Sondheim – Prisoners

Prisoners
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

Ruth Catlow – overland

overland
overland (2010, 131MB, 2:58 min)

And sadly, the last in our little season of movies by Ruth Catlow. This is another
train movie, no conceptual underpinnings to speak of this time, just a beautiful,
bleached out pastels, lo-fi ( mobile?) account of the Serbian section of a journey by train to Istanbul
last year when she was refusing ‘to fly for art’, something more people should do more often if
the results here are anything to go by.
More from Ruth, of course, as she produces it…

Scritti Politti – pop sublimity

Word Girl
The Word Girl (1985, 7.62MB, 3:14 min)

Oh Patti
Oh Patti (1988, 20.3MB, 4:14 min)

Two of the most perfect pop songs ever made, the first from
1985’s Cupid & Psyche & the second from 1988’s Provision
(& which features a trumpet solo from Miles Davis of staggering
economy & otherworldly beauty).
Pet Sounds excepted, pop music just doesn’t come better.
The vids aren’t just an adjunct – of course they have historical
interest (that weird decade!), but there’s something fragile
& haunting & mysterious there which survives the occasional impossible
to overlook moment of naffness.
Wonderful.

Annie Pui Ling Lok

EP
EP (2008, 45MB, 2:29 min)

Anyone who has been lucky enough to see dancer & artist Annie Pui Ling Lok
do the former will know what a fruitful combination of fierce, almost austere,
intellect & yet sensitivity to the particular, the fragile & the human, to expect.
There’s such a sure hand at work here – the confidence in collaging
disparate material brings Marker to mind & although we’ve tagged it
‘experimental’, in one sense the piece is anything but -it’s so not
a technical exercise, but a rounded, resonant work of art.

More from Regina Célia Pinto

Paintings

Neste vídeo há uma grande delicadeza, uma fragilidade,
que não deve levar a pensar que essa peça de Regina Pinto
é de alguma forma ocasional ou menos artística.
Em vez disso, esse é o trabalho de um artista maduro,
sem nada a provar, e com a enorme liberdade que isso traz.
Um estudo de todo o corpo de seu trabalho evidencia
amplamente tudo isso e mostra quão profundamente
consistente e coerente ele se apresenta.
Poder-se-ia ainda acrescentar o quanto ele nos emociona,
o quanto é estranho e muito bonito.

There’s a delicacy, a fragility, about this piece
that shouldn’t lead one to think that Regina Célia Pinto’s
work is in any way casual or artless.
Rather, this is the work of a mature artist with
nothing to prove and the enormous freedom that brings.
A study of the whole body of her work
amply bears this out.
It shows just how consistent and deeply considered
it is and, one should add, how affecting, how strange
and how very beautiful.

Toby Tatum –The Golden Age

the golden age
The Golden Age (2011, 181MB, 5:34 min)

We’ve posted Toby Tatum’s work
before and it’s work with a definite charge to it and ambitious too.

I think this piece is more wholly successful than its predecessor but I’m still not totally convinced.
It’s something to do with the aim of conjuring a very precise & particular
dream-world which strikes me as an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of approach,
in that the tiniest false note disrupts the sought for spell.
Therefore Tatum creates a very high bar indeed for himself and his performers.

If one compares similarly oneiric work by Cocteau, Lynch or Hadžihalilović,
however dense and rich the atmosphere gets, there is variation with humour
or banality preparing us for more poetry to come and somehow too, framing it,
setting it off.
That sounds more critical that I want to be for this is, in every respect, a
very nicely realised and haunting piece.

Next week, or the week after, we’ll post an interview with Tatum about his work.

Another from Ruth Catlow

as i looked up
travel images unseen (2011, 156MB, 6:01 min)

‘5 video clips taken on a simple video camera, through a window on a coach to the
plane from Istanbul and arriving in London by train. Selected by and stitched, unseen
by the creator who will never watch the video, ever.’

The gentlest conceptualism & quite, quite lovely too.
There’s something about knowing the premise that leaves one
very open – one could say innoculates one – to its formal consequences –
here a looseness which somehow gently stretches time, makes it grainier
but conversely sharpens our attention, perhaps to make up for the
maker’s own vow of abstention.
One more in the series to come.