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.
Disappearing Body (2012, 44MB, 1:02min loop)
Time marches on but some things don’t change and one of these is
our unbounded admiration here for the work of Alan Sondheim.
This is a perhaps a lollipop in comparison to some of his work but
it is, as always, rich and beautiful and lodges both in the conscious
mind and in our dreams.
Says Sondheim:
Mark Esper’s Two-Tone Enlightenment work forms the basis
of this short video. The screen presents shadows as positive,
not negative; infrared light forms the projection source
which is read and interpreted by revolving LEDs.
The body disappears. In the video, I imitated the effect
using video echo in an attempt to erase the body almost
entirely. Mark’s piece is brilliant, and the video is a
byproduct; I take advantage of the illumination to create
a somewhat clumsy series of movements.
Thus the mechanical is made virtual, and the virtual made
mechanical; such reversals form the core of theory povera.
Eat up, Little Pearl – trailer (2012, 42MB, 3:26min)
Absolutely wonderful promotional/performance video from US performance/dance
outfit Mad King Thomas (whom I know little about but would love to see),
the vid directed, apparently, by Kevin Obsatz who was behind the
video haikus we posted in July.
Video…&..er…troupe…all great, great.
Emily Richardson -‘Over the Horizon’ (extract) (2012, 75MB, 1:10min)
We’ll start this season with an suggestion for something you
can physically attend and absolutely should, too, if you’re
anywhere near London this Thursday evening (Sept 27th).
As part of the London Underground Film Sessions
The Horse Hospital are premiering Volume 6 of Kerry Baldry‘s
exemplary ‘One Minutes’ compilations of …er… one-minute-in-length
artist moving image work.
Transparency dictates I reveal I have a piece in it, but any claims
for mine aside, I can confidently predict a wonderfully varied, well
curated, roller coaster of work.
This piece is an extract from a longer work by Emily Richardson
(and, of course, splendid though it is, showing a single piece
immediately traduces one of the principal attractions of the project
which is the heady variety and contrast of it all. Here and here
is some stuff from previous volumes)
Hope to see you there!
History of the Demonstrations (2012, 211MB, 15:53 min)
A Statement by Luaty Beirão (2012, 34MB, 7:05 min)
Three connected movies, which connect in a very direct way with the world about us.
For the last couple of years, simultaneously with the ‘Arab spring’ there have been
a number of similar movements around the world where ordinary folk have stood up for
the right to free speech and the right to a decent life, mostly both.
This happened on a small scale in the Southern African country of Angola where the inheritors
of the magnificent struggle against imperialism in the 70s seem to have forgotten their roots,
perhaps lulled by power and the good life it can bring to a few. A small but dogged and effective
campaign for democracy and against corruption, poverty and police state begaviour sprang up amongst
young people there.
The first video is a documentary relating the beginning, growth of this movement and subsequent
attempted government repression.
( You can find some more info , from Human Rights Watch, here)
Our second video is a track by the Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão, better known as Ikonoklasta
which is a tremendously entertaining bit of agit-prop against the regime.
It clearly struck home because the Angolan security forces have attempted to frame Beirão by
secreting a substantial amount of cocaine in a bicycle wheel in his possession on a flight
from Angola to Portugal.
The third video is Luaty Beirão’s statement upon and account of these events.
Watch the videos and draw you own conclusions – I do not for a moment believe Beirão is guilty
of anything except bravery and standing up to oppression.
We’ll leave you with these videos for the summer a reminder there’s art and there’s life and there’s
not a lot of space between.
We’re going to take a break until mid September-ish when we’ll be back with mostly
art videos but anything else that amuses, inspires or outrages us.
If you have stuff you think we’d like, send us links – we look at everything we’re sent.
It remains only to wish you all a nice and relaxing summer if you can manage it.
The Visitors (2012, 42MB, 3:51min)
Exquisite work from Simon Mclennan, whom we’ve celebrated here before
and will again.
Rehabilitates that near-cliché “poetic” as applied to moving image…
mailman, moron, superman (2008, 76.3MB, 3:27 min)
Spinning (2008, 47.2 MB, 2:00 min)
Two pieces from Donna Kuhn in 2008.
I wrote then:
We’ve shown a number of pieces by Donna Kuhn here previously.
I wondered to myself a couple of times, I must admit, whether the fact of
having developed such an intensely freighted and personal syntax and vocabulary might
not at some point become a block to further development, whether there was a limit to
the elaboration (and not of course simply the formal elaboration but of how much
in the way of new approaches to her subject matter this process could be made to yield) of this
admittedly extraordinarily beautiful and singular set of moves.
Well no sign of it yet – instead there is this remarkable process of intensification,
of continual, ever finer and more nuanced scrutiny, distillation and development.
It’s like watching an never ending succession of rabbits being pulled out of
hats and it’s quite, quite beautiful and moving.
