December 2010
Because it’s the time for counting things down and looking back over the year, let’s re-enjoy some of 2010′s most watched stories from our YouTube channel.
#5 Meg’s short and sweet “Epic Fail.” (Watch her Best Presentation-winning Grand Slam story here.)
#4 Liz Spikol “spills her guts” at our May Salon, Spilling Your Guts
#3 The story that took current “Best Storyteller in Philly” Amanda to the Fall Grand Slam. (Watch her Grand Slam story here.)
#2 Cecily can make a funeral hilarious.
#1 Not a big surprise here… Olga tells us about her not-so-little friend, Carlitos at the Summer Grand Slam.
Straight from the First Person Museum Online Gallery this week’s featured story comes to us from Abdel from Philly! I first met Abdel this fall at the First Person Museum table at Outfest organized by Philly Pride Presents, Inc. Abdel traded his story “Prayer Connection” about his medal of the Divino Nino (Divine Child Jesus) for one of our First Person Museum tote bags!
But Abdel’s isn’t just featured in the First Person Museum, he’s also been featured at the Philadelphia Museum of Art! This past Saturday, Abdel shared his story about his medal with us again. This time, he told his story at our Caribbean StoryCircle, Worldly Possessions as part of the First Person Museum and Michelangelo Pistoletto: Cittadellarte exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Twelve storytellers from countries across the Caribbean Ocean gathered around Pistoletto’s mirrored table formed in the shape of the Caribbean coastline to tell the stories behind objects that represent where they’ve come from and who they are today. For more information about the Michelangelo Pistoletto: Cittadellarte visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art official website.
Abdel also performed during the First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art this year in the World Premiere Play, Prison 101, a monologue-driven theater piece created by the men of Graterford Prison. Through this work the playwrights reveal the stories of how they landed in prison and what they have done to reclaim their lives since becoming incarcerated. Read what the Montgomery News had to say about Prison 101.
Prayer Connection
Abdel, Philadelphia, PA
Theme: Empowered
Object Type: Stuff I Wear
The night before I moved in to the U.S. from Venezuela, my dear friend Maria came to my house to give me a medal of the Divino Nino (Divine Child Jesus) to protect me. After more than twelve years, I still have it. My medal reminds me of the value of my friend’s love and the power of prayer.
Read Abdel’s official entry.
Now you too can be featured in a Museum! Upload your story to our First Person Museum Online Gallery today. Select from Themes such as “Empowered” and choose from Object Types like “Stuff I Wear.” Read more stories at firstpersonmuseum.org.
Next week’s featured story could be yours!
-Becca Jennings
Still looking for that perfect holiday gift for that special someone this year? Let them know how you really feel. Your gift of gripes and grumbles will be music to their ears this holiday season with the brand new Complaints Choir Documentary!
This hilarious DVD and three CD set includes songs featuring 20 DIY choirs formed internationally, including First Person Arts’ own Philadelphia Complaint Choir. The Complaints Choir was create by husband-and-wife artist team Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in 2004. Today, it is a global sensation based on everyday people singing their complaints. According to Time Out Chicago, “The Complaints Choir has local citizens bitching and moaning with gusto.” The Complaints Choir Documentary is a co-production by Fine Mellow (Denmark), Smog Veil Records (U.S.) and Kinotar (Finland).
In 2008 First Person Arts created the Philadelphia Complaint Choir, which brought together people from all over Philadelphia to collect their complaints and set them to music. The choir then performed Philadelphia’s complaints at nontraditional venues around the city including Rittenhouse Square, outside of Liberty Place and in Suburban Station. Don’t miss the audio track of “Why, Why, Why” performed by the Philadelphia Complaints Choir! Check out the video of the Philly Complaints Choir performance at the First Person Festival below!
Learn more about Complaints Choirs Worldwide at their official website.
Like the Complaints Choir Documentary on Facebook!
-Becca Jennings
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Things have been quiet on the First Person blog as we wind down from the AMAZING 2010 Festival (THANK YOU again to all attendees, artists, volunteers, friends, fans and folks who spread the word and helped make it happen) and think about what we want the blog to look like in the coming months.
