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August 19–26, 1999

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The Century in a Day

A sampling of some of the more noteworthy events and projects occurring on Aug. 23, Capsule Day:

9:00 a.m. Proclamation ceremony, Conversation Hall (Room 201, City Hall). Mayor Ed Rendell proclaims this day to be Capsule Day, hopefully by showing up in person. A critical mass of "Capsulers" will attend and tape the ceremony, then fan out in all directions for at least two blocks to get an initial impression of the city from these various perspectives.

9:30 a.m. Mural artist Diane Keller begins a mural at Third and Walnut. Julie Deery is there to kick off her day-long tour (with assistants) of murals in Philadelphia, with guidance from the Mural Arts Program. "I’ve been fascinated by all the talent expressed in all these murals all over the city," says Deery, "and going out there with a video camera is a chance to learn more. I especially want to interview people in neighborhoods that are not otherwise well kept up, and see if a given mural has had an effect on morale, or on any sense of community, in their opinion."


 

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10:00 a.m. Creative Artists Resource Project (CARP) and friends assemble at the Please Take M.E. (12th and Callowhill) to embark on the Trash Tour. "We’ll be picking out reusable and repurposeable stuff, filming along the way, answering people’s questions about why we’re doing this and hopefully making people aware of the quantity of waste in our current culture and promoting waste reduction. People will get a new perspective on trash when they see what attention we’re paying to it." And if they don’t during the tour, when members will fan out through the city to collect stuff, then they may after the group reconvenes at the Snyderman Gallery to assemble their finds into Capsule Art (see below).

10:30 a.m. Greater Philadelphia Food Bank records activity in and around its Third and Berks location. Jo Ann Connelly, president and CEO, looks forward to a future where food banks are "engaged in as many partnerships and collaborative ventures as possible," and hopes that organizations like her own will initiate new creative projects to help fight hunger.

11:00 a.m. Anne Harvey arrives at an area supermarket to tape the contents of the shelves. "I’ve always been interested in how grocery stores reflect neighborhoods," she says. "When you see different ethnic foods appearing you know it’s because the neighborhood is changing. When I see more Goya products I know the Hispanic population is increasing. Whereas at the South Philly Acme they have a whole aisle of different shapes of pasta." For this reason even a small amount of time may bring a new perspective to her inventory. "Then again," she notes, "in a while we may not even shop that way at all. I’ve just been reading about cyber-groceries, ordering all your food online and it shows up in this little truck. So maybe the whole store will become an anachronism."

11:30 a.m. Joel Spivak of the Philadelphia Trolley Coalition rides around town on various forms of city transit with a tape recorder, taking every opportunity, he says, "to ask people what they think about SEPTA."

Noon. Jim Gladstone starts off on his Cafe Culture tour, planning "to explode the myth of 1990s ‘coffee culture’ as a single easily understood cultural entity by visiting a range of Philadelphia java joints — a grunge one, a blue-collar one, a yuppie one, a Euro one, a homo one, etc. — demonstrating coffee as a common denominator crossing many consumer demographics."

12:30 p.m. Amy Guskin and Paul Nordquist of the group Left Brain begin filming at the north end of Forbidden Drive in Fairmount Park for a visual survey of flora and fauna within the city limits, continuing down the Wissahickon Creek to the Schuylkill River.

1:00 p.m. Michael Hollinger begins his trip on Route 23 from Chestnut Hill into the heart of Philadelphia. "The 23 is a great cross-section view of Philadelphia," he says, "what with all the different neighborhoods it passes through and all the history." His taping of the trip will add to a growing oeuvre of Germantown Avenue-based Hollinger teleplays, including the segment he wrote for WHYYTV-12’s First Person Philadelphia in 1997.

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Anne Harvey



2:00 p.m. "Rocky" project at Art Museum steps begins, with five people continuing in shifts through the day until each has cajoled at least 23 out-of-towners to run up the steps à la Rocky and lift their arms. In-depth interviews on the significance of Rocky 6 are optional.

3:00 p.m. Michael Perilstein shows up at theaters in a western suburb to interview people coming out of movies. "I thnk it’ll be interesting to see people’s relationships to films in this period. It’s a lot more fun looking back at this century’s fiction, because the facts of it are so dismal." Perilstein confidently predicts that the physical medium of film itself will be all but extinct by 2011.

5:00 p.m. Snyderman Gallery (303 Cherry St.): Capsule Art meeting for CARP artists as well as registered Snyderman Gallery-based artists. Craig Stover will be coordinating and photographing the projects created on Capsule Day.

7:46 p.m. Everybody gets a good shot of the sunset (weather permitting).

8:00 p.m. Capsule Day wrap-up party featuring music by LeftBrain, Todd Young and Eliot "EDO" Duhan at The Coffee Shop (formerly Lionfish), 614 North Second St., 215-829-9103. Please bring a can of food to donate to the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank.

What would you put in a virtual time capsule? To include your own Capsule Day project in the festivities, check out the Web site (www.capsuleday.com) or e-mail van23@philly.infi.net if you’re online. If not, you can call 215-487-9056, or simply take your Capsule Day footage on Monday and mail it to: Capsule Day, PO Box 2384, Philadelphia, PA 19103.

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