Kino Da! (1981, 5.6 MB,1:42 min )
Kino Da! , a wonderful portrait of the poet and communist Jack Hirschman
by the American experimental filmmaker Henry Hills is just one of the Hills films
that can be viewed at . More about Hills and his work see – henryhills.com
Tim and Puma Mimi: High Five Low Five (2012, 283MB, 4:22 min)
Slightly self-consciously kooky but, it must be said, splendidly
entertaining bit of both music and moving image, from -ahem –
Tim and Puma Mimi.
Curiously we were lobbied for this by a publicist type fellow.
We’re quite flattered here at DVblog that we’re thought of as having
any clout.
I should say we turned down the first couple of things he suggested
and he obviously then did his homework because this one we like, a lot.
dudeboat (2012, 2 MB, 11 secs)
misteriosoxxx (2012, 4 MB, 41 secs)
Slightly traducing the spirit of the project where
the two artists mix, hack and otherwise mutate
and abut up to 9 videos simutaneously in the same web page
as a (very welcome) online adjunct to the current Drawing Surrealism
show at LACMA, we’re featuring a couple of the component parts.
(Because we love both these artists and we want to publicise
everything they do, which is never, ever, dull.)
To view it properly go (and keep on going back) to the
project page and to learn more go here.
John Cage – 4:33 (2004, 47MB, 9:23 min)
Wonderful video of the BBC Symphony Orchestra under
Lawrence Foster giving a performance of John Cage’s
notorious/ provocative/seminal/epoch-making 4:33.
Serial Metaphysics #1 (1984-86, clip, 6.4MB, 1:08 min)
Serial Metaphysics #2 (1984-86, clip, 5.9MB, 1:08 min)
Wheeler Winston Dixon is now a professor of film studies
at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Before he did that he made
a lot of (on the evidence of these clips & others) really great short movies.
In particular these two clips from Serial Metaphysics, apparently almost
entirely constructed from TV ads, whet the appetite for a viewing
of the whole twenty minutes.
Dixon conjures fever dream magic from commercial banality.
Check in particular the end sequence of clip one:
David Lynch eat your heart out.
Waltz (2003, 55.9MB, 7:04 min)
More ideas per second than many have in a lifetime & wonderful
& haunting & evocative & engaging & smart ones too.
She makes it look easy & natural. Think about it – bet it’s not.
A fantastic piece by veteran video artist/performer Joan Jonas found
on the invaluable Lumen Eclipse site.
Time is speeding up (2016, 11MB, 1:00 min)
This is a beautiful piece, a distillation down to a minute of a three month installation by Ruth Catlow, artist and co-director of the marvellous Furtherfield.
She explains its premise and construction better than I can, so I’ll hand over to her:
This networked video performance and installation is about how life seems to speed up as we get older; based on the reflection that when I was one day old, a day was my whole life but on the second day one day was only half my life etc.
The work was commissioned for ‘We Are Not Alone’, an exhibition for 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, UK.
During exhibition opening hours between 23rd January -24th April 2016, viewers could watch a live looping video online. At the exhibition people could pose for the web cam, or might be caught looking at the video in which they were soon to be portrayed.
Using a computer programme called Geological Time Piece that I created with Gareth Foote a still webcam image was captured every 3-5 minutes during exhibition opening hours. The camera pointed at a wall in the gallery, upon which a changing text was displayed. The software added each image as a frame to a looping video, of fixed 3 minute duration. The frame density increased every 3 minutes, as each images was added to the video.
In the exhibition space full of movement – of light and shade and people coming and going – people could insert themselves into the video by standing between the webcam and the text. Over three months the human presences started to flicker and disappear and the moving image progressively conveyed a more geological sense of time, the arc of daylight moving through the space, the architecture, and other more static things came to dominate the image. The computer programme stopped running when the exhibition closed by which time the video contained over 3600 images. The final video runs for a minute at 60fps.
my life is not a happening (2007, 17.3MB, 1:31 min)
I really like this genre of physical theatre/dance/happening/what-you-will
put through the video mangler (apparently jitter does its stuff here)
& the splendidly named Ben Pranger & his accomplices
carry it off rather nicely.
I gather this piece arose out of some workshops in 2007.
I love the excitement of that sort of voyage of discovery; there’s a kind
of frontier feel to it which is really captured here.
It’s also a philosopher’s stone job – out of apparently prosaic fragments
comes forth a small kind of magic.
running to catch a train (2016, 103MB, 9:07 min)
I’m gently waking DVblog up to post this extraordinary piece of work from Paula Musgrove, with videography from Yasmin Cox (both year two Art & Design students at WSD where – transparency! – I currently teach.)
