Pierre Huyghe #1 (NK, 2.69MB, 1:43 min)
Pierre Huyghe #2 (NK, 1.59MB, 3:03 min)
Pierre Huyghe #3 (NK, 2.33MB, 1:29 min)
Pierre Huyghe #4 (NK, 2.29MB, 1:30 min)
Four short videos by the often vexing, occasionally brilliant, Pierre Huyghe
from the website of the PBS Art in the 21st Century series.
Hanging Around (2008, 14.7MB, 1:35 min)
Cuckoo Land (2008, 28.6MB, 3:03 min)
2008 work from John Murphy, whose work we’ve featured here before.
Three videos which differ sharply in tone and which despite
a apparent simplicity of construction resonate long afterwards.
Case study: Cuckoo Land.
* found footage
**the good old forwards/backwards routine
still amusing/engaging enough in this case to hold one’s attention, but
***the muzak Grieg piano concerto
on the way back seemed a bit like over-egging it at first but
I find it speaks to me here more than the rather crude formal
device might warrant.
Partly this is due to the setting. Each piece gains in depth from its
association with the others, but I wonder also whether
it isn’t a sign of great artistic confidence on Murphy’s part:
“Here’s what I did – make of it what you will!”
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
Extended Camera (2005, 5.5MB, 2:19 min.)
Night Performance #3 (2005, 12.1MB, 7:54 min.)
In May 2005 Garrett Lynch & co-conspirators blagged some
money from Arts Council England to spend a weekend at a
country house playing with video.
The result is documented on this great site.
At their best these vids do absolutely match up to the
funding application rhetoric. They combine performance,
technology & layer upon layer of knowingness to produce results
which had me, at least, open mouthed with admiration.
Wonderful!
Ice Flowers – and my cat was so curious (2007, 23.5MB, 3:59 min)
shame (2007, 14.8MB, 2:27 min)
From 2007: first beauty tout court, then beauty with a big sting in the tail.
From Loiez Deniel, all of whose work is worth spending time with.
Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen (1977, 80MB, 3:16 min)
Grabbed from YouTube.
If you’re in the UK, this is to tide you over until it’s safe
to emerge without a vomit bag quickly to hand…
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.
I See a Darkness (2012, 32MB, 2:40 min)
Bonnie Prince Billy/Will Oldham has a way of generating interesting things
around his core business of making extraordinary music.
In a similar way to that of Ornette Coleman, his album artwork always
contains many little explosions of visual pleasure and neither is it devoid of
food for thought.
This is also true of the videos he commissions to accompany his music.
We’ve posted some of these before , including a deliciously bizarre
one from Harmony Korine.
This is one of my favourites to date. Made by Ben Berman, it involves
Oldham lolloping around the streets of Glasgow in a way that in real
life would have me crossing the road toot sweet.
I’m an Oldham fan. If I had to put my finger on one of the things
that lifts him so far from the ordinary it would be a confidence in his
work so great (or maybe better, simply an integrity to it and to his art),
that he can encompass within it and place around it things of utter
ridiculousness without undermining it, indeed, whilst rendering it the more potent.
This is not to downplay the role of Berman in this. He is clearly a significant
talent and a fine co-conspirator for Oldham.
sliveRider (2012, 316MB, 5:26 min)
From: Curt Cloninger
To: Michael Szpakowski
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:21 PM
A video collaboration between A. Bill Miller and Curt Cloninger.
Audio by Low. Bill and Curt swapped files back and forth until the
person receiving the file felt it was finished. Links to the video
files in progress are included.
I’ve been reading Deleuze on Leibniz about the Baroque fold, and
this project seems like we were folding video. Like cooking, folding
in ingredients. The trace of each iteration is discernible, baked
into the final fold. Not so much cutting, fading, layering, moshing,
or even remixing (although there is some “databending”).
Hope you are doing well over there,
Curt
On Sunday, May 20, 2012, Michael Szpakowski wrote:
This is quite, quite enchanting.
Do either of you have any objection to me doing a DVblog post on it?
thanks!
Michael
At 8:28 AM -0400 5/20/12,
a bill miller wrote:
Fine with me!
bill
Thanks Michael,
Yes, please do.
Best,
Curt
Birds (2006, 15.5MB, 3:04 min)
Netlag (2006, 15.8MB, 4:23 min)
Early 24 carat weirdness & ethereal beauty respectively from the
French Pleix group.
Fall into Light (2012, 209MB, 3:57 min)
For about the first twenty seconds I didn’t think I was going to like
this music video by Dawid Krępski & Jason Chiu, or at least that I
would remain easily indifferent and unmoved.
