[Looking Out #01] Tony Buba, COVID 19 an OBSESSION —PART I from Miller ICA on Vimeo.
“I have been obsessed with the coronavirus outbreak. Some of the obsession is because of my age. I am 76 and I will be 77 in October. People in my age group have extraordinarily little chance of survival even without having been subjected to breathing the polluted Mon Valley air their whole life. I am preparing for my death. Making out a will, living will, naming an executor, etc., all that crap even shipping all my material to be archived at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. So, death will not totally catch me off guard, but I have at least two new films I want to finish. The thought of dying before finishing another Braddock film and a film about my family is frightening. Why, I am not sure. The films could be dreadful, and nobody would watch them but that does not matter. I need to finish them. Another reason was the devastating outbreak in Italy where I have a lot of family and friends. Would I ever get to see them again? Of course, more selfishly would I be able to get back and get more material on my mother’s and father’s village.
This piece was shot over a two-day period and it is structured with my COVID 19 obsession. The shots in seconds are 3,15,22,9,4 and 19 repeated seven times. The two days are blended, like my life. The audio is constructed, sometimes the sounds are synched, sometimes not, also like my life is now. I want to thank Alex Young and the Miller ICA team for asking me to participate in this project. It has given me an opportunity to focus and really appreciate the beauty of a Baltimore oriole.”
#LookingOutPGH
‘Looking Out’ features works by Pittsburgh artists created through their respective windows while sheltering in place. This on-going series envisions a new commons making our mutual experience of sheltering-in-place one less of isolation and more of collectivity and solidarity. This series is a Miller ICA project with prompt by Alex Young.
-looking out from our windows and for each other