The performance took place at the private view of the end of year show and the video was then inserted as is,replacing the original performance soundtrack and joining the various physical outputs of the performance to form the substantive exhibition piece ( As you can see in the poster image.)
I think it is marvellous, subtle and profoundly moving work and I hope we will all hear a good deal more from Paula over the coming years.
Dance Me To The End Of Love (clip, 1994, 0.5MB, 31 sec.)
Dance Me To The End Of Love (1995, 34.1MB, 6:07 min.)
Leonard Cohen’s work has always walked a fine line
between kitsch & poetry.
Don’t get me wrong – the kitsch is like a dash of chilli,
gives the whole thing added piquancy & depth.
Check out these two videos for ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’.
The first, the short clip, is the official video.
Now look at the second.
OK- first things first -just who is that playing the bridegroom?
Then, consider if this whole unofficial one ( by Aaron Goffman)
prolix & kitschy in some respects as it undoubtedly is,
doesn’t somehow do more justice to Cohen’s world !’
prisoners (2008, 25.4MB, 2:36 min)
Nearest thing to a Picasso we yet have, in my view.
Whatever history decides, there’s no denying one point
of Sondheim/Picasso commonality – an almost compulsive
productivity.
I’d push it further -they both constantly transform lead into
gold. Picasso & his seat & handlebars, Sondheim, for example,
these bits of video.
The music, a kind of hallucinogenic, shredded-up
slow funk/blues, is also particularly noteworthy.
Here, for good measure, is Alan’s accompanying rubric:
prisoners of motion capture, prisoners of west virginia
prisoners of caloric, froid, prisoners of gravitation
prisoners of art, mayhem, vandal, prisoners of desecration
o to be a prisoner of life again (above the clouds
o to be a prisoner of love again (within the waters
o to be a prisoner of truth again (beyond the earths
o to be a prisoner of dance again (before the fires
prisoners of fires, froid, prisoners of aerostat and transport
transport of prisoners, clouds, waters, earths, fluids
yes, prisoners of fluids, prisoners of fluids and places
prisoners of west virginia, of fluids, places, life, love,
truth and dance again
Le P’tit Bal (1994, 35MB, 3:48 min)
Total joy !!
Video: Philippe Decouflé.
Song: Le P’tit Bal Perdu by André Bourvil.
Borders (2010, 201 MB, 3:59 min, silent)
Worth every second of the download for this extraordinary
piece from young UK artist Liz Sterry, a digital arts student at the design school in Writtle, Essex, UK.
It’s an astonishingly assured bit of conceptual gorgeousness.
I’m particularly taken with..what’s the word.. the ..um..rightness of judgement
with which it was shot and assembled – on the surface thrown together
but everything combining so easily & elegantly to create something of
logic, power and great beauty.
*Transparency – where I currently teach.
Anarchy In The UK (2007, 45.4MB, 4:44 min)
Anarchy In The UK has been a bit of a theme of late here on dvblog.
Now, from the indispensable Rupert Howe comes this breathtaking version.
Not only is it extremely funny, with an off the meter chutzpah quotient,
(witness the animal terror in the eyes of the guys on the tube towards the end)
but like a lot of Rupert’s work it’s a kind of contemporary London travelogue
(of the best sort: hard edged, eyes wide open truthful & hence beautiful) too.
My Miwoo [Tai Chi Weekend Control] (2007, 24.6MB, 50 secs)
Aī-Hz, real name Michael Renassia,
is a French visual performer living and working in Tokyo.
His site contains possibly my favourite biographical nugget ever:
‘He is using compositing software in a diverted way, and real-time mixing
instruments with the aim to create a noisy/pop universe…’
Now, who could possibly object to that?
This piece is rather lovely – the thing that totally makes it for me
is the epiphanic moment at the end when the music/animation stops &
the person appears ..there’s a haunting sense of time suspended..
So, for me, 10/10 for visuals.
I am pretty bored ,though, with the by-the-yard avant-dance music
that accompanies so much work of this kind..it’s not bad
or anything, just pedestrian…
Native Dancer (2011, 92MB, 2:08 min)
Genbush (2006, 48MB, 6:03 min)
Two pieces from Alan Sondheim -one we originally posted in 2006
and one in 2011. The piece –Native Dancer –
is a particularly affecting example of recent motion capture/avatar work.
It properly forms part of a triptych but I think it is the outstanding of the
three and I’m going to exercise curatorial perogative & post it singly.
It enchants me -I don’t know exactly why, I think the reasons could be
quite banal -there’s something of the children’s TV sci-fi epic about it perhaps…
Don’t know, just love it.
