Videos by Dan Senn

A House On Jungmannova
4+4+4 Days in Motion
A documentary by Dan Senn

Director's Statement

"A House On Jungmannova" was a spontaneous effort. I was in Europe for installations of my art in Poland and the Czech Republic and had with me my video camera and lapel mic. The "4+4+4 Days in Motion" festival, for which I had constructed "The Odradek Complex," a kinetic sound sculpture installation, would be in place for 12 days, and except for maintaining my own work and socializing, I had little more to do. But I was also rapt by the 4plus festival concept, one supported by the mayor and city council of Prague. A concept which consciously and smartly used an abandoned structure in the center of an very old city as a kind of anthropomorphic artifact. A concept which, for all sorts of legal reasons, could no longer be realized in western Europe or the United States. So, just like that, I decided to document the building, the festival, its artists and to make a piece. And from this simple impulse was born "A House On Jungmannova" with a crew of one.

As an interdisciplinary artist, I have interdisciplinary expertize, and this has both its advantages and its disadvantages. As a composer, a sound technician and editor, I know where to put the mic and how to engineer the best sound. As a videographer and photographer, my films are as much about what is seen as the subject at hand. As a video editor with access to my own editing studio, I am able to work long hours, to start and restart the piece until I get it right. Best of all, there is little stress in the process of making a "film," except for the pressure I put on myself. I need not worry about whether I can meet production costs.

These are just some of the advantages of working alone and that so few people work this way is the crux of the disadvantages. It is rare that one sees in the credits a single name for a piece, as in "A House On Jungmannova," a piece which normally would take many others to realize, and it has often crossed my mind to fake all sorts of assistants just to get over the hump of being labeled "unprofessional." The connection between working alone and the weekend hobbyist is insurmountable in some.

Before I started to make experimental and documentary film, I was, and continue to be, a composer of classical experimental music and a sculptor of kinetic-sound sculpture. Today, my moving picture pieces are often integrated with this work, and sometimes a piece comes out that stands alone, like "A House On Jungmannova." Because I have worked with photography for many years, the step from music composition and kinetic sculpture, to experimental and documentary film is a short and easy one, especially given that my Mac computer doesn't seem to mind which software I run. Working alone is only natural for me.