Tonight and Saturday, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts hosts collaborators Sam Green and Dave Cerf as they present Greetings on Behalf of the People of our Planet!: three “live documentaries” on three offbeat subjects. Their unique format combines film clips, still images, live narration and sound mixing in an event that is part film, part lecture, and wholly absorbing. The screenings at the YBCA will focus on the world’s largest mall (outside of Guangzhou, China), the Voyager Spacecraft and its Golden Record, and the history of time capsules, both big and small.
Green and Cerf’s eclectic interests will shape the screening. The Voyager Spacecraft segment, composed entirely from sounds and images hurriedly collected by Carl Sagan and a team of experts in 1977, will cover the history of the project as well as its utopic goals. While Sagan has already said much of what there is to say about the project, verbosely and poetically, there is still plenty of rich, resonant, and truly funny material left for Green and Cerf to highlight.
The World’s Largest Mall tells the story of the South China Mall, a gigantic and nearly completely empty complex of stores, amusement park rides, and Venice-like canals. The “large chain business interpretation of quality of life” (as one sign proclaims) is an instant noodle billionaire’s attempt to leave his mark on history. The mall’s manager describes the situation as a real “build it and they will come scenario. He built it, but they didn’t come.” In the screening, quiet, almost still shots of the mall’s desolate spaces are juxtaposed with clips of an employee, dressed as a Teletubby, prancing through a plaza.
“If Mao saw the South China Mall, the beautiful buildings, he would say, ‘Oh my God!'”
In the newest of the three documentaries, An Illustrated Lecture on the History of the Time Capsule, Green and Cerf explore the grandiose and often comical history of the time capsule. Looking at the time capsule as an expression of cultural imagination and self-portraiture, Green poses the question: “What does it say about who we are today that, for the most part, we no longer bury time capsules — that the time capsule itself has become a thing of the past?”
Depending on the setting, Green says, the presentations can be classified as documentaries, performances, or simply fancy lectures. The best part of it, both Green and Cerf agree, is the flexibility of the live event. Instead of arriving at a venue with a finished, packaged product, hoping for the best, they present a mutable thing. Between one screening and the next, they can tinker to their hearts’ content — a both thrilling and nerve-wracking prospect.