And here’s what we originally said about the other piece, which I see no reason to change:
Humor is perhaps not a quality that springs immediately
to mind when discussing the work of Alan Sondheim.
Wrong! His work is saturated in it, often a species of
graveyard or gallows wit.
Here, though, he just lets loose, plays.
But the man is incapable of doing anything that doesn’t
resonate with layer upon layer of meaning too!
I Want To See How You See (2003, 55.2MB, 4:48 min)
Hallucinatory, luscious, with a hint of darkness: approaching the
formulaic but, if so, certainly a winning formula for Rist & as
always undoubtedly beautifully & imaginatively wrought,
a video portrait of the writer & curator Cornelia Providoli,
found on the consistently excellent Lumen Eclipse site.
Last Wine (2013, 96MB, 2:50 min)
Anyone who has followed DVblog for any time at all will know how much we
admire & value the work of Alan Sondheim.
He commands a huge range of technique and tone in both his writing and moving
image work. At one point of his compass there is the fiercely cerebral; at
another a rich humour & at yet another a sense of fellow feeling with, a
striving to understand some of our most puzzling and yet everyday feelings
and states of mind.
Things we’ve all encountered in relationships with family, friends and strangers.
This is a particularly moving piece, the more so because of its uncertainty of tone
– its enactment of the sad awkwardnesses of human interaction.
me (2008, 12MB, 1:06 min loop)
slbarrier (2008, 33.1 MB, 4:32 min.)
elo1 (2008, 46.3 MB, 5:26 min.)
Three from 2008. As always, utterly watchable and quite unparallelled.
PS I’m going to post beneath a text piece by Sondheim from around the
time the movies were made, not because it has any direct
relevance to them (though of course it has relevance)
but because it’s great & a further demonstration, if such were required,
of his range of technique and vision…
she can MOVE FRUIT FROM ONE KIND OF TREE TO ANOTHER
she can MAKE OTHERS FALL ASLEEP OR WAKE AT WILL
she can MAKE FIRE BLAZE FROM WEAPONS
she can FLY THROUGH AIR
she can SEE THROUGH WALLS
she can TRANSFORM A CAVE INTO A PALACE AND SEAL THE EXITS
she can REMOVE THE TUSKS AND TRUNK FROM AN ELEPHANT AND RESTORE THEM
she can MAKE A KING SPEECHLESS AND RESTORE HIS SPEECH
she can GENERATE DEMONS AND COMPLETE DEMONS
she can END DROUGHT AND HEAL ILLNESS
she can SUBDUE LIONS AND TIGERS AND BRING THEM TO FAITH
she can REMOVE ARMS AND LEGS FROM SOLDIERS AND RESTORE THEM
she knows ALL LANGUAGES AND ALL DOCTRINES
she can EAT ENDLESSLY AND DRY UP WELL SPRINGS AND RESTORE THEM
she can CUT OFF HER HEAD AND FLY THROUGH THE AIR AND RESTORE IT
she can MOVE A BUFFALO AND HER CALF BACK TO THEIR HOME
she is SAFE FROM ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND BLOWS WITH CUDGEL AND ARROW
she can TURN AROUND ARROWS IN FULL FLIGHT
she can TURN INTO AN OLD WOMAN AND BACK AGAIN
she can SEE THINGS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD
she knows ALL FUTURE AND ALL PAST EVENTS
she meditates FOR DAYS ON END WITHOUT SLEEP OR DRINK OR FOOD
she can HOLD SEVEN HUNDRED UMBRELLAS ABOVE HER WITHOUT TOUCHING THEM
she can RAISE THE DEAD AND RESTORE THEM TO DEATH
she can BE IN SEVERAL PLACES AT ONCE
she can TRAVEL INSTANTANEOUSLY FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER
she can MAKE SMALL THINGS ENORMOUS AND ENORMOUS THINGS SMALL
she can MAKE DEVOTIONAL IMAGES CRUMBLE AND RESTORE THEM
she can CARRY A TEMPLE ON HER BACK
she can CLIMB ENDLESS STAIRS AND OTHERS CANNOT FOLLOW HER
she fits THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE INTO A TINY CORNER OF A CAVE OR HOUSE
she disappears AND APPEARS AT WILL
she conquers DEATH
she eats CORPSES URINE EXCREMENT SEMEN MENSTRUAL BLOOD
her slightest MOVEMENT TRANSFORMS WORLDS
her dance CREATES AND ANNIHILATES WORLD
she loosens BOUND ANIMALS AND RELEASES THEM
she can WALK ON WATER AND WALK THROUGH FLAMES
she can CAUSE THE EARTH TO QUAKE AND FLOWERS TO FALL LIKE RAIN
she can DISCOVER HIDDEN TREASURES
she can WALK THROUGH WALLS AND CLIFFS
she can SEAL CAVES AND CREATE GREAT HALLS WITHIN THEM