Then, ..well.. , it’s a slow burn but it gently explodes, if that’s not too
much of an oxymoron, into something fertile and strange that won’t let
go of you.
I don’t think there probably is a narrative but, as you watch, the piece
fools you into believing there is, one straight from a fever dream.
Great.
Credits:
Song: Beca – Fall into Light
Directed: Dawid Krępski & Jason Chiu
Actors: Kelsey Peterson, Fred Geyer
D.O.P: Dawid Krępski & Jason Chiu
Edit: Dawid Krępski
Special thanks: Magdalena Gaca, Michael McKeogh
Floating Green Leaves (2012, 212MB, 3:52 min)
Diana Brighouse is a doctor turned artist in a grand tradition.
She’s currently completing an MA at the University of Chichester in the UK.
Her work is intensely thoughtful and thought through and also often very beautiful.
I’m not always keen on artist commentaries on their own work but what she sent
me is a model of clarity so I’ll reproduce it in full here.
‘The underlying stimulus for my work is to challenge the reductive philosophy
that prevails in Western society today.
I believe that reductionism is manifest through a prioritising of scientific
or quantitative methodology. An unquestioning belief in the measurable is
found not only in science and technology, but also in education, medicine
and politics.
I believe that the supremacy of the measurable can be directly related not
only to the political and financial threats to the arts, but also to the
regressive attitudes towards women and the disabled.
Successive postgraduate university educations in medicine, spirituality,
psychotherapy and art have repeatedly challenged the certainties I have
been taught.
My use of digital video (a quantitative binary process) to produce images
that I believe to be non-reductive reflects the paradoxes created by my
chosen professions.
There are multiple possible interpretations of the videos depending on
the background of the viewer. This is deliberate and hopefully supports
my non-reductive thesis.
These videos are part of a series investigating reflections; a second
series that I am also currently working on investigates shadows.
My intention is that this series will be more politically orientated.
My videos are taken in my garden and edited with Sony Vegas Platinum 11.0HD.’
We’ll have another of these beautiful works next week.
Mentoring (2012, 255MB, 16:01 min)
Final one in the present series of Edward Picot’s Dr Hairy videos.
Great stuff, which we’ve enjoyed a great deal.
We eagerly anticipate series #2, perhaps we could suggest The Return of Dr Hairy,
Dr Hairy’s Repeat Prescription or The Beard is Back.
Glad to see he’ll be putting in an artworld appearance at
the new Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park, London.
Not to be missed if you’re in the area during the run of the show (not only
because Dr H is great but also because Furtherfield haven’t put together
a remotely dull show yet).
Okie Dokie (2008, 46MB, 2:47 min)
Neat bit of videoing by Dave Hughes for Dan Deacon’s Okie Dokie.
Sparky & intelligent both (& nice use of Prelinger footage,
cheeky rather than earnest, makes a change)
On Presidents and Superheroes (2009, 7MB, 1:15 min)
Another piece from Manchester Cornerhouse’s excellent Subversion show.
This post is a collaboration with Furtherfield – they’re hosting ….
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.
Larissa Sansour: A Happy Days (2006, 13MB, 2:57 min)
Following on from the work we showed last week from the
excellent Subversions show, here’s another piece by
Larissa Sansour.
This is featured in the other UK show featuring work
from the Arabic speaking world, this time specifically
from artists with roots in Palestine, Navigations at
the Barbican in London.
There’s some tremendous work on show there, not least this
one – all the work Sansour I’ve so far seen has delighted me
by being much better than a verbal description might lead one
to expect. So with this one you might hear:
“To the tune of the theme from Happy Days Larissa Sansour
edits together stills of herself, a Palestinian woman,
in various locations in the occupied territories.”
And you might think:
“Ho-hum, seen it all, virtuous agit-prop, with the usual sledgehammer irony”
and you would be totally wrong.
Of course the irony is there, and anger, of course, but
there’s a lightness of treatment – the Sansour “character”,
the everyday found surrealism of some of the shots, the
little jokes (the titles: “The Palestinian”
– “The Israeli Army as…Itself” &c.)
which, without negating any political content, makes the
whole thing richly human and a pleasure to watch and watch again.
Navigations is definitely worth a visit – there is a great variety
of very engaging work.
Apart from the two Sansour pieces there’s a tremendous semi-documentary
work shot in a Miami auto paint and body shop by Shadi Habib Allah
Two complaints though – unlike the lovingly assembled and spacious show
in Manchester, Navigations feels like a somewhat cramped and token
footnote to the “proper business” of the Palestine Film Festival –
publicity for it only appears on the Barbicam website in this context.
