Author Archives: michael

More Showstudio

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Some Frank Talking from Edward Picot

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franktalking1
Frank Talking #1 (2010, 157 MB, 9:59 min.)

franktalking2
Frank Talking #2 (2010, 247 MB, 9:51 min.)

Two more episodes in Edward Picot’s satirical but affectionate
insider view of the British NHS.

                                                                               previously…

More Jon Rafman

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You, the World and I
You, the World and I (2010, 67MB, 6:10 min)

Another piece from Jon Rafman, and whilst it’s made with the same dexterity,
wit and inventiveness as all his work this one doesn’t quite hit me in the
same place as the others we’ve posted.
(Don’t get me wrong – this piece would garner unstinting praise were
it from most other people – it’s just that Rafman sets the bar high for himself).
It’s something to do with the closure-as-a-story.
It’s a bit too neat. The found material seems deployed as an aid to
story-telling rather than dripping with the glorious uncertainty and
ambiguity that chartacterised some other earlier work.
(An analogy: the difference between a Rauschenberg Combine
and a picture in shells at a seaside gift shop. Not that extreme here, of course)
None of which is meant to imply that it isn’t worth at least 12:20 min of your time…

Sondheim & an Ad…

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rilkes tongue
Rilkes Tongue (2006?, 73 MB, 1:44 min)

Alan:
“something to stare at

This is a few years old, but hasn’t been put up; the dancer is Maud
Liardon, either Foofwa or I held the camera and made the video and
effects reminiscent of G. Moreau come to life, the church is in the
Swiss Alps, Rilke was buried behind it, murals of tormented hell,
angelic world of Elegies, we were transported”

PLUS
tether

…Alan Sondheim is one of the artists whose work you can see if
you can get to Nottingham, UK this Thursday – Sunday, 11th-14th Nov, 12-5 pm, in the first offline
appearance by DVblog, where a 45 minute program of work first posted here
will be continuously screened at The Wasp Room, part of Tether Studios.

Details:
Tether Studios,
17a Huntingdon Street
Nottingham
NG1 3JH

tel: 07729124336

mail@tether.org.uk

Artists featured:
Kerry Baldry, Steven Ball, Robert Croma, Rupert Howe, JimPunk, Donna Kuhn, Morrisa Maltz, Millie Niss, Giles Perkins, Sam Renseiw, Alan Sondheim, Nathaniel Stern, Liz Sterry, Eddie Whelan

Also – if you’re reading this & are interested in screening this program -we have both PAL and NTSC
DVDs available. Just mail us!

Lev Manovich – Little Movies #3

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manovich #5
Classical Cinema II (1994-98, 1MB, 20 secs)

manovich #6
On the Transient Nature of an Electronic Image(1994-98, 3MB, 1:47 min)

Original post

Lev Manovich – Little Movies #2

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manovich #3
A Single Pixel (1994-98, 2MB, 43 secs)

manovich #4
Classical Cinema I (1994-98, 1MB, 34 secs)

Original post

Lev Manovich – Little Movies #1

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manovich #1
Binary Code (1994-98, 2MB, 52 secs)

manovich #2
On the Ephemeral Nature of Little Movies (1994-98, 3MB, 1:05 min)

I mentioned the Manovich Little Movies in the post I did the
other week on Eryk Salvaggio’s ‘Unfinished Mpeg Haiku’.
In the course of writing that I went to Manovich’s site to look at them
& was surprised to find that their page was in some disarray
and the movies themselves had been removed.
Nor could I find them either in the version archived on the Rhizome Artbase.

It seems a shame for them not to be available -they’re historical
(and in many ways amazingly presecient) documents at the least,
although I find them – especially the last one – gripping and touching too.

Then I remembered the wonderful Wayback Machine and I found them
there, all snug and safe and sound.

We’ll post them here in twos in the next week or so,
in the order in which they appeared in Manovich’s
original presentation of them.
Although the image linking to it has been removed from the site
Manovich’s very interesting statement remains.
(I guess if that goes too you’ll still be able to Wayback it)