Recreation, Re-Creation, or, We Like OLD Stuff – Bitsy Knox

Posted on January 4, 2012 by doron

Recreation, Re-Creation (2006, 9.6 MB, 4:27 min.)

“This video juxtaposes original 16 mm footage acquired from my Grandfather
with interview footage taken of my Mother and Grandparents. All but the
past-tenses of their speaking are left intact, while the film footage has been
aggressively manipulated.
The project seeks to question the language of constructing one’s identity through
negotiation with familial history, where the past has been constructed and reconstructed
in order to corroborate certain facades of culture which are wished to be left intact.”
Bitsy Knox from 312.

Jennifer Steinkamp – Mike Kelley

Posted on December 20, 2011 by doron

Mike Kelley (2007, 7.3 MB, 15 sec.)

‘Mike Kelley’ are high definition video projections of individual trees
with branches moving in a twirling pattern. Projected to fill the height
of the gallery’s walls, the images interact with the architecture of the gallery,
creating tension between the imaginary landscape and the physical space.

by Jennifer Steinkamp.

Sondheim – Prisoners

Posted on December 19, 2011 by michael

prisoners (2008, 25.4MB, 2:36 min)

Nearest thing to a Picasso we yet have, in my view.
Whatever history decides, there’s no denying one point
of Sondheim/Picasso commonality – an almost compulsive
productivity.
I’d push it further -they both constantly transform lead into
gold. Picasso & his seat & handlebars, Sondheim, for example,
these bits of video.
The music, a kind of hallucinogenic, shredded-up
slow funk/blues, is also particularly noteworthy.
Here, for good measure, is Alan’s accompanying rubric:

prisoners of motion capture, prisoners of west virginia

prisoners of caloric, froid, prisoners of gravitation
prisoners of art, mayhem, vandal, prisoners of desecration

o to be a prisoner of life again (above the clouds
o to be a prisoner of love again (within the waters
o to be a prisoner of truth again (beyond the earths
o to be a prisoner of dance again (before the fires

prisoners of fires, froid, prisoners of aerostat and transport
transport of prisoners, clouds, waters, earths, fluids

yes, prisoners of fluids, prisoners of fluids and places
prisoners of west virginia, of fluids, places, life, love,
truth and dance again

Gilbert & George -The Singing Sculpture

Posted on December 13, 2011 by doron

The Singing Sculpture (1992, 830k, 41 sec.)

“Singing Sculpture documents one of Gilbert & George’s most famous “living sculpture” pieces.
Covered in multicolored bronze paint, the artists sing and interchange parts of the English
music hall standard “Underneath the Arches.” Through their stylized performance,
Gilbert & George deliberately blur the lines between life and art, reality and contrivance.
This ambiguity does not rely on a transformation from living to sculptural form. On the contrary,
they have merged the two in order to obliterate, rather than emphasize, the distinctions between life and art.” – Walker Art Center
from Video Data Bank

Annie Pui Ling Lok

Posted on December 6, 2011 by michael

EP (2008, 45MB, 2:29 min)

Anyone who has been lucky enough to see dancer & artist Annie Pui Ling Lok
do the former will know what a fruitful combination of fierce, almost austere,
intellect & yet sensitivity to the particular, the fragile & the human, to expect.
There’s such a sure hand at work here – the confidence in collaging
disparate material brings Marker to mind & although we’ve tagged it
‘experimental’, in one sense the piece is anything but -it’s so not
a technical exercise, but a rounded, resonant work of art.

More from Regina Célia Pinto

Posted on November 24, 2011 by michael

Neste vídeo há uma grande delicadeza, uma fragilidade,
que não deve levar a pensar que essa peça de Regina Pinto
é de alguma forma ocasional ou menos artística.
Em vez disso, esse é o trabalho de um artista maduro,
sem nada a provar, e com a enorme liberdade que isso traz.
Um estudo de todo o corpo de seu trabalho evidencia
amplamente tudo isso e mostra quão profundamente
consistente e coerente ele se apresenta.
Poder-se-ia ainda acrescentar o quanto ele nos emociona,
o quanto é estranho e muito bonito.

There’s a delicacy, a fragility, about this piece
that shouldn’t lead one to think that Regina Célia Pinto’s
work is in any way casual or artless.
Rather, this is the work of a mature artist with
nothing to prove and the enormous freedom that brings.
A study of the whole body of her work
amply bears this out.
It shows just how consistent and deeply considered
it is and, one should add, how affecting, how strange
and how very beautiful.

Toby Tatum –The Golden Age

Posted on November 23, 2011 by michael

The Golden Age (2011, 181MB, 5:34 min)

We’ve posted Toby Tatum’s work
before and it’s work with a definite charge to it and ambitious too.

I think this piece is more wholly successful than its predecessor but I’m still not totally convinced.
It’s something to do with the aim of conjuring a very precise & particular
dream-world which strikes me as an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of approach,
in that the tiniest false note disrupts the sought for spell.
Therefore Tatum creates a very high bar indeed for himself and his performers.

If one compares similarly oneiric work by Cocteau, Lynch or Hadžihalilović,
however dense and rich the atmosphere gets, there is variation with humour
or banality preparing us for more poetry to come and somehow too, framing it,
setting it off.
That sounds more critical that I want to be for this is, in every respect, a
very nicely realised and haunting piece.

Next week, or the week after, we’ll post an interview with Tatum about his work.

Another from Ruth Catlow

Posted on November 21, 2011 by michael

travel images unseen (2011, 156MB, 6:01 min)

‘5 video clips taken on a simple video camera, through a window on a coach to the
plane from Istanbul and arriving in London by train. Selected by and stitched, unseen
by the creator who will never watch the video, ever.’

The gentlest conceptualism & quite, quite lovely too.
There’s something about knowing the premise that leaves one
very open – one could say innoculates one – to its formal consequences –
here a looseness which somehow gently stretches time, makes it grainier
but conversely sharpens our attention, perhaps to make up for the
maker’s own vow of abstention.
One more in the series to come.

Aī-Hz – My Miwoo

Posted on November 17, 2011 by michael

My Miwoo [Tai Chi Weekend Control] (2007, 24.6MB, 50 secs)

Aī-Hz, real name Michael Renassia,
is a French visual performer living and working in Tokyo.
His site contains possibly my favourite biographical nugget ever:

‘He is using compositing software in a diverted way, and real-time mixing
instruments with the aim to create a noisy/pop universe…’

Now, who could possibly object to that?
This piece is rather lovely – the thing that totally makes it for me
is the epiphanic moment at the end when the music/animation stops &
the person appears ..there’s a haunting sense of time suspended..
So, for me, 10/10 for visuals.
I am pretty bored ,though, with the by-the-yard avant-dance music
that accompanies so much work of this kind..it’s not bad
or anything, just pedestrian…