Patrick Lichty #4

Blown Away
Blown Away(2003, 3MB, 52 secs)

Mental Profiling
Mental Profiling (2003, 7MB, 2:15min)

 the new saint of louisiana
The New Saint of Louisiana (2003, 4MB, 41 secs)

Three more from Patrick Lichty.
Again- hard to believe these were made seven long digital years* ago.
Not a lot to add, except I approve his taste for Tuvan throat singing.

*Digital years a bit like dog years, of course.

Elodie Pong – ADN/ARN

sfs_trailer
Trailer for ADN/ARN (2003, 8 MB, 4:04 min.)

ADN/ARN was an interactive installation addressed to one person at the time,
filmed with 8 surveillance cameras, in which each visitor was invited to confide
and then contractually sell a personal secret. The initial system took place in
Lausanne at the Centre d’Arts sc

More Showstudio

beasting
Beasting (2008, 3MB, 31 secs)

blackball
Blackball (2008, 10MB, 1:21 min)

God, I dislike this work! It’s the combination of the stellar
degree of smug self-congratulation with a faux experimentalism/pretension
to art similarly typified by the ludricous “creative” moniker
attached to exponents of advertising.
But..but..again – like some ads, not many, some – there’s
something to be learned here, especially from Beasting
which manages to be both deeply, Zoolanderishly, risible
(the branded underpants) but also generate a kind of deep,
myth-related frisson.
All the more vexing that somewhere here is real talent.

So…we hold our noses and post…

Enough! Six months, at least, before any more of this.
I’m going out for some air.

The Little Artists – Lick Yourselves

lick yourself
Lick Yourselves (2005, 64MB, 6:27 min, silent)

The Little Artists are a UK collaborative duo, most famous/notorious
for their re-renderings of iconic artworks in the childrens’ construction toy
LEGO.
This brief description doesn’t do them justice – their work is rich & complex
& they make hay, playfully but profoundly too, with all sorts of contemporary
obsessions – remix &appropriation, branding, celebrity & not least the idea of
artistry/creativity itself.

This video stems from their 2005 show based on the work of Mark Quinn, the casting-
his-head-out-of-his-own-frozen-blood guy, and the show featured them dressing
up as ice cream salespeople and flogging fruit flavour ice lolly replicas of
the Quinn piece.
The vid is a minimal, leisurely and ever so slightly disturbing account of
one of these slowly melting.

I must declare an interest – I wrote an essay for their new book, which, if
your appetite is whetted, you can get here.

Patrick Lichty Season – #3

The New Miranda
The New Miranda (2003, 38MB, 2:17 min)

blooper - voodoo chicks
Blooper – Voodoo Chicks (200?, 1MB, 16 secs)

 the engines of truth
The Engines of Truth (2000?, 20MB, 5:08 min)

Our Patrick Lichty season resumes after quite the longest break ever,
partly because I misplaced the files he so generously gave us
in 2007.
Looking through these again it comes home very forcefully what
a significant role Lichty played in the development of a new language of art video,
one contemporaneous with the birth pangs and development of net art & later to
feed centrally into online art practice.
The pieces still impress as hugely imaginative and sometimes challenging
and apart from their physical size and compression don’t appear time worn
at all. In fact, in many ways they seem amazingly prescient, perhaps
even ahead of their time.

More soon.

Readings

readings
Readings (2008, 43 MB, 9:53 min.)

I must admit I’d never really heard of fashion video as a genre
until someone I teach showed me an astonishing piece by
Ruth Hogben & Gareth Pugh last week, which sent me off in search of more.
This piece comes from site called ShowStudio:

‘an award-winning fashion website, founded and directed by Nick Knight,
that has consistently pushed the boundaries of communicating fashion online.’

according to its ‘about’ page.

The piece we’re posting here is directed by Knight together with the designer
Hussein Chalayan, with editing by Ruth Hogben and music by Anthony, of Johnsons
fame.
It’s a tour de force, fizzing with ideas, a mesmerising watch,
and a fund of stealable ideas, so we’ll definitely be returning
for more, though I have to say I only see a dark void where
a living heart might have beat – there’s no speck of warmth
or humanity to it.