Last month, a bit of synchronicity.
I finally saw Pixar’s animated feature UP, where a crotchety old man attaches enough balloons to his house to carry it to South America.
A few days later, at a film performance at Light Industry by Emma Hart and Benedict Drew, there was a row of similarly colored balloons at the back wall of the space. They were all attached to one piece of clear film, and when the performance started, the artists fed the film into the projector. The dust from the floor-dragged film specked the light of the projection, which also created vibrant overlapping shadows on the wall. One-by-one a balloon would bob languidly down the room and eventually soar up until the color of the it overtook the full screen of projector light before being released and floating to the ceiling.
Each of the performances had an element of experimentation, a "What would happen if…?" feeling, imparted to the audience as they watched. Here it became, "What will happen when the last balloon rises up?"
