Distractions

'A Handy Tip for the Easily Distracted', a vignette created by Miranda July that didn't make it in the final cut of The Future (which premiered at Sundance 2011). Now go and take your hostages for tomorrow: for distractions are on the attack more on Mondays than on any other days in the week.
For those of you who are not familiar with Miranda July: Gem has featured her a few times before. Our radar has also caught her in a recent UK performance. We would have loved to outbid the audience.

Taletelling

Miranda July performing Things We Don't Understand And Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About . Performance took place in The Factory (2006), in New York City.

Learningtoloveyoumore (LTLYM)

New media tools such as YouTube, Vimeo and Blogger opened the stage to regular joes and sues. This created unparallelled possibilities of interaction between artists and their audiences. As interactive internet art projects emerged, it became increasingly difficult to tell artists and their audience apart. This is evidently the case with the LTLYM project, where artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher commissioned the general public to, for example, make and locally post 100 fliers of their typical day (#10), or draw Raymond Carver’s Cathedral (#46). The outcome was then presented en masse back to the audience. How thin the line between the artists and their audience became, is shown best by assignment #44: “make a LTLYM assignment”. It received the highest response and the resulting assignments topped the original ones. Read your parents' favourite book. Take a photo of someone's clothesline. Make a message in fresh snow.
My assignment for the lion-hearted: catch up with a stranger of random gender in the street and reenact Miranda July’s lines and silences, as in the video posted above (from Miranda July's film Me and You and Everyone We Know).

Beginning with a video again

Top Ranking by Blonde Redhead from their album 23 (2007), featuring Miranda July

The Hallway

The Hallway from The Hallway on Vimeo.