June 25, 2009: Stores pay window dressers thousands a year to come up with original ideas to draw in the foot traffic and entertain passersby. But I highly doubt they EVER came up with something as original and unexpected as Brian Feldman's nighttime piece "Brian Feldman Reads This Newspaper In Its Entirety" which took place starting at 8:30pm at Frames Forever & Art Gallery on Orange Avenue in Winter Park June 25, 2009.
There he was as I pulled up in my car, standing in a store window, holding an Orlando Weekly and reading it word for word into a microphone. The sound (rig designed by Tommy Wingo) coming through the two speakers stuck on a folding table to the right of the window was set at a decent volume and sounded crystal clear. The lighting from within the window lit the wall of newspapers behind him like in a perfect Barneys window display. The floor of the window area was covered in newspapers, and even Feldman himself wore a handmade vest of newspaper.
The reason for this performance piece which stretched into the wee hours, as he was to read the entire Orlando Weekly (this week's edition) from cover to cover, including the ads, was to commemorate WMFE's canceling of their newspaper-reading service for the blind on its station due to funding issues.
Less than ten people were in attendance when I showed up with Thomas Thorspecken (yes I am name-dropping) but every single one of them were seated and clued in to the action. Some followed along with him in their own copy of the paper while one wrote on his laptop the whole time. A white car paused on Orange avenue in front of the store to see what was going on, then sped off. And somewhere in the darkness, a window dresser was struggling to come up with his next window idea.
There he was as I pulled up in my car, standing in a store window, holding an Orlando Weekly and reading it word for word into a microphone. The sound (rig designed by Tommy Wingo) coming through the two speakers stuck on a folding table to the right of the window was set at a decent volume and sounded crystal clear. The lighting from within the window lit the wall of newspapers behind him like in a perfect Barneys window display. The floor of the window area was covered in newspapers, and even Feldman himself wore a handmade vest of newspaper.
The reason for this performance piece which stretched into the wee hours, as he was to read the entire Orlando Weekly (this week's edition) from cover to cover, including the ads, was to commemorate WMFE's canceling of their newspaper-reading service for the blind on its station due to funding issues.
Less than ten people were in attendance when I showed up with Thomas Thorspecken (yes I am name-dropping) but every single one of them were seated and clued in to the action. Some followed along with him in their own copy of the paper while one wrote on his laptop the whole time. A white car paused on Orange avenue in front of the store to see what was going on, then sped off. And somewhere in the darkness, a window dresser was struggling to come up with his next window idea.