amount of space has to be created to be fully creative. If you're worried about it being really good, then truly innovative things can't happen in that atmosphere. If the most important thing is how the audience is going to like it, then a large chunk of time is devoted to worrying about that. Obviously, we're not trying to make anything bad.

Anula: Our respondent at the UFVA conference made it seem like we were brat kids running around not caring about how things turn out and that's certainly not true. She took our statement about spontaneity and the space to have creative freedom and turn work out quickly, and turned it around to say that "you guys don't care about it anyway, right?"

Dorothea: She said you have no criteria, so how can I have criteria myself?

Mike: We do care, but we don't care about certain things that are classed as being "professional" or "high quality", but we do care about other things — is it experimental, unique, does it convey personal experiences? To be honest, we do have criteria and people have sent us stuff that was maybe quite slick looking, and we don't want to use it.

Anula: Also for me, it's not just about whether we get good videos made or just show them somewhere on this trip. It's about getting new audiences and contributors. Because I think people do get very inspired by the shows, they are inspired to write a story or do something they have not had positive enforcement for, like stories about themselves. And for me, what would be really exciting about this trip, would be to have more people, whether in video or not, get inspired to create stuff.

Carl: Maybe that is the Utopian ideal for this trip — that Termite, as a conduit, will create connections between media makers or communities that weren’t there before.

Dorothea: So what does all of this have to do with the kitsch of the old?

Meg: Let's get back to the kitsch of the old.

Dorothea: But is the bus kitsch?

Anula: There is one interesting point. With this Y2K thing happening, in some countries, like India, which are considered way behind in terms of technology, everything isn’t computerized yet. All the things to do with day to day living, don't rely on these computers, so if a computer goes down, it's not a big tragedy.

Mike: And also they are used to inconvenience and interruption.

Anula: Yes and I think that this 1964 bus which has a generator, manual transmission and manual steering is ‘Y2K compliant’. It has the same aspects of the old having outlived the new.

Mike: With the millennium, the Y2K, these older things could be useful in that situation. They aren't as reliant on state of the art innovation.

Carl: I guess that's what people were saying about the bus. It may break down (and has and will, I’m afraid) but since it’s this ancient vehicle, and so it's much easier to work with and repair. There are so few parts — if something breaks down it’s usually not some mysterious thing.

Mike: yes, an alternator, a fan belt, etc. Also what is interesting about Y2K, it shows us how entrenched technology has become in our culture. Numerology has moved from superstition to science. This is not a Friday the 13^th curiosity. The changing of dates, of numbers in a program, now effects us all.

Meg; I feel removed from it. Yet when my water stops flowing on January 1st, I will notice.

Mike: Well this is an early warning sign of how much computers have taken over functions in society.

Meg: It's like those ads on tv -- Have you ever attended a board meeting from the beach on your vacation ? -- You will. The idea that technology will save time and allow humans to relax while computers do things for you. It's no longer about that. Now, you can look forward to having to work all the time, and never having a break at all. Your work will now come with you to your vacation home, or into your car. All the places you avoid work are now invaded. It will take an additional number of hours because you are so reachable.

Carl: Yes, I read an article that said no one has ever invented a labor saving device. Inventions may make things quicker to produce, but you just do more work in the same amount of time.

Meg: So now it all seems very fatalistic. We started talking about a Utiopian vision, and now we are bogged down in this discussion. It's like life -- why live if you will only end up dead?

Anula: Yes, I think this is one of the fears for collectives.

Meg: Our collectives in Buffalo died off.

Dorothea: yes, everyone starts with this vision. Romantic, yes, kitsch no, because kitsch is only a product and romanticism is always a process.

Meg: That's beautiful and a good ending.