(Better than a couple of weeks back when a search for “Navigations” on the Barbican
website yielded precisely – nothing.)
This is disrespectful to artist moving image work in general and
also, I think, to the artists concerned.
Secondly the fact that it sits, looking a tad temporary, on the
busy walk-through mezzanine on four small identical screens, with long
compilation times, gives it an anthropological rather than an art
exhibition character, whilst the (yawn!) Bauhaus blockbuster takes place
upstairs in the galleries proper. This is again disrespectful to
the artists and specifically to them as Palestinian artists:
footnotes, curiosities, on the margins.
Work of this strength and diversity would have made a great large scale
show – Cornerhouse show that it can be done and how to do it very well.
What a shame that the Barbican, with all its resources, doesn’t
seem to understand both why and how it should have attempted something
similar.
Nonetheless, if in London, you should go!
Tweets in Space (2012, 52MB, 2:27 min)
Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern of Wikipedia Art return with another
project both odd, lyrical and utopian.
“Tweets in Space” will beam Twitter discussions from participants worldwide
towards GJ667Cc: a planet 22 light years away that apparently might support
earth-like life.
Anyone can take part, simply by adding #tweetsinspace to their tweets during
two performance times in September, when Stern and Kildall will be doing live
projections at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in New Mexico,
and boldly tweeting where none have tweeted before.
They say:
“This differs from every past alien transmission in that it is not only
a public performance, but also performs a public: it is a real-time
conversation between hopeful peers sending their thoughts to everywhere
and nowhere.
Our soon-to-be alien friends will receive unmediated thoughts and responses
about politics, philosophy, pop culture, dinner, dancing cats and everything
in between.
By engaging the millions of voices in the Twitterverse and dispatching them
into the larger Universe, “Tweets in Space” activates a potent discussion
about communication and life that traverses beyond our borders or understanding.
It promises more than could ever be delivered.”
This is their fundraising video – please consider making a donation to make the
project happen and also publicise and share it on lists, facebook, twitter, etc.
Larissa Sansour: A Space Exodus ( Clip) (2009, 7MB, 1:15 min)
Tarzan and Arab: Colourful Journey (Trailer) (2010, 11MB, 1:38 min)
Here are two clips from videos featured in the excellent Subversion show,
featuring artists from the Arabic speaking world, currently on (to 5th June) at
Manchester’s Cornerhouse.
It is carefully, elegantly and thoughtfully curated by Omar Kholeif, who writes:
“Like many of the artists I was looking at, I felt that collectively
curators and writers associated with the politically unstable Arab world were
being asked to step up and perform to an identity that the world wanted us to play.
With Subversion my aim was to do just the opposite. I worked with artists who
referenced this very language but who wanted to dissent, poke fun, critique
and re-define themselves as artists of the imagination, and not of any specific
social or political condition.”
It has to be said that this bending of the stick is eminently successful – none
of the works included has any taint of tokenism, they are rich with a poetry,
humour and humanity that cuts entirely across any notional cultural divide.
Where they do focus upon political subject matter (and one should not form the
impression that this is a show with, in any sense whatsoever, its political teeth pulled)
what delights is the richness and the playfulness with which this is done.
Larrisa Sansour’s “A Space Exodus” is both gentle and devastating.
Gentle, the Sansour persona (and we’ll have another piece of hers next week)
presented in the work, with the rather stylish space suit, the wistful smile and wave
towards the far away earth, having planted the Palestinian flag on the moon:
–“That’s one small step for Palestinians, one giant leap for mankind”.
Devastating when one sets this gentleness by the side of what we know of the Apartheid
wall, the illegal settlements, punishment demolition of Palestinian homes &c.
(Anyone who doubts the piece’s political impact should take a look at the vile racism
of some of the comments on the YouTube posting of this clip
– “Send all the Palestinians to the moon” &c.)
The other piece featured here is from the Gazan twins Ahmed and Mohamed Abu Nasser,
known professionally as “Tarzan and Arab”.
Although (in a disarming interview in which they come across a bit like a smiley
and un-terminally-corroded-by-snotty-cynicism younger version of the Chapmans)
they assert the piece is in some sense about internecine Palestinian conflict,
to me it reads more like a balletic paean of love to the cinema, to the
moving image (including perhaps the video game too – what do you think?).
Until last year Tarzan and Arab had never been to a cinema and have largely
been unable to attend screenings of their own works abroad.