One thing I definitely want to see are more videos. Videos of our savvy and amazing storytellers, Salon artists, and audience members. So let’s get the resolution started off right with video of last night’s Slam winner, Caitlyn. Her story of a French defecation won over the judges and the audience. She walked away the overall winner and audience favorite. But it was a close Slam. Janelle came in second place by just half a point for her story of a serious car crash that recalled a missed moment between herself and her dying mother. The audience was so enthralled by Janelle’s story, that you could hear a pin drop in World Cafe Live last night. Overall, it was a great group of stories, and our host Michael McCarry kept things going at a funny (and often flirty, ahem) pace. Though I bet his mother would make an even better host. 
Visit our YouTube channel where we’ll be posting more videos from last night’s Slam over the next few days. And if you want to catch our next Slam, it’s December 28th at L’Etage. The theme is “Holiday Spirit” and in the spirit of the season, tickets are just $5!
What do you want to see us blog about? Interviews with artists? Goings-on around Philly? Tell me in the comments!
- Karina
Hit the campaign trail with Curt from Minneapolis in this week’s featured story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery! Protest carpet square naps and fingerfuls of paste as you travel with Curt through this hilarious story about a political pin that points to Republican repentance. Learn more about the scarlet letter that adorns his lapel and reminds him of an election gone RED!
Sandbox Activist
Curt, Minneapolis, MN
Theme: Growing Up
Object Type: Stuff I Wear
My first taste of political activism was during the 1984 presidential election, and a taste was all I needed to become addicted. North Dakota’s mere three electoral votes never brought the state much political influence, but I determined not to let that stop me.
I was a staunch Reaganite, and probably broke all sorts of electioneering laws by campaigning on public school grounds. In polling my classmates on which candidate they supported, you may not be shocked to hear that none of them expressed much of an opinion. You should, however, be disappointed, as I was, that not one of them could name a single candidate. This, dear reader, is the future of America! Their undisguised apathy disgusted me.
Worse yet, none even knew that there was an election coming up.
Or… what a president was.
I was in kindergarten.
My parents, both generally progressive-leaning Democrats, swear they don’t know where I got it from. Everyone goes through a rebellious streak, mine apparently just came a decade early. I blame television. I watched a lot of TV as a kid. A LOT. I suspect I might have become enamored of Reagan because he was on TV quite a bit, and also because he somewhat resembled one of my other television heroes at the time, Orville Redenbacher.
In any case, while the other kids in my class were napping on carpet squares and sneaking an occasional fingerful of paste, ruining their appetites for snacktime, I was coloring Yeti-sized Reagan campaign buttons on the cardboard circles you used to get on the bottoms of frozen pizzas.
As I grew older, my interest in politics never ceased, but I did come to notice that as my own awareness of the world and my place in it continued to develop, I realized that the priorities and principles of the objects of my political devotion might not exactly match up with my own. Though not until after the following presidential election, where I turned an Earth Science assignment, a nature-themed shoebox diorama, into an electioneering stunt featuring a green construction paper BUSH and model decoy QUAIL. Insidious, I know.
Today, I’m a full-fledged Minnesotan, and celebrate the long heritage of progressive politics and politicians from my foster home state. I still feel terrible, in a very overblown, Catholic sort of way, that I encouraged — nay, ENDORSED — Reagan’s defeat of a man I now idolize, Mr. Walter Mondale. Truly a man of the people, I have friends who have run into Mr. Mondale on the street, or at the drugstore picking up a prescription. No Secret Service detail, no black stretch limousine, just out and about like anybody else. And now that I live in Minneapolis, Mondale’s home town, I live in constant, paralyzing fear that I will actually run into the man himself on some mundane errand, at the grocery store, or the library. And that our eyes meet across the produce bin, and he sees the guilt and shame floating just below the irises, and unconsciously understand the entire story of our shared past. And punch me out in disgust. Maybe even spit in my face while I’m down, for good measure. I hear he’s got a mean left.