she can MAKE HERSELF INVISIBLE AND MAKE HERSELF VISIBLE AGAIN
she can CREATE OVERWHELMING TEMPESTS
she can SUBDUE SNAKES AND OTHER WILD ANIMALS
she can SING PERFECT SONGS OF HER OWN DEVISING
she can ALLEVIATE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE ELDERLY
she can ALLEVIATE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE POOR
she can SCORCH CLOTHES AND RESTORE THEM
she can READ MINDS CLOSE BY AND AT A DISTANCE
she can EAT ANY SORT OF IMPURITIES
she can LAUGH AN EIGHT FOLD LAUGHTER
she can DRAW STELES AND JEWELS FROM THE GROUND
she can ERECT VAST PALACES AT AN INSTANT
she extracts POISON FROM WATER AND WALKS THROUGH BLAZING FLAMES
she can CHOOSE THE DATE AND TIME OF HER DEATH
she can MAKE DRUMS AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS TO SOUND BY THEMSELVES
her steps MEASURE GREAT OR TINY DISTANCES AT HER WILL
her gaze CAN SHATTER AND RESTORE ANYTHING
she can TRANSFORM HERSELF INTO A SKELETON AND A RAINBOW BODY
her gaze CAN OPEN CAVES IN SOLID ROCK AND SEAL THEM AGAIN
she remembers HER PAST AND FUTURE BIRTHS
she can TARRY WITH CONSORTS WITH OR WITHOUT ELABORATION
she can SELF ILLUMINATE
she can WALK AIMLESSLY DAY AND NIGHT
she can SPREAD THE SCENT OF PERFUMES IN EVERY DIRECTION
she can SIT LIE OR WALK IN MID AIR
she can WEAR APRONS OF BONES
she is FLEET FOOTED
she changes THE COLOR OF HER BODY AT WILL
Job’s Comforters (2013, 3MB, 7:00 min)
Those who associate Edward Picot solely with his marvellous Dr Hairy series,
wickedly funny and pointed satire in the kind of lo-fi/hand made tradition
that comes down from Postgate and Firmin might be quite taken
aback by this. You have to watch the whole thing. Until shortly before the
end you seem to be simply watching a poetic & minimal retelling of a bible
story, then the whole thing suddenly lurches several gears into the kind of
territory that one associates more with Tarr and Kasznahorkai at their most
bleak and disturbing (and somehow their most bracing and exhilarating too).
It’s a punch to the solar plexus of a piece and simply magnificent.
I don’t know where its bleakness comes from or takes us but what it does
en route burns into you.
Kerry Baldry is an enormously generous spirit – her curatorial efforts around the various
One Minutes compilations have given a good many moving image artists reason
to be grateful.
She is also herself a maker of fine work with an intensity both of focus and of feeling.
In this piece everything falls together.
She touches the familiar with wonder and terror.
Belgrades (2013, 50MB, 4:04 min)
Neat music video – for a D J Investor track – from Martin Rychicki a.k.a GAC,
originally from Poland and now Paris resident.
The bendy Sax is particularly fetching.
Assured & engaging movie making.
No More Workhorse Blues (2006, 6.4MB, 2:55 min.)
Will Oldham a.k.a Bonnie Prince Billy is a writer/performer
of unusual talent & significance.
Extremely smart, genuine skill with language (in many registers)
a wide range of cultural reference, a sense of being part of a
larger tradition, but also a rootedness –
the mining of a very specific & personal seam.
Then, still, within this – a capacity to surprise, even shock.
An integrity.
Here he teams up with Harmony Korine who matches the
complex richness of the song with a roquefort of a video:-
a sweet rottenness -simultaeneously intensely delicious
& to the same degree inducing a certain queasiness.
Boundary Cyclone Transaction (2013, 233 MB, 6:46 min)
There’s an odd mixture, in varying quantities, of bone dry wit and
a strain of almost ecstatic lyricism in the work of Steven Ball.
This is combined with an interest in formal governing devices
(how much they actually govern and how much it is part of the
expressive character of the works that they should appear
to so do I don’t know)
Steven, I’m delighted to say, made this piece especially to
be unveiled here on DVblog and it was something worth waiting for.
I append some of his notes to the piece.
****************************************************************
“Lists remind us that no matter how fluidly a system may operate,
its members nevertheless remain utterly isolated, mutual aliens.
