Bonnie Prince Billy Again


Agnes (2004, 7.3MB, 3:12 min)


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!

Albert Nanning – Exit


Exit (2008, 48.6MB, 4:50 min)

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…

Alan Sondheim – Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds


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.

Huzzah for Brittany Shoot!


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.

Will Goss – from Magenta’s Caress

beanstalk
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.

More from Anthony Rousseau

climax
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.

Curt Cloninger – Pop Mantra #4 (Rain Down On Me)

rain down - 10:00 am
Rain Down On Me: 10:00 am (2012, 22MB, 1:27 min)

rain down - 3:43pm
Rain Down On Me: 3:43pm (2012, 20MB, 1:01 min)

rain down - 6:00pm
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

Full documentation

Tony Arnold – New Work

Robert Loggia Trailer
Talkin’ Singularity Blues (2012, 186MB, 8:13 min)

Talkin
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.

Jon Rafman – Ad-Vice for a Prophet


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.