hatbox Nash Consing hatbox Nash Consing

february hatbox

 

hatbox.
march 1, 2024.
brooklyn, new york.



In the mornings I wake up to the cooing of a mourning dove. It’s early– but spring is on its way. It’s a period of growth.

Sage’s friend.

Every Monday in February, I journaled what I accomplished the week prior. I do this because if I didn’t, then my week looks like a hodgepodge of worrying. Once I finish an activity, my mind scrambles to the next item that comes to mind, making my weeks feel like a sprint,stop,sprint,stop,sprint. I journal on Mondays because it’s a self-deserved pause. An inhale before the chase continues on. A meditation of placement.

Here’s everything I made, experienced and remembered in the month of February.


[RUNNING]

  • 180.11 miles of running in february.

    It’s the most I’ve run in a month in my life. I ran in three snowstorms and circumnavigated Roosevelt Island.

[CREATIVE]

  • Created an album release party photoshoot and video with Chonk Parties for CMD+Jazmine’s debut album, “As A…”

  • I’m grateful for this one. Jazmine is an incredible audiophile, storyteller, company-founder, all-around-good person. Doing this project set some seeds in me as I scramble to understand my creative life and how it can exist in the whiplashing mosaic of the rent-paying world. One thing that’s stuck with me from her company website, Molten Heart, is this quote:

    ”Molten Heart will move at a tortoise’s pace (by design). There’s no startup capital, no funders, just me at my desk, sitting by the window gazing at helicopters that continually funnel back and forth every thirty-five minutes.”
    – Jazmine (JT) Green.

    To be in constant creative collaboration within my NYC Experimental Event Series collective, Chonk Parties, and in parallel with artists such as CMD+Jazmine has been essential in this time of forming definition. In a period of my life where nothing is guranteed, approaching art-making has made me feel like anything in this world is possible.

image taken with a Nintendo 3DS

  • Parallel to the work with CMD+Jazmine and Chonk Parties, I began to find through lines with my personal film that I have been making since 2019, Missing the Sheep, an archive film that follows a 23-year-old filmmaker (me) who returns to the hotel where he stayed three years prior to find meaning in a world that always seems to shift out of reach. Still in the depths of building this world, so more later on this. Just know good things are happening with this project behind my closed eyelids.

screenshot from Missing the Sheep

  • Visited the Copy Machine Manifestos zine exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

    I’ve been wanting a place to put my photography. Growing up a natural online-sharer while also making efforts to be less offline has proven a difficult dilemma: where can I place things I’ve made to rest in a place that feels more permanent?

    This website is an answer.

    Another answer is in zines; a medium that feels like an intimidating return to something I never originated from. I made one zine in college as a final thesis project utilizing photos, scans of my hand-written poetry, and quotes from my friends. I’m thinking this can be a return to that form– it’s rare that I hold the images that I make, that I brush over the lines of ink that I place on page. Creating an artifact like this has been on my mind for a while. More to come, hopefully.

from Copy Machine Manifestos exhibit.



[FROM KUDZU]

  • Applied to over 11 grants, funds, fellowships and residencies.

    I haven’t applied to grad school yet. I’m considering on it with the sheer density of application I’ve used this month.

    We’re trying to fund our film to finish the last leg of production, where we hope to go to Asia in our home countries of the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam for three months to investigate kudzu in its native lands, how people interact with the vine there in contrast to how it is positioned in the U.S., while also confronting the countries where our families migrated from.

in Japan, Kudzu still grows in the winter.



[WATCHES]

  • Sky Hopinka’s Sunflower Siege Engine [2022].

    There’s much to be said about Sky Hopinka’s films and how it destructs and reconstructs the way I think about making movies. I haven’t fully processed how I love this film. Maybe that’s by design.

by Sky Hopinka’s “Sunflower Siege Engine.”


[LISTENS]

  • CMD+Jazmine’s *“As A…”* [2024]

    I might be biased as I spent this entire month editing photos, scanning film, processing creative juices to create background videos for the “As A…” Album Release party, but also, this album is really fucking good. Honored to spend a month behind the curtain CMD+Jazmine’s brain, and I’m excited to see this art out in the world.

  • Toro Y Moi’s “Sandhills” [2023]

    Something about a filipino dude from South Carolina. It hits.

  • Mk.gee’s “Two Star & The Dream Police” [2024]

    I’ve been playing this album on repeat after seeing the “Are You Looking Up” music video from my YouTube Recommended playlist. Every spring there’s an artist that delivers me from the dead of winter to the thaw of early spring. This year, it’s Mk.gee.

“Are You Looking Up” music video by Mk.gee



That’s all in my hatbox for now. More to come.





We’re always in a perpetual state of return.

 
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