THE theme of this year’s 01SJ Biennial is “Build Your Own World.” Todd Chandler went ahead and made his own universe.
First, the New York–based artist filmed Flood Tide, a genre-defying “road movie on a river” about musicians who set out on a strange odyssey to build and sail boats made out of junk—and starring the real-life boat-builders in both footage from the actual event and a fictionalized version of their own true story.
Then, Chandler created the music for the film with his band Dark Dark Dark, a chamber-folk ensemble with other members hailing from New Orleans and Minneapolis. Though the official release version of neither the film nor the music has been finalized, Chandler will present a “remix” of both when he plays live to his film with his band on Sept. 16 and Sept. 19 at South Hall.
If that isn’t enough, Chandler, along with fellow artist Jeff Stark, is even building the theater his movie and music will be presented in. As the duo prepared the “Empire Drive In” project last week, Chandler—looking a little bit like the classic cool kid from the drive-in era in a white T-shirt and jeans—surveyed a layout of two dozen junkyard cars filling one end of South Hall, while up above him Stark was perched in a crane, overseeing the construction of the giant drive-in screen.
“He’s an amazing artist and organizer of massive impossible things,” he says of Stark, who also worked with him on the boat project that became the basis for Flood Tide. While “Empire Drive In” certainly isn’t impossible, it has a faint whiff of unlikely. Working radios will be installed in the cars, which are lined up in several rows facing the screen, in traditional drive-in style. The drive-in installation will screen several films besides Chandler’s. For feature presentations, viewers can sit in the cars and hear the sound through the radio, or outside through the large sound system. At other times, there will be loops running on the screen, and the sound will only be heard through the cars.
Chandler and Stark came to California for a couple of days last November to scope out supplies, and arrived on Aug. 22 to begin work. They found the cars through Nick Jafari, the owner of Vince’s Foreign Auto Wreckers in San Jose.
“We said, ‘Can we borrow or rent 24 wrecked cars from you?,” recalls Chandler. “Right away, he totally got it. He was amazing.”
As it comes together, it looks not unlike some near-future drive-in just after the zombie apocalypse. They could, of course, have gotten two dozen perfectly functional cars, but their approach makes a statement that’s an interesting match for the future-tech 01SJ event.
“It’s about a lot of things,” says Chandler. “It’s partly about these junk cars. It’s a technology festival, and even though there’s not a lot of obvious tech happening here—we’re working with salvaged wood and these totally trashed cars—it is sort of about how quickly technology becomes obsolete. Most of these cars are from the ’80s and ’90s and even this decade. Part of it is about reuse, and found objects. Each of these objects has a story, and that’s super interesting. You can look at any of these cars, some of them have letters or photos, each of them has a story.”
It’s also, of course, about the drive-in itself, and how we watch movies.
“Both of us as teenagers went to drive-ins, and definitely had interesting experiences at the drive-in. It’s partly about that drive-in experience, the fun of it,” says Chandler. “At this point it’s kind of a nostalgic thing, there are very few drive-ins—the land that they’re on turns out to be worth more as a parking lot.”
FLOOD TIDE, a film by Todd Chandler, with live performance by Dark Dark Dark, will be presented on Thursday, Sept. 16, at 9pm and Sunday, Sept. 19, at 3:30pm at South Hall in San Jose; free with admission to South Hall or a Biennial general admission ticket.
