HWGang is shorthand for Hollywood Gang, a self-named group of friends that met in Los Angeles more than twenty years ago, and are now scattered across the globe. This visual love poem explores time, memory and the nature of friendship.

Throughout the years, the “gang” has reconnected at the important and even insignificant junctures of our lives – together we have celebrated marriages, births of children and grandchildren, milestone anniversaries, birthdays, and career accomplishments. Whenever we’re together, we hang out, enjoy each other’s company, consume a large quantity of alcohol, and ritualistically retell gang lore.

In thinking back over the past, the memory of an event seemed to speed up and then hang on certain moments frozen in time. I wanted to visualize this phenomenon, so I had a program written that allowed me to select a long clip and then generate a quick-time movie comprised of a specific number of frames (every one out of 45, for example). I then deleted sections of the clip, or, alternatively, froze certain frames, lengthening them from one to ten frames. I used this “memory scrub effect” for several long events – a rehearsal dinner, wedding reception, and a Millennium New Year’s Eve party. Mismatched audio fragments are placed under much of this video to further convey the sense of our memory being held in bits and pieces. This may seem nonsensical to an outsider, but to a member of HWGang, a simple fragment can recall an entire event.

In addition to the memory scrubbed clips, I included scanned photos and other short video clips. At the center of this group and also to this piece is Joe, the HW Gang reigning philosopher king. Joe recites one of his own love sonnets and performs part of the Impossible Dream. Playing and listening to music is part of every get-together, and the video includes snippets from different groups that gang members have formed over the years.

Time is all too fleeting, and our memory is uncertain and fragmentary. But there is a season for everything, and friendship makes each season bearable.