All of it something of a masterclass, but the use of sound especially colors me
green with envy – wonderful!
iKast 2012 (2012, 70MB, 3:23min)
iKast voodoodoodles (2012, 89MB, 2:35min)
voodoo 1 (2012, 362MB, 9:58min)
Here’s some more gripping work from Michael Barnes-Wynters a.k.a Barney Doodlebug
who previously opened my eyes to a thriving live arts scene in Manchester, UK.
Featured here are two videos of a new piece by Michael which figured in i-Kast,
“a live intervention transmission for www.artplayer.tv with artists roney fraser-munroe,
naomi kashiwagi and michael barnes-wynters” in May of this year.
The first video is an excellent short documentary overview of the event
with interviews with key figures.
Michael is going to be running an event for 15-25 year olds as part of the season
in the new Tate Modern space “The Tanks” on Thursday 23 August.
Netbehaviour Mailing List Fractal [Excerpt] (2012, 5MB, 59 secs)
From Claude Heiland-Allen:
Seven years of archives for this mailing list filtered down
to the most often occurring 1000 words of 4 letters or more,
in an infinite fractal zoom – each word is made up of the
words that most likely follow it.
We love the Netbehaviour list & this, splendid & bonkers both, does just
what it says on the tin with that excellent institution – we’ve posted
the minute long version here but if that whets your appetite for more
there’s an hour long version at archive.org.
Gun has no Trigger (2012, 31MB, 3:26 min)
I need to get out more, or at least talk to more people because the
Dirty Projectors completely passed me by until a couple of weeks ago
when I happened upon this video for a track from their new (and, I
have to say, quite, quite, wonderful and – and I use the word advisedly
because it is so overused in a popular music context – strikingly original)
album.
I’ve no idea know who directed the vid but it’s smart and spare and beautiful
and fits the music like a glove (but a glove that brings more than simply being
a glove to the table – maybe it has striking patterns, or raised areas or a
couple of extra fingers, or it glows in the dark or something.)
Driving (2006, 6MB, 4:39 min.)
Loop (2006, 11.8MB, 7:49 min.)
Two 2006 movies from Christian Marc Schmidt’s adaptive landscapes
sequence of work.
Check out the link above for Schmidt’s background notes on the pieces.
I’ll just observe that they are not alone in recent work featured here
in belonging to a category of work that could be called gorgeous formalism.
Still Life (2006, 16.9MB, 3:36 min)
Spout (2006, 8.26MB, 2:14 min)
Two short movies from Canadian artist Adamo Macri in 2007.
Grass Barbed (2008, 13.8MB, 41 secs, silent)
Grass In Wind (2008, 20.4, 48 secs, silent)
Utter loveliness from Irish artist Kevin Flanagan in 2008.
Utter loveliness never something to be disdained in my view, but here it’s also allied to a
steadfastness of purpose & well, just simple old fashioned
courage of conviction.
Cell Portraits (2005-7, 28.7MB, 4:18 min)
Beautifully assured piece of documentary film making from Richard Jochum in 2007,
a portrait of the scientist Jan Schmoranzer preparing microscopic images
of cells (& and eating lunch, drinking coffee &c.)
I particularly like the lighness of touch shown here, the gentle wit.
Jochum’s openness to the humanity, the quirkiness and individuality of the
participants ( the..um..dance), raises the level of the piece from
an interesting educational short to something much richer.
To be slightly controversial, it’s dully predictable someone left
a comment on Jochum’s site along the lines of ‘I’d like to get some of those
images for my wall’ The final slide images, laden with scientific interest as I’m
sure they are, are in my view the bit of the piece with the least artistic
interest (or at least such interest as they have derives from their place
in the process and the film’s account of it rather than their pretty-pattern-ness).
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.
Béla Halmos – Legyenes (2010, 19MB, 4:10 min)
I just love this and I can’t completely rationalise it. Everything about it –
the fantastic playing of Béla Halmos and companion, the earnest intensity
of the dancers, the crowd’s glorious vocal participation (especially that very
Eastern European tight-throated high pitched rhythmic women’s singing) just makes me
weak at the knees with delight.
It was recorded at the 29th National Dance House festival in Budapest in 2010.
Behold the Light (at Night) (2008, 87MB, 6:27 min)
We initially posted this in 2008 when we encountered Dan Osborne’s work
for the first time.
Recently he seems to be actively rejecting some of his earlier work so I hope
he doesn’t mind us reposting this. In my view he’s a very talented artist
with a quite singular vision.
We said then:
There’s something pleasantly reminiscent of Linklater’s Slacker
in this piece from Dan Osborne.
I don’t mean to suggest it’s derivative; I don’t think it is, or only
in the completely unescapable way of coming-after. This piece
has it’s own identity, which at first I wasn’t sure whether it was
completely random, but then little bits of structuring begin to
assert themselves. In particular I like the fades which occur
immediately prior to anything substantive happening.
A lot of it looks very good too – there’s no doubt the man
has an eye – the 3-D glasses sequence, the fire women,
the musical instruments procession (although am I alone in
finding something slighty snotty about the shot of the bemused onlookers?).
That little cavil aside this is interesting stuff & I look forward to seeing
how Osborne’s work develops.
