trailerpilot

I’ve been asked repeatedly where the name trailerpilot comes from and I suppose this is the place where that information belongs.

I began using trailerpilot as a stage name for my work in choreography around 2003:  I would tell people that not all my work would be credited to trailerpilot but that all trailerpilot pieces would share certain attributes, chief among them a willingness to use readily-identifiable stylistic hallmarks as efficient shorthand for the acknowledgment of influences and what for me seemed the impossibility to, in dance, create wholly original work.  trailerpilot was chosen as something that would abstract this approach:  A pilot is a driver, a source of information, a trailblazer, a beginning, a seed, whereas a trailer is devoid of agency, something which relies upon something else to give it motion and direction, to move it through space.  Thus a trailer pilot is both:  It is the thing that drives that which is being pulled.  It’s the acknowledgement of the concurrent generative and derivative qualities in all creative endeavors.

Additionally, as a compound word it has nice visual rhythms.  I’m not wild about how it sounds, but that’s something that makes it well suited for the online world:  You can look at it all day but rarely need to say it aloud.

I also recently discovered it’s an obscure bit of kiln hardware.

It never quite took off as a stage name.  Choreographers don’t have stage names and it was consistently difficult keeping people from capitalizing it and so, without ceremony, I phased it out.  Planning ahead, however, I had long since registered this domain, as well as trailerpilot as a username on many sites.  Late last year I had the idea to start a blog on dance and my other interests:  Architecture, urbanism, visual art, performance, music and pop culture and, voilà, this site was born.  Thanks for reading.

Zachary Whittenburg

03:16::2009

Chicago