Ontographical cataloging hones a virtue: the abandonment of
anthropocentric narrative coherence in favor of worldly detail.”
“…ontography is a practice of increasing the number and density
[of things], one that sometimes opposes the minimalism of contemporary
art. Instead of removing elements to achieve the elegance of simplicity,
ontography adds (or simply leaves) elements to accomplish the realism
of multitude. It is a practice of exploding the innards of things.”
– Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomonology
Imagine this as a premiss:
the world as it appears is only as it appears to you
and perhaps
the world
actually
appears in arbitrary order
Boundary Cyclone Transaction takes Ian Bogost’s characterisation
of the ontographic list and uses it as a process by which to
auto-construct a picture of a non-human, which is perhaps to
say alien, world, or at least one such as can be constructured
using material found on or through the internet. As such it
also presents a fragment of what might be considered as th
e consciousness of the internet as manifested in image, sound and text.
The video consists of collections of image sequences, written words,
spoken words and sounds. The order in which each of those elements
presents themselves to the viewer has been determined randomly,
therefore any juxtaposition of the elements is entirely arbitrary.
The words used are nouns, i.e. they are things, objects, they
were selected using a random word generator. The sounds consist
mostly of recording of environmental phenomena, such as weather
or recordings of cosmic energies, generally speaking non-human
sounds. The image sequences are all found online and consist of
landscapes, insects, animals, images of microscopic organisms
and viruses, astronomical image, in other words also largely
non-human. Both sounds and images were found through using
keyword searches. It was important in the making of the work
for the elements to be as removed from what I might customarily
intentionally select, for them to be as far away from the
familiarity of the (my) everyday, as possible.
Alienation is a state arising from objects in the world, as they
present themselves inevitably arbitrarily and without a coherent
narrative. In this video the use of random processes aims to
make coherence impossible, or as difficult as possible, while
still, due to the linear and temporal nature of its reception,
will still self-organise into a kind of self-coherent ecosystem.
The longer term aim is for this video to be realised in performance,
to perform itself, using software to randomly order the playback
sequence of the discrete elements and media objects (images,
words, sounds) for every iteration.
Reliving and All Falling (2012, 206 MB, 4:42 min)
Lyric moving image poetry that keeps on giving, in proportion to time
spent with. I particularly admire the carefully structured and evocative
soundtrack – there’s a moment towards the end where a deep rumble starts
to suggest the rhythm of the waves we have been watching but never quite
completely coheres and this specific ambiguity typifies the richness of
the use of sound in general.
Visually, the angled image makes us more carefully examine and really see,
drink in, the casual beauties – in delicious high contrast B&W – placed before us.
Lovely.
Baldessari Sings LeWitt (excerpt) (1972, 10MB, 3:38 min)
In which John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt’s
sentences on conceptual art.
From the indispensible Ubuweb.
2 Humans, 1 Paper (2013, 10MB, 3:38 min)
I first stumbled across Osvaldo Cibils and his marvellously eclectic and well..simply marvellous work.
So simple but so, so telling. Kind of Buster Keaton meets Bruce Nauman meets something hard to pin down but lyrical, grotesque and smart all at once.
My kind of artist.
+++
2 humans 1 paper
video art/soundart.
performance with plotter paper 200 x 107 centimeters.
performers: fiorella alberti architect and osvaldo cibils artist.
place: artist’s studio. Via della Cervara, 55 – 38121 – Trento (TN) Italia
22 march 2013, 20 hours
Simply British (2013, 77MB, 4:03 min)
Hi Lucy,
I think it’s really good. Who did the Hard Day’s Night remix?
I really like the way it is clearly a powerful comment on lots of things to do with the contrast between Britishness & flag waving and national hubris &c. and the actual situation for many people, but it’s never simply a piece of agit-prop.
At first I thought its slowness in unfolding might be a problem but I like the way it makes us take the time to think, with the various repeated images (like the bus with the slogan on it) but also with different material developing against the background you establish, especially the ever present and heartbreaking Big Issue guy – it turns out to be slow burning as opposed to slow. I also like the 90 degree rotation of some of the stuff and the way that then fits rather nicely into empty-ish spaces in the other “channel”. Great work – congratulations!
michael
I Wasn’t always Dressed Like This [Trailer] (2013, 120MB, 1:42 min)
If the substantive piece (which I gather is about 33 minutes in length) is
anything like as good as this trailer promises it will be stunning.
This has all the hallmarks of the previous piece by Betty Martins – When the Souls Arrive – we posted here : beautifully made, scrupulously attentive to those being observed/interviewed but with its own quite particular gentle and steely authorial stamp.
