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.
Author Archives: michael
Robb Bradely/Randy Newman – I’m Dreaming of a White President
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.
Morrisa Maltz – Character 1/3 (Infinite Loop)
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!
Lucy Mills – Sunday Afternoon Narcissism
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.
Alan Sondheim – Disappearing Body
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.
Mad King Thomas/Kevin Obsatz – Eat up, Little Pearl – trailer
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.
One Minutes – Volume #6
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!
The Framing of Luaty Beirão
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.
Simon Mclennan
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…
2 from Donna Kuhn
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!