Nevermind the 49 states that went red that election. Nevermind the fact that I was 12 years too young to vote. I practically single-handedly delivered North Dakota to the Reagan column, and thus guaranteed Mondale’s victory. Clearly, North Dakota was the key all along. If only I had known.
To assuage my guilt, and to fend off Mr. Mondale’s harsh, harsh spittle, I turned to a little knick-knack of my parents. An almost-Yeti-sized “I HEART MONDALE” button, which I wear to this day. The button, to the unsuspecting eye, is just another nostalgic political artifact, perhaps worn in wonky hipster irony. Look into MY eyes, however, and you’ll see its true significance: a giant scarlet ‘R’ on my lapel. Reagan. Republican. REPENT.
Check out Curt’s official entry.
Feeling inspired? Now YOU can be featured in the First Person Museum! Upload your story to our Online Gallery today to www.firstpersonmuseum.org along with an image of yourself, your object, and even video! Choose from story themes like “Growing Up” and object types like “Stuff I wear.” Next week’s featured story could be yours!
-Becca Jennings
Every week we’ve been featuring a story from the First Person Museum Online Gallery on the First Person Blog. This week we’re serving up a double feature – two stories submitted by husband and wife, Jim and Caroline from Bethesda, MD. Our Marketing Coordinator, Karina Kacala, met Jim at Pecha Kucha, when she presented about the First Person Museum this past August in West Philly at Studio 34: Yoga | Healing | Arts.
Read what these self-proclaimed “counterculturalists” have to say about their groovy days browsing hippie bazaars and protesting war in the 60′s. Jim has empirical evidence for reincarnation in his featured story about a righteous revival of a hippie shirt. You’ll never guess who else was inspired by this Indian cotton block-print paisley pattern! Caroline had a Philadelphia “Phlashback” that uncovered a new iconic cyber identity. Now she’s making a second online appearance in the First Person Museum Online Gallery. Can you dig it? Check out their stories below.
Reincarnation of a Sansom Street Hippy Shirt
Jim, Bethesda, MD
Theme: Generation to Generation
Object Type: From Long Ago
My wife Caroline and I married in June 1968 while students at Antioch College, a work-study school in Ohio. In the fall of that year she interned at the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute in North Philadelphia, I at the Board of Education, at that time on Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Our apartment was on Walnut Street near 20th Street, off Rittenhouse Square and across from the War Resisters’ League.
Proper counterculturalists, on weekends we would browse the hippie bazaar that was Sansom Street. I bought my favorite shirt there, made from Indian cotton in a block-print paisley bedspread pattern, dark red on a tea-stain tan. This soft, incense-redolent, sacred garment had long gone missing. That is, until some 40 years later when I bought it again—-new, two sizes bigger, and now made by Ralph Lauren.
Read Jim’s official entry.
Philadelphia Photo Phlashback
Caroline, Bethsda, MD
Theme: Generation to Generation
Object Type: From Long Ago
In 1967 I was an Antioch College cooperative education intern in Philadelphia, working as a pediatric “play lady” at Hahnemann Hospital and living on Spruce Street near 12th Street. It was the time of the Summer of Love and the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a time of naiveté, dreams, and danger.
Earlier this year, while searching the Internet for images of the Sixties to show our two sons, my husband Jim found a picture of what he swore was my doppelganger. No, this (anonymous) photo was of me and my roommate at a 1967 antiwar protest (I’m holding the sign) in Philadelphia. For over 40 years, it seems, I—a mild-mannered book editor— have had a secret cyberlife as a peacenik hippie icon. On Google Images, search “hippies protesting,” and there I am.
Read Caroline’s original entry.
YOU can be part of the First Person Museum. Upload your story about an object you treasure today along with an image of you, the object, and even video to our Online Gallery.
Join us tonight, Friday, December 3rd from 5-7PM for the December First Friday Reception of the First Person Museum pilot exhibit at the Painted Bride Art Center (230 Vine St.). Come tour the exhibit, enjoy FREE beer and food, and meet other Museum Contributors. Click here for more information and to R.S.V.P for the event.
-Becca Jennings