(I usually hate anthropomorphising art – you know the thing, ‘this piece investigates’ &c. – except here
I am sorely tempted to say that Martin’s work ‘knows how to listen’. Of course what I mean is Martins knows how to listen, carefully and empathetically, and then to re-configure parts of that listening and looking and understanding too as moving image soaked with detail and feeling.)
In addition the subject matter could not be more timely: a broadside of delicate
beauty in the face of bigotry.
Play Local (2013, 69MB, 3:58 min)
Enchanting video by Tom White of a sound/music outreach project he ran in Peckham, South London on behalf, appropriately, of the South London Gallery.
There are so many piss-poor arts outreach projects. So nice to observe that this one was clearly brilliant.
The Caretaker (2013, 397MB, 7:24 min)
We’ve been following Morrisa Maltz‘s work since just about the beginning and we’re delighted to show here her first longer, narrative (well, if you count fever dream as narrative), piece.
Quite a lot of firepower (lots of collaborators) deployed here, happily to excellent effect ( In fact the piece actually directed by Lauren Lillie although the look of it is pure & vintage MM). It all retains in buckets the goose-bump factor of earlier work but embeds it into a very satisfyingly rounded whole.
This is great work; it deserves to be seen widely.
Blindness (1971/1991/2011/2012, 37MB, 3:18 min)
I’m a huge fan of Curt Cloninger’s work, especially his virtuosic but often profoundly moving ( and how often do you hear that word in connection with new media*?) Playdamage sequence.
Here he simply mashes up a section of a 1971 Acconci video with a Jack White cover of a U2 song.
Actually to say mashes up is making it more complex than it is which is – visuals – Acconci; sound – U2 through White. Genius – Cloninger.
*except of course for the ridiculous Bill Viola, where it’s so clearly used by the very easily pleased.
Dream Home (2012, 61MB, 1:00 min)
Don’t Know Y (2010, 116MB, 2:23 min)
I first encountered Nikki Rolls’ work through Kerry Baldry’s splendid One Minutes series.( In fact we featured another piece by her in our very first post about that series)
As with so many of the artists included in that series she’s an amply justified curatorial choice;
her work is subtle, thought provoking and very beautiful.
She makes tiny ( or sometimes none, except to select) interventions into found (sometimes “found from herself”) images or footage which have a transformative effect and an expressive force much greater than one might have any right to predict. Beautiful.
I Don’t Want Your Lasagne Furnace (2009, 41.4MB, 2:23 min)
Artists I really care for tend to fall into two distinct categories.
The first is the extensive or Picasso category – refusing to be
bound by stylistic limitations or boxes they constantly
reinvent themselves, often seeming like ten artists in one skin.
The other might be called the Giacometti or Morandi model, where
the best part of a lifetime is devoted to an intensive, deep,
exploration of a limited set of themes and content.
They have in common more than would at first appear to be the case.
They are both led by a kind of shamanistic passion, a surrender to
the unconscious, to whim, to a playfulness which can be either infantile
or deadly serious, and they reject the most common practice which is the
dull conformity of making work which attempts to guess the market,
or follow fashion or whatever.
If Sondheim is the net exemplar of the first way then Donna Kuhn
must typify the second.
Small miracles of freshness & originality mined and chiselled from
a tiny pallette! Wit and sadness both! Wonder! Delight!
Thanksgiving Prayer (1986, 7.6MB, 2:21 min.)
An astonishing rendition by William Burroughs of his
‘Thanksgiving Prayer’ in a short video directed by
Gus Van Sant.
What’s Opera Doc? (1957, 57.2MB, 6:52 min)
Remember the tingle down the spine when the first song kicks in in
the musical episode of Buffy?
Well, here’s the template from 1957.
Cartoons featuring talking and singing animals performing opera simply
do not get better than this.
Wishing you all a very happy holiday season…
Morse Gestures (2009, 28.6MB, 2:54 min)
Floating Cup (2009, 1.35MB, 28 secs, silent)
Suitcase in a Box (2009, 59.6MB, 1:00 min)
Assured & smart domestic surrealism from Ben Pranger.
Belt Crossing (2009, 9.1MB, 1:04 min)
Absolutely exquisite 2009 Lumière from Sam Renseiw
La Biennale (Dictum Ac Factum) (2009, 63MB, 1:40 min)
Nicely made, kind of de Chirico-ish in its
sense-of-place-that-never-was & the way it
haunts you long after viewing, this piece from
Aleksandra Domanovic featured as part of the
Padiglione Internet of the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Oh –Dictum ac Factum – ‘No Sooner Said than Done’, apparently.
modern life (2005, 3.6MB, 3:13 min)
grass spider (2005, 6.1MB, 2:55 min)
2005 work from Lewis LaCook.
