Author Archives: michael
Boxers
Baum
Simple in conception and execution & quite lovely.
Photography: Julie Roehr
Music & Video: Nikola Jeremic
From http://www.njeremic.ecobytes.net/njeremic//index.html
(Don’t you wish, though, people wouldn’t leave those huge bars of black
space above & below like that -so many do- but crop to the area where
stuff is happening?)
Leeds Vlog #2
Kill the Artist
Kill the Artist Trailer (2008, 17MB, 2:37 min)
Kill the Artist (excerpt) (2008, 12.7MB, 1:09 min)
Documentary from Andreas Troeger about ‘artists who got into trouble with the law
because of their art-works’.
Personally I don’t share what I understand to be the film’s implicit
libertarianism – I’m all in favour of shutting down, for example,
Holocaust deniers, or race hate merchants generally.
Niether did I see any work in the extracts sent that I gave a damn about artistically
but of course the point is that censorship operates salami style
& often by picking the most problematic, hard to defend, cases first,
so the discussion here matters.
Nonetheless when the definitive history of political censorship of/attacks upon art in the early
twenty first century is written I can’t help feeling the Steve Kurtz case
will figure more largely than the stuff on display here.
Interested what others think.
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries at the New Museum (2008, 62.5MB, 2:48 min)
If you don’t know them, you should; Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
have been responsible for some of the most spine tingling & evocative work
on the net in the last ten years,
This documentary, lifted from the indispensable Rhizome, gives a good bares bones historical
account of them in the context of a show earlier this year at the New Museum.
I didn’t see the show & whilst I’m pleased they’re getting this wider exposure I wonder
if there isn’t something quite particular about the way their work presents in a browser
(preferably, in my view, with headphones on, ie. as submerged in these delicious
& fractured quasi narratives as only the net experience will allow).
Then, it is visceral and immediate.
On the evidence here, there seems to have been something
a little more diffuse about this multiple screen installation.
I don’t know; it’s a surmise; I’d be happy to be told I’m wrong.
It raises interesting questions, though, about the transplanting of work
from browser to gallery.
The Breeders
Huffer (2002, 69.2MB, 2:15 min)
Video for the 2002 single from The Breeders
The new album is great too; feels like it was made by
smart wayward, passionate, human beings
rather than a focus group.
A Series of Practical Performances in the Wilderness (2)
‘Embedded’ – Alan Sondheim in Santa Monica
restart (2006, 9KB, 4 min. loop)
We’re Alan Sondheim fans here at dvblog.
When so much work on the web is banal & lacking in ambition
he is an antidote, a tonic, a reason to hope.
His restless energy & intelligence transmute everything
he engages with into art (remember Picasso & those handlebars?)
Those living in the Santa Monica area might have seen his installation
‘embedded’ (also including work by filmmaker Leslie Thornton)
at the Track 16 gallery in 2006.
Donna Kuhn – Limbo
Limbo (2008, 26.3MB, 3:08 min)
We’ve shown Donna Kuhn’s work couple of times before.
Look at the trajectory.
It’s always been impressive but there’s a new note here:
a confidence & ambition that is really striking.
It’s a cliche but cliches are nonetheless sometimes true
-here’s someone who has found a very personal
voice & learned how sing with it in a sophisticated
& affecting way.
More here.