Bonus Track
single channel video, col, sound, 1'07", 1999
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..In 1999 I was finally able to rent a studio: a 40 foot long shipping
container placed in an empty lot in South 4th street in Williamsburg.
Soon enough I met Chaim, also known as Curly Oxide,
a hasid youngster from the neighboring Satmar community,
at the time very curious about the world outside hasid confines. He
had started coming by to hang out at my neighbor Vic Thrill's studio
and they had started making music together. Chaim would come to visit
me in my container and we would have endless conversations.
He would only accept kosher food and drinks and when
praying time came he proceeded to do his rituals as if I wasn't there,
or at times, he would explain me every step of it. That container
placed in that strategic location had become an instrument of dialog,
a chamaleonic space: part of the street with doors open, a capsule
shut off from reality with its doors closed. I shot Bonus Track inside
this container, when my stereo started playing the Beastie Boys and
Chaim instinctively started dancing to this music he had never heard
before.
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Exhibitions
Pais de Poetas
Rotunda Gallery
Brooklyn, New York, 2007
One Minute Film Festival
Jason Simon and Moyra Davey's barn
Beaver Brook, New York, 2006
What means free
Freespace at Chelsea Hotel, Daniel Reich Gallery, New York, 2005
*program
*performance with Nutria
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Epilogue
Time passed. I ended up leaving the container.
One day I bumped into Chaim outside Adorama camera shop in 18th
street in Manhattan. His family had send him to Israel to cut all the
rockstar nonsense and had selected a wife for him. A couple of years ago I
went to B&H for some supplies and he was working there. He said he was
happy, he had a wife and kids and was doing traditional Jewish music.
Chaim and Billy interviewed by David Segal in
This American Life, Chicago Public Radio
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