Video commission by the rock group The Decembrists for the song “Here I Dreamt I was An Architect”, based on the character and Installation “The Tourist”.
[video]
2004
2010-2014
Led the design/development teams for Minneapolis-based biomedical firm Newton Medical.
All material copyright Newton Medical
2007
mixed media installation
Dimensions variable
2004
The intention of Breath Test is to engage the viewer in a momentary contemplation of the power each of us possesses with respect to material integrity, even when faced with something so seemingly sturdy and durable as a building. The work is installed in a space empty but for a microphone hanging from the ceiling. As the viewer steps up to the microphone and blows, he or she is able to destroy a house with the force of 30-kiloton atomic bomb. Entering into this constructed environment, one gains ownership of the experience and the space, as well as the power to alter the elements within it.
Breath Test explores the idea of exchanging a space for the imprint it leaves,addressing the shadows and corners that exist within a room, a on cellular memory, reach, and need. It deals with notions of stability and temporality in an atmosphere in flux, questioning whether it is only specific human decisions that can destroy the built environment, or if shifts in economics and ideologies can possess just as much physical power.
2011
Mixed Materials
Demensions Variable
Creative Director / Co-owner of bicycling and lifestyle brand Freeman Transport
2006-2010
2003-2004
Led the development team for an artificial heart device for a New York-based biomedical firm MYOTECH.
2005
mixed media installation.
Dimensions variable.
From John Massier, Curator at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center “In Nathaniel Freeman's ambling narrative video The Tourist, the artist plays the title character, your standard Everyman in warm pursuit of an unspecified something. He seems to be seeking shelter, which he never finds and never adequately constructs. If he is seeking companionship, he never finds it. It he is seeking purpose and meaning, that pursuit remains unresolved by the end of the piece. Freeman's Tourist is a wayward pilgrim jonesing for something and we are witnesses to his lack of progress. He moves, he passes through locations, but Freeman's clever use of time-lapse photography articulates the restless soul within. Freeman's Tourist is never quite in sync with the world (either moving faster or slower than Ins environment) and we are left with the sensation that he is traipsing through some ambiguous netherworld.”
2009
Six Screen Video and Sound Documentry
Demensions Variable
"Killing Rowlando is an immersive video installation that utilizes contemporary and archival footage to explore disparate constructions of masculinity across generations, as well as the decline of personal and political power that comes with age. The project is inspired by a family history that has produced both military generals and wards of the state within the same generation. Suspended between these two sides of his past, Freeman looks at the overlap between a seemingly organized mental state and pure bedlam, and the way these two conditions are not opposites so much as the transitory manifestation of a cultural need."
2011
Collaboration w/ Black Sheep Bicycles
2001
bronze, surgical tubing
leather, steel
15’x7’x10’
2006
Thirty-foot multi-channel video installation of Niagara Falls projected on the walls and floor of the abandoned Central Terminal in Buffalo, NY
2006
Promotional video for Masi Bicycles
2003
cast iron, textiles
24”x10”x6”
2004
film
2002
beeswax, steel
aluminum
8”x8”x4’
2009
Down by the Weep Hole is the story of Minneapolis' Stupor Bowl, the world's coldest and most inebriated alley cat race. The movie chronicles the race's development form a twenty-person local event in 1997, through 2009 when over four-hundred national and international competitors made the harrowing journey through the Twin Cities' frozen streets.
2010
Creative Director and Editing
Basic is a performance-based piece that incorporates video and sound to explore the fractured character of a motivational speaker / coach who is at once humorous, pathetic and inspiring. As his character shares with the audience his philosophy on matters physical, emotional, and otherwise, Freeman explores the complicated mix of emotions audiences feel towards a man at odds with a host of unattainable and illogical quests.