He seems to have dropped out of sight.
A shame, he made startling and splendid work in a number of media.
Update: I looked – he’s here and .
Good.
Breakblast (2008, 7.7MB, 1:01 min, silent)
Breakblast (2007, 4.9MB, 55 secs, silent)
Over the fence and here we go (2006, 4.4MB, 49 secs, silent)
Three stop motion pieces, economical &
elegant all, from Finnish artist Timo Vaittinen.
I like the (justified) confidence their silence
demonstrates.
The Cut-Ups (clip) (1966, 15.4MB, 1:20 min.)
William Burroughs & co-conspirators made this in 1966.
1966! – could’ve been the day after tomorrow.
Penmanship (2010, 75 MB,2:59 min)
Genius.
Is that an actor, or frighteningly, is it appropriated documentary
of some normally little viewed, fringe sort?
Failure is an Option (2010, 53 MB, 2:03 min)
More rum goings-on from the prodigously talented Will Goss.
Is that the Kalevala?
More on Thursday.
Paisajes del placer y de la culpa #1 (2008, 119MB, 7:49 min)
Paisajes del placer y de la culpa #2 (2008, 74MB, 4:52 min)
José M. Sánchez-Verdú is a Spanish composer who creates richly textured and
sensuous music in an uncompromisingly contemporary idiom.
His richness is no frippery but properly fought for and won.
Here is a short movie, in two parts, made by David Olmos, about whom I can find
no information whatsoever, which blends a fictional narrative with footage of
an orchestral performance of one of Sánchez-Verdú’s works
Paisajes del placer y de la culpa – Landscapes
of Pleasure and Guilt.
The film is undoubtedly skillfully made but I remain slightly agnostic
about its premise or even necessity; however no such doubts about some
of the most extraordinary music of recent years.
I grabbed the film from YouTube and as you can see the image quality isn’t great
although in some ways the graininess appeals and seems apposite to the subject.
Nova Scotia Fires (1969, 5MB, 3:00 min)
I hadn’t, to my shame, heard of the late David Askevold until the Camden Arts Centre
put on a beautifully put together and gripping retrospective last year.
Here’s one of the pieces on show then. It’s not particularly great quality plus
it’s in a tiny window but it does conjure (perhaps an appropriately Askevoldian
choice of word) something of the impact -witty, smart and otherwordly – of his work.
* and there’s a good review of that here.
TyryTyry (2012, 133MB, 2:06 min)
Nice bit of work from Polish film maker and musician Martin Rychlicki, who also
trades as DJ Gacmaster & GacPax,
for a track by DJ Investor.
We’ve featured Rychlicki’s rather winning work here before and no doubt will again.
Horses (2004, 16.7MB, 4:37 min)
Agnes video by David Shrigley
& Horses by Braden King,
both of them classy bits of work.
There’s a PhD to be had for someone along the lines of
‘The Curatorial Role of the Recording Artist’.
BPB/Will Oldham’s CD cover art never disappoints –
the acme of hip good taste ( though not in a bland way, I think)
– & the same is true of his videos.
I particularly love the projection-within-the vid trope of Horses.
Also -what songs!
Says Albert Nanning:
‘I’m a writer (poems mostly) and photographer, living and working
in Amsterdam. My age is 41. See also. The last five years I’ve made
so many pictures due to the digital workflow that by accident
I discovered a way to give all those pictures that I don’t use
a kind of meaning by putting them in a clip that I made.
Most pictures are from Amsterdam. I made
the clip with iMovie.’
& nicely it works too…
Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds (2008, 5.6MB, 24 secs)
It’s funny – even when Sondheim does picturesque there’s
something very defiantly personal about his take on it.
Here it’s the way that the sequence of images just occasionally
looks as if it hadn’t been thrown together at random but
most of the time it does.
And this does not matter -in fact it’s an asset -there’s a shamanic
urgency to everything Sondheim does which is wholly engaging.
Woah (2009, 6.1MB, 41 sec loop)
Bush Shoe (2009, 2.8MB, 27 secs)
Protest (2009, 14.1MB, 26 secs)
It’s the James-Bond-Martini scenario – tinder dry & leaving you
both shaken and stirred.
Three reasons to say “Huzzah for Brittany Shoot!“.
PS nobody in the UK actually says Huzzah, whatever you might have been told.
Beanstalk [from Magenta’s Caress #3] (2010, 125 MB, 3:50 min)
This is great. It forcibly calls to mind the early work of the sainted Hal Hartley
and whilst it’s arguable that some of what’s on offer here is like a sort
of condensed supercharged bucket of HH’s stylistic tics I find none of that
irritating in the way I might have expected, rather it’s a definite plus, by some odd
counter-intuitive magic. It’s the very over-the-topness of it all that lends
it its huge charm.