In fact their first works, also shown at Cornerhouse, were old style film posters
for non-existent movies, all given titles from the names of Israeli military
operations: Defensive Shield, Cast Lead &c.(as, indeed, their film has too).
There is a great deal more to this show, which covers diverse geographical slices
of the Arabic speaking world and where therefore the interaction between life
and art has a different tempo and character to the works by the Palestinian
artists discussed here.
And it’s all great – I don’t have space here to properly do the whole thing justice.
In particular, though, I do want to mention Akram Zaatari’s two luminously beautiful
films set in the milieu of gay life in Beirut – though again to outline them thus,
in one line, in terms of “topic”, is to oversimplify – we must distinguish between
ostensible topics and the dense, lyric and dazzling poetry which they engender.
Also Khaled Hafez’s wonderful short “On Presidents and Superheroes”
(yet another political context, that of a staggeringly prescient augury of a victorious
but still contested Egyptian revolution) but I simply am going to just mention it as I
hope to write something a little bit more extended about it when I post a clip here (soon!).
If you possibly can, do yourself a big favour and go and see this show; give
yourself plenty of time, there’s a lot to see and some of the moving image work
is quite lengthy (and hats off to Omar Kholeif for achieving installations of
works that are appropriate, thought provoking and, somewhat banally but importantly at my age, comfortable.)
If you’re travelling from out of town (and I urge you so to do, dear reader, I urge you)
you can also catch the tremendous Roger Ballen show at the Manchester Art gallery,
which is a whole other story.
I’ll be returning to Subversion both here and in a somewhat more extended piece
of writing for MIRAJ next year.
Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You): 9:23-9:26 pm (2012, 70MB, 2:27 min)
Again (I Wish I Was A Fool For You): 10:08-10:10 pm (2012, 64MB, 2:33 min)
I love (and increasingly so) Curt Cloninger’s work.
The wonderful series of gif/flash/loop/glitch/kitchen sink audio visual poems on his site, his forays into
datamoshing and his series of live performative/endurance pieces
which, sprouting like green shoots from a rather austere central
European branch manage to be filled with light and nuance and a
-how shall I put it -… a joy which is earned, which is not trivial,
and to which we are invited and which arises out of a heightened sense
of ourselves and of others as embodied beings and of our necessary interconnections…
Here’s Curt’s account of a recent piece, a collaboration with his wife Julie,
for which we post two pieces of documentation. (I don’t know whether Curt sees
them as simply that. I think they are quite lovely in themselves – certainly the video
piece derived from Curt and Annie Abraham’s telematic collab Double Blind,
featured here previously certainly has artistic legs of its own and perhaps should
be taken as something of a precedent.)
Anyway, over to you Curt:
“A 3 Hour performance by Curt and Julie Cloninger. Julie is pre-recorded
on video singing for ten minutes along with Curt playing Rhodes piano.
Her video and audio are then projected and looped in the performance space
while Curt sings and plays guitar live. Both are blindfolded.
A duet across time. The repeated excerpt is from the Richard and
Linda Thompson song “For Shame of Doing Wrong.
Performed at the Black Mountain College campus during the 2012 reHappening festival“.
I Don’t Know That Would You Like to Search the Web for it? (2012, 96MB, 38 secs)
Image White/Red (2012, 12MB, 35 sec loop)
Another DVblog favourite today, I’m glad to say.
Morrisa Maltz, returning to the world of art from her foray
into commerce (but that so elegant and sharply done), presents
us with two new vids, mysterious and lovely both; one that
feel ecstatic and the other with, perhaps, a darker note, I think.
Anyway, partly because I think it’s enlightening and partly because, dammit,
I can, I reproduce below an edited verison of an exchange
Morrisa and I had about these.
MM:
…think I’m moving in a bit of a different direction…I’m working
on a few pieces that are much shorter and meant to loop- sorts of images
that function more as paintings and could possibly fit in sculptures
or present themselves framed on a wall… I’m not sure if those would
work for DVblog, but I’m attaching two pieces that function in that way,
one that is similar to old pieces a bit and one that is entirely meant
to loop and function as more of an “image” than a video……..
I’m really trying to get back in the groove after all the Mofone excitement
so no worries if you don’t like these pieces and don’t want to write
about them or want to write something not so great about them…
MJS:
I think they’re both great & I’d love to do a post about them.
For me change is a sign of life. Nothing depresses me more than the all
too frequent art school advice to find a “thing” and to keep doing it.
