At Hand Productions

At Hand Productions has spent over a year of planning to make this broadcast happen and the day is here. Starting in July At Hand Productions' Prophecies of War will broadcast throughout America on Comcast, Charter, and Bresnan cable. It will be available to over 22,000,000 cable subscribers and will be broadcasted eight times In the spring of 2008, At Hand Productions began recording and editing Prophecies of War to DVD. After the national broadcast, it will publicly release the DVD in the fall of 2008 and it contains material that audiences will not get to see on cable television. Expect to see other footage, interviews, and more when the DVD is released.

The president of At Hand Productions, Andrew Hanna, spent a year and countless hours of research and communication with the various divisions of Comcast, Bresnan, and Charter. He has a background in music performance and composition and performs using synthesizers, electronic wind controllers, and an effected saxophone.

In 2004, a fifteen-minute excerpt of Prophecies of War aired on the Philadelphia show High Wired. It featured emerging artists that create works that would not be seen through mainstream media. Since then, Prophecies of War has blossomed into its own being through an EP CD, international reviews, performances, and radio interviews on NPR's WRTI. The premise to Prophecies of War is the juxtaposition of Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 warning to America with other presidential speeches. It is a production that expresses its theme through live emotionally charged music, psychedelic video and graphics, and mind bending audio clips. One reviewer described Prophecies of War as “LSD without the LSD.” When one attends this performance, they are immersed in a world of sound and visuals that leave the audience only to feel and think.

At Hand Productions was formed from Hanna's desire to see that his productions reach the public through as many channels as possible. AHP premieres its multimedia productions through CDs, DVDs, radio, Internet, and now television. The mission is to give a voice to the voiceless. The topics of many of the multimedia productions cover politics, history, social affairs, international conflicts, mental illness, and class revolution.

“The arts have been in a winter . . . an Aquarian spring is around the corner,” Hanna, 28, said, but did not elaborate on any other goals. There is no talk as to if there will be other broadcasts of his other multimedia productions, but one can only hope that there will be more. In 2003, Hanna formalized his collective art theory. To this day, the theory has not been published and remains in the hands of a special few that include scholars and artists. Similarly, he draws his artistic lineage through Richard Wagner and Sergei Diaghilev. Wagner re-introduced collective arts in the late 19 th century through his enormous operas. Diaghilev perfected Wagner's principles of collective arts and extended it to ballet and explored themes that were current to his time. Diaghilev's Ballet Russes presented Stravinsky's volatile Rite of Spring that featured a nude ballerina who danced herself to death. This presentation shocked audiences in Paris causing uproar.

“Diaghilev is known for his famous statement, “I give audiences what I want to give them, I don't give them what they want.” And to this I add, art is meant to excite, entertainment pacifies. Art represents the heart, mind, and spirit of the people. Entertainment represents greed, materialism, facades, and the wallet.”