More from Will Goss soon.
Climax (2006, 6.2MB, 1:11 min)
We’ve featured Anthony Rousseau’s excellent work here before
this is one of many great pieces you can see on his blog.
I’ve focussed in on this one because I think it’s particularly interesting
in its capacity to be genuinely disturbing in a number of ways over a short spell of time.
Made from appropriated Prelinger footage, Rousseau says it is
Une construction filmique dont la ligne directrice est la
traduction d’angoisses et de peurs infantiles.
‘A filmic construction of which the directorial line is the translation of childhood fears and anguish’
Now, before I read that, I was thinking what Rousseau had done cleverly
& to powerful effect was to deploy many of the tropes of the horror genre
so we fear for, not with, the child.
But then I suppose many of those devices are indeed rooted in
our peurs infantiles & in fact we do both.
Smart. Smart, rich, good.
Rain Down On Me: 10:00 am (2012, 22MB, 1:27 min)
Rain Down On Me: 3:43pm (2012, 20MB, 1:01 min)
Rain Down On Me: 6:00pm (2012, 110MB, 6:32 min)
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 14 September 2012, 10am – 6pm:
Curt Cloninger repeatedly performs a short excerpt from the
Radiohead song “Paranoid Android” for eight hours blindfolded.
The performance is the fourth in an ongoing series.
Video documentation by Alice Sebrell
Talkin’ Singularity Blues (2012, 186MB, 8:13 min)
Robert Loggia [trailer] (2012, 43MB, 1:39 min)
We’ve shown work -very individual and promising work –
from Tony Arnold before and we’re delighted to do so again.
There’s an energy and freshness to his work and a kind
of volcanic flow of creativity which is invigorating.
The first of these pieces is accompanied by music from
Arnold himself, which I like very much. The second is a trailer
for a full length piece which you can view in its entirety here.
Ad-Vice for a Prophet (2005, 78.6MB, 6:59 min)
I wrote the text below in, I think, 2008.
[In case you didn’t notice we’re intermittently re-posting stuff previously
posted on weekends in line with our 5 day a week current policy
– it also takes a bit of the pressure off which, two old guys,
we feel, we feel].
Since then Rafman has gone on to achieve a measure of well deserved
celebrity, showing at the Saatchi Gallery in London amongst other
prestigious venues, especially with his 9 eyes of google street view
I notice the piece we feature here no longer appears on his CV or website.
A shame – it has many merits – not least of which is an embryonic
version of the sensibility which underpins his more current work
although I entirely understand why artists occasionally attempt
to take a broom to old work.
Great piece by Jon Rafman.
I love the refusal to commit to a tone, the playfulness & humor, the wistfulness &
sometimes the vaguest air of menace too.
There’s a curious feel. An air of detachment, as if nothing can be said
directly but that everything is mediated & distanced by the act of editing
and presenting, serving up, (as with the ads).
The whole thing feels haunted by movie history.
I’m curious to know whether this is all found footage, whether some of it is
original or what.
Anyway, tremendous. Lots of other interesting
work on his site.
Character 3/3 – Iris (2012, 67MB, 1:20 min)
Last one of three and all a pleasure to post and to view.
Here’s to lots more work from Morrisa.
I’m Dreaming of a White President (2012, 15MB, 3:16 min)
Great bit of film-making to match a genius song.
But…but…
Of course you want Obama to win just
to wrongfoot the racists et. al. but you
can’t help wishing he’d actually done something
to merit the mad hostility of the rich, the bigots
and the terminally gullible.
Character 1/3 [Infinite Loop] (2012, 130MB, 1:07 min)
I love Morrisa Maltz’s work. I particularly relish the way
she doesn’t rest on her laurels but pushes herself ever on to new
and (over-used word in the arts but, I think, apposite here)
fearless ways of thinking about and making things.
This is the first of three pieces best described, literally,
as moving pictures.
Tremendous!
Sunday Afternoon Narcissism (2012, 190MB, 2:46 min)
Hypnotic and disorientating chunk of enchantment from London artist
Lucy Mills.
Only one cavil and that’s the title – the self-deprecation involved might
serve to camouflage the actual richness of this piece, at least from the
casual viewer*.
Let’s be optimistic and assume careful viewing, which work of
this quality certainly merits.
* Although, on reflection, the ‘Sunday Afternoon’ also suggests a certain
dreamy languor quite in keeping with just how gently ravishing it all is.
