To the cash-crunched student, finding money on the ground is a luxury and thrill. To the curious human, however, there’s something about a crumpled wad of loose leaf notebook paper that incites just as much excitement and wonder: Is it a note? After all, a note is where subject matter too sensitive or complex to put into verbal conversation finds its way.
Davy Rothbart, from NPR’s This American Life, took hold of this idea in the early 2000s and turned it into his life’s ongoing art project, resulting in the Found books and Found Magazine. Readers continue to submit hundreds of found postcards, shopping lists, flyers and notes each year.
Now, meet Nick Preuher and Joe Pickett. Both are Wisconsinites, but a similar passion to Rothbart’s has thrown them to all corners of the nation the past seven years. The pair hoards any and all film footage it comes across – the weirder, the better.
Both groups have been aware of the other for years, but never collaborated. “Found vs. Found” will be just such an occasion, with what was described by Preuher as a “battle royale of found stuff.” While the event is being pitched as a head-to-head, “Fight Club”-type ordeal, the groups have worked in close collaboration with each other this fall – and found kinship in the tight parallels of their work.
“We’ve based it as a competition,” Prueher said, lamenting that Found Footage has been victorious in only one of four shows on the tour so far. “There are three rounds, and we each have 12 minutes to show off our best finds in those rounds. At the end of the 12 minutes, we nominate three impartial judges in the audience and if they think Found Magazine won, they hold up the magazine. If they think Found Footage won, they hold up the VHS tape.”
Pickett and Prueher have both worked for The Onion, and Prueher spent many years with the Letterman show. Although audience members might feel compelled to describe Sunday night’s show as a lively, interactive form of art, Prueher said he and Pickett consider themselves more comedic than artistic. Rather, he said, it is the innate concept behind both projects that emotes artistry on its own – providing glimpses into strangers’ most intimate thoughts for an appreciative and engaged public audience.
“There certainly is something interesting about this footage, that would otherwise be lost through the ages, that we’ve rescued,” he said. “Exercise videos, training videos and other people’s home movies that were meant to be watched privately. When you have a room full of people, and it’s projected onto the big screen, there’s something magical that happens; like you’re all part of a happening.”
While the entries to Rothbart’s magazine and books come from thousands of readers worldwide, what Prueher does is a mostly domestic project. Found Footage is the result of more than 20 years spent valiantly thrifting, rummaging, picking and dumpster-diving for film of all sorts to reclaim – the show Sunday will be a selection of their favorite films from these travels. When asked by The Badger Herald, Prueher said he could see how the project definitively depicts Americana.
“By and large we are a fairly ridiculous people,” he said. “We are obsessed with video, and have a lot of ambition even if we don’t have the talent to back it up. These films help tell part of the story.”
He continued that even though he presents these films from a comedic perspective – embodied in the playful, “boxer’s ring” motif of the Found vs. Found event – he and the rest of the team have a reverence for the people in the found footage; people whom they’ve never met but compose the motley cast in their nationally-touring show.
“Even though we’re sort of laughing at them, we are doing it from a place of love because we found the footage; we appreciate it ourselves,” he said. “I think it is pretty revealing about who we are as a people, even more so than a really polished work of art. If you’re only looking at Citizen Kane and the AFI [American Film Institute] top list of films, it’s a pretty incomplete picture of our culture.”
Davy’s brother, Peter, who plays guitar and tours with Found, is “the best ‘note-finder’ in the world,” according to Davy. But what makes a good note-finder, anyway? Clearly a unique subset of personality traits and skills must be involved. Prueher wasn’t sure, but intoned that – like footage finding – it is an acquired talent.
“I think it’s the same as VHS; it takes an awareness,” he explained. “I think we went through a good portion of our teenage years without even looking for VHS tapes, but once we knew you could do something cool with them, like show friends – and it’s the same with notes – all of a sudden your feelers are out and you’re very aware of notes taped to a door, or on the ground, or in a tree. Once you are attuned to it you are constantly looking out.”
Found vs. Found will face off Sunday, showcasing the Rothbart brothers’ collection and music alongside the film compilation made by Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett. Tickets are $13, one dollar of which will go to support the Goodman Community Center, a resource in the area that provides free tutoring, recreation and afterschool programs. The match commences at 8 p.m.
