In March of 2006, performance artist Ze (pronounced “zay”) Frank launched a daily video blog known simply as the show with zefrank. Since then each tightly-edited, three-to-five minute webisode has combined Daily Show-style commentary on world events with songs, observations, and occasional games or challenges in which his viewers could participate.
The show is trenchant, funny, philosophical and surreal. One particularly clever viewer-participation scheme was to have his audience (known as “sports racers”) create an Earth sandwich, document the event somehow and send it to Ze Frank. The greatest single effort to create an earth sandwich came from the Scourist duo who literally placed a piece of bread on two opposite sides of the planet, and then documented the adventure on video as part of their world-traveling blog.
Born Hosea Jan Frank to German-American immigrants, Ze is not a classically trained performance artist. Rather, he is Brown-educated neuroscientist. His education goes a long way to explain his keen ability to analyze the world simultaneously with passion, detachment and humor. Frank’s scientific training may have also led him to envision “the show…” as an experiment. Hence his decision to announce, at the start of its run, that Ze Frank would only produce “the show” for one year.
Sadly that year has come and gone. Gladly, the show’s archive has acheived sponsorship, and will live on in the World Wide Web, via Blip.tv.