Imagine Picasso with this philosophy…
Anyway – although they are different you have very distinctive fingerprints 🙂
MM:
I think that change is extremely important for an artist , and it’s …
unfortunate that artists quite often get pegged into one way of making
things and continue to work in that vein- that seems to contradict
the whole idea of an artist for me…
We’ve followed Eddie Whelan’s work from the very beginning and enjoyed it all the
way.
More than enjoyed, actually. Been impressed and moved by the care, thought and skill
with which he approaches everything and particularly by his forging of a very personal,
nuanced and beautiful language from the practice of data-moshing.
He has recently turned his talents to the making of music videos –
and the constraints of the form, both in terms of time and the unity demanded
by serving a soundtrack make for small jewells of lyric visual poetry.
I gather he also plays on this one, and they,Grass Giraffes, have an EP forthcoming in May.
I’ll certainly be investing in a copy.
okay, not okay (2006, 2.53MB, 4:03 min)
year before last (2006, 1.98MB, 3:43 min)
I admire this work in its refusal to cosy.
I think it’s quite brave, in a medium where
startling visual effects are so easily realisable,
so little needing to be worked for, to make something
( & not just a work but a whole series)
that demands such careful listening
& hands out so few visual lollipops.
Lisa’s site.
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.
Death was the West (2012, 221MB, 5:19 min)
A restrained, austere, smart and at the same time gripping piece from
Essex, UK, film-maker Peter Scott, still in his final months at art school.
I understand it to be a by product of a work in progress but it
has an integrity and presence entirely of its own.
I look forward to more.
Explaining Conceptual Art to Bizarro (2012, 89MB, 1:36 min)
Danger Music #17 by Dick Higgins (2012, 19MB, 45 secs)
And to celebrate our resurrection (for which heartfelt thanks go to James Morris), two newish pieces from the redoubtable (I write so many of these things a nagging doubt enters my mind as to whether I’ve perhaps called Patrick redoubtable before, once, twice…more? But leave it – redoubtable he is) Patrick Lichty.
Both pieces take place in DC Universe Online, about which I know nothing so I won’t even begin to show myself up by attempting to expand, and both reference recent art history – one Beuys explaining pictures to a dead hare and the other Dick Higgins’s Danger Music.
Both are utterly splendid.
what remains (2007, 19.7MB, 1:26 min.)
We need no excuse here to feature more of Alan Sondheim’s singular & remarkable oeuvre.
This one caused a bit of a debate on Netbehaviour in 2007 -some baulked, fearing it to be images
of rending, tearing of the body. Alan says not at all, it’s tantric/ecstatic.
The singer is Alan’s wife Azure Carter.
When he originally posted it, it came with this poem (a sonnet?):
what remains
because of the faces and powers among our second lives
and third and others in-between the others; because of
swollen faces thinned back to pages bones and shadowed flesh
that nothing stays what was simple and illusion
and then poetics rounds and fills the world
among lost pages and inscriptions freed
from every symbol and symbols freed and world;
the less are said the farther truth transcends
because of truths and songs and lights and place
where bodies turn; because of bodies churned and stretched
among beams of those lights and those songs; those truths
nothing stays back nothing; valleys fill with jostled things
and things churn symbols; the world
fills silence; skies get dark kiss; welkin
The World’s Largest TV Studio (1972, 17.2MB, 7:10 min.)
A historic piece of political video from
the 1972 Miami Democratic Convention, this excerpt featuring an interview
with Michael Shamberg, author of Guerilla Television & founder member of Top Value
Television. (Also founder of Raindance & subsequently big shot Hollywood Producer).
Found in the broadcasting section of the Southwest Museum of Engineering Communications
and Computation, which is actually stuffed with goodies.
Sithair (2007, 6.4MB, 1:49 min)
Cyber Skin (2007, 38.8MB, 3:05 min)
Meat Market (2007, 39.6MB, 7:14 min)
I was lucky enough to see young Irish artist Joan Healy
present her work at a 2008 DATA event in Dublin.
It was strange.
First off, consciously or not, she has this innocent
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth demeanour and then she
shows this.. er..stuff
Documented here, in ascending order of weirdness, there’s a performance piece
where she transforms her hair into a musical instrument,
a piece where she satirises the current bio-art fashion by
getting into a box, exposing some of her back (the installation
claims this is especially grown cyber-skin)
& then attempting to draw to screen the patterns the punters trace
out on her.
Last is ..well.. (vegans avert your eyes), electronically assisted dancing meat
– you know.. chops.. steaks.. & the like..
After she gave her talk I said to her I thought her work was ‘utterly deranged’
She smiled sweetly and said she would take it as a compliment.
It was.
