On Saturday night, the Garage hosted its first Multi-Media Sandwich! Local artist James Ford’s videos were screened at the beginning and end of the evening, sandwiching local band Mondo’s ambient, electronic songs. It was one of the most beautiful and strange nights the Garage has ever seen.

As Chris, John, and James set up for the evening, the Garage was quickly transformed in a cozy, ambient home with more keyboards, synthesizers, and pedals than most people could handle. The image above feels like one of the romantic photos of musical instruments that would be on Wilco’s website.

We kicked off the evening with a screening of three of James’ short videos. They were completely enchanting, exploring ambiguous, motion-oriented imagery and mesmerizing sonic backgrounds. They are the type of videos that you get lost in. The audience was gathered in the Garage, right outside on the ground and couch, and across the street on the hill of the park. It felt like there were different tiers of seating for the screening…although each seating area offered a meaningful and intriguing experience of the videos.

Following the screening, Mondo turned out the lights and cranked up the synthesizers. Chris and John created strange sounds and beautiful rhythms that they collaboratively wove together for almost an hour. They even set up a video feedback loop and projected video of the back wall of the Garage onto the same wall. As they moved around or audience members participated and moved around the space, the motion was recorded and layered visually onto the back wall. Sam and I had a discussion and discerned that we thought the Garage was very happy about this.

The turnout was huge with folks coming from Richmond and a wide range of ages coming out. There were several audience members in strange masks and hats provided by Chris and John. I loved that as different folks interacted with the performance (either physically or sonically), they were given either a sombrero or wizard’s hat to mark their involvement as collaborators.

After a frenzied finale, the night wound down with a final screening of two more of James’ films. Overall, it was a wildly creative, joyful night. Thanks so much to Chris and John of Mondo and to James for making such a great sandwich of artwork.