Hurdy-Gurdy Man (2019)
Single channel HD video, stereo.
Digitized archive film and photograph, digitized painting, sound, animation.
The boy with the brass instrument is my father, probably about age sixteen (1931), dressed for a high school band concert. The hurdy-gurdy man is a short footage loop appropriated from Walter Ruttmann’s film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City(1927). I’ve brought these two near-contemporary visual elements together in a setting that to me carries reference to Schubert’s Der Leiermann (Hurdy-Gurdy Man) from his song cycle Die Winterreise (Winter Journey). At the end of his journey, the singer-protagonist comes to the edge of town. There he encounters a hurdy-gurdy man: Strange old man, shall I go with you? Will you play your hurdy-gurdy for my songs? Some have suggested that the hurdy-gurdy man might represent death, or the journeyer in self-confrontation, or even Schubert himself. The text border is from D.H. Lawrence:Have you built your ship of death, O have you? O build your ship of death, for you will need it.