Focus on the Work, Owerko

The Boombox Project is a bad commercial for Lyle Owerko's exhibition book of the same name.

The Boombox Project, directed by Paul Stone and featured in SIFF's "Face the Music" package, tells a flimsy story that focuses more upon an apparently self-involved artist than upon the product it seeks to sell.

The film begins with an expository focus on Owerko and how he began taking pictures while vacationing in Holland, and how he fancies himself a "creative anthropologist." He alludes to the boombox's position as a cultural icon for youth of the '80s and '90s, before briefly describing how he photographed and exhibited them and lets us know there's a book we can buy.

The film's intent is to sell us on his product, but the execution doesn't deliver. The focus seems to be on Owerko as opposed to his exhibition book, and he is a less than compelling protagonist. A Dutch vacation and professionally identifying by a self-invented term make Owerko seem overly privileged and unrelatable. The effect is not only alienation from the artist, but from the art that he's selling.

If the intent of The Boombox Project is to sell the audience on Owerko's exhibition book, it does a poor job. By focusing on uninteresting aspects of Owerko instead of upon the exhibition itself, the film makes us wonder why we should even care.