Author Archives: michael

Nathaniel Stern – the odys series

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the storyteller
the storyteller (2001-4, 13.3MB, 2:24 min.)

Six pieces originally shown as a gallery installation.
Says their creator, the artist Nathaniel Stern :
‘The odys series consists of six short digital video poems / monologues for
small screen viewing in an intimate gallery space. By stuttering between
odys actions and words, listeners construct his person. As he attempts
to re-member, bringing the past back to his body and calling it his own,
listeners attempt to piece together a story for themselves. Viewers are
encouraged to re-visit and jump over juxtaposed media, and create a
shifting collage of, and in response to, his person.’

This is work of huge ambition both aesthetically & technically &
it’s brave and it’s edgy, sometimes to the point of being uncomfortable to
watch. Neither does Stern fear engaging with complex & difficult ideas.
Definitely worth more than one viewing.

noise
noise (2001-4, 11.4MB, 2:08)

they may be giant
they may be giant (2001-4, 12.3MB, 2:06 min.)

multiplicity
multiplicity (2001-4, 5.3MB, 1:17 min.)

upstandard
upstandard (2001-4, 14.2MB, 2:24 min.)

itown
itown (2001-4, 14.6MB, 2:32 min.)

More Athens strangeness

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Dance
Dance, Motherfucker, Dance! (2006, 7.4MB, 3:22 min)

Epiphany
Epiphany (2006, 1.9MB, 11 sec loop)

From the town that brought you Boling & Morales here’s more,
this time from John Crowe of ‘plural medium’
Is it something in the water or just that unrelenting Southern sun
that seems to make Athens a crucible of weirdness?
Be afraid, be very afraid &c.

Music for the delicately entitled Dance, Motherfucker, Dance! by the
Violent Femmes.

Google Gaaagled

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The Adventures of Confucius
The Adventures of Confucius (2006, 8.5MB, 36 sec.)

Heartbroke
Heartbroke’n and Gaaagle’d (2006, 1.9MB, 52 sec.)

Couple of movies from gaaagle.com,
a site thhat was set up to protest & satirize Google’s
decision last year to see, rather than do,
no evil.

Jennifer Proctor – Two movies

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Hickory Hill
Hickory Hill (2004, 10.1MB, 2:02 min)

Surfacing
Surfacing (2003, 8MB, 2:25 min)

Engaging & sensitive work from Jennifer Proctor.
What is the word for video..like..painterly for
painters?..well, these videos are that word.

Lunch with Jan

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Lunch
Lunch (1992, 18.3MB, 7:03 min)

Splendidly dark & funny stop motion ‘n’ prosthetics work from
the fearless (& peerless) Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer.

Rupert Howe – FatGirlInOhio -2 cell phone movies.

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Falafel
Falafel (2006, 1MB, 43 sec)

ShotCutScoredAndPostedByEmailFromMyNokia93Phone
ShotCutScoredAndPostedByEmailFromMyNokia93Phone (2007, 2.4MB, 2:41 min)

I’ve been reflecting a lot recently on how, whatever is the ostensible
subject of movies, they are all in some sense ‘about’ everything we see
in every frame. And with the passing of time how this often becomes
more true as if, like a dog from water, the meaning is shaking itself out.
The Bas Jan Ader ‘falling’ movies exemplify this ( & how poignantly!) for me –
their conceptual motor aside, I remain most haunted by their background landscapes..
Rupert Howe of FatGirlInOhio brings this sharply to mind –
the subject might be a morning jog or Falafel but the totality of each movie
contains some of the best evocation of the glory & the grime that is
2007 London I’ve yet seen. That doesn’t exhaust it, of course, which is why this
work is deft & it is fine.
He is gravely mistaken about the Falafel though – undoubtedly the
best Falafel in London is at Gaby’s on the Charing Cross Road…

Untitled Iowa

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Untitled Iowa
Untitled Iowa (2007, 31MB, 5:57 min)

Gorgeous & deft chunk of Americana from Aaron Valdez
with all the Hoppery, Wyethy, Portery &c nods
but nonetheless standing nicely on its own feet
For my taste that high reverby modal piano(?)
tiptoes along the border of clich

‘Lapa’ – Regina C

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Lapa
Lapa (2007, 9.6MB, 43 sec)

Em um campo do trabalho que

For Sore Eyes – Anders Weberg

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For Sore Eyes
For Sore Eyes (2006, 23MB, 2:17 min)

I like this (though what I mean by that is sort of provisional; read on)
& also it, the piece, bothers me a lot.
I watched it once, context free, then I read a statement Anders Weberg supplied*
and quite honestly still felt pretty context free, and it’s that very elusiveness
which makes me say I like this and it’s that very elusiveness
which makes me say this bothers me, a lot.

Questions:

# Is the woman drowning, fighting for breath?

# If she is drowning & we find the film in some sense beautiful
are we then complicit in something terrible?

# Or is she frolicking in the water & does the slo-moness &
the sound mislead or, perhaps, just lead us.

# Is the footage appropriated or was it shot especially?

# If yes, was it slow in the original?

# Was the image treated in any way other than (possibly) being slowed down?

# Did either the music or the sound come with the original?

# Either way, is the provenance of music & sound different?

# It sounds like the sound really is the sound of something
(perhaps something terrible, I don’t like to think) happening underwater.
Is it?

# Is there a general lightening of tone just before the end?

# Does she free herself from the water?

# Is she now safe?

# We’re happy because she’s safe. Does this feeling
in us represent a cop out by either filmaker ( if there
are two, the original & the appropriator), a failure to follow
through,a failure of nerve?

# Or is she just leaping from her frolicking in the water,
shaking it from her hair in a kind of elemental ecstacy?

# Why is everything so dark?

# If everything is OK why is everything so dark?

*‘For Sore Eyes is another exploration of the ambivalence of the male
gaze and gendered (dis)order.
It is a suggestive reflection of life in the
pyrotechnic insanitarium of consumerism freedom.
But what really is freedom?’

High and Dry – Music from Tucson, Arizona

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1Z0-803
High and Dry
High and Dry Trailer (2003, 8.6MB, 1:53 min.)

Trailer for what looks like a really neat film about the Tucson music scene.

Main attraction of this trailer for me is that it features the God-like genius of Howe Gelb.
but I’m sure it has other merits too.