La sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière à Lyon (1895, 2MB, 46 sec.)
The year is 1895. The “Hangar” was the first set in the history of Cinematography and
can be seen here in “La Sortie de l’usine Lumière”, Lumière’s first film.
from the fantastic site – Institut Lumière.
Indian Movie [Declan Kilfeather] (2007, 3MB, 55 sec)
Punch [Kerry Baldry] (1994, 30MB, 1:14 min)
Land Gauge [Steven Ball] (1981/2008, 44MB, 1:21 min)
Upside Down World [Marty St.James] (2008, 19MB, 1:25 min)
A dual purpose for this post.
I wrote a review of Vols. 1 to 4 of Kerry Baldry’s excellent One Minutes
project for a new journal, the Moving Image Review and Journal, due out soonish
(although the first issue is dated January 2012, I understand it’ll be out late this month)
and I thought it would be nice to post the pieces I discuss in it here.
So, here, with one exception, they are.
The second thing follows – just to encourage you, especially if you
are in Academia somewhere, to get a sub to this (or order it from your
library &c) – it’s going to be an interesting and useful resource.
I Fell for You (2011, 216MB, 1:00 min)
Threshold (2011, 86MB, 3:29 min)
I Fell For You:
‘My early artistic ideas came from a 3-year experience as
a commercial fisherman in Alaska. At the time, my work
centered on ideas consistent with the locale: hermetic
fabulousness, escape, odyssey, and the sublime.
Todayperversities of the sublime continue to influence the
way I shape projects. A consensual explanation of the
contemporary sublime would acknowledge that there are
thresholds of human perception and a desire to explore these
thresholds connecting ourselves to a greater environment of
understanding and awareness. At the root of my work is
an interest in human experience.’
Threshold:
‘Borrowing from fluxus films Threshold is filmed in Iceland
and the Oregon Coast and made for a project with The
Archer Gallery.
The video takes place where land meets sea, where the
landscape moves from vertical to horizontal, and
associatively between life (verticality) and death (horizontality)’
I’m guessing the club formed by the intersection of the sets of
experimental video makers and of former commercial fishermen
in Alaska is a fairly exclusive one.
Jack Ryan upholds its honor in these two exhilarating
(but totally uningratiating, no puppy-dog-eyes here) pieces.
I especially love “I fell…”.
Very bracing.
Harddisko (2007, 29MB, 1:29 min.)
Harddisko is an installation piece by Valentina Vuksic dealing with raw
computer sounds. Rhythmic noises are evoked from sixteen
hard drives, orchestrated through simple power circuits.
By cutting each disk’s power in varying sequences and amplifying its
particular sound characteristics, an unpredictable acoustic
and visual interplay emerges.
Change is Constant (2006, 6.5 MB, 3:02 min)
This is a short film I edited to one of the tunes recorded by
Amoeba Technology. I shot most of the footage use in the video,
the footage is a mixture of 16mm, Super 8 and Mini DV.
from Mark Reilly, at alienresident.
The Incorporation of Demands for Liberation(2011, 13MB, 3:24 min)
Brilliant!
Last piece from ANW, for the moment, although we
certainly hope to feature more in the future –
some of the most original and exciting work I’ve seen recently.
For some context see Monday’s post.
Flow Spot Test #6 (2011, 18MB, 3:34 min)
“Just downloading apps at my Blanc Laptop Cart when all
of a sudden BenJi, an old teammate from XpresSpa shows up.
He happens to be subcontracted now by the American Airlines
subsidiary AffinityAlliance as an evaluator of potential for their
Oneworld Alliance codeshare lounges (of which FlowSpot is the
newest member).”
Flow Spot Test #5 (2011, 57MB, 2:03 min)
“Just having my early afternoon session of Body-Work with
Nnah, my Body-Designer.”
Says ANW, of the FlowSpot Tests:
For a large-scale exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
I created a color coordinated airport/hotel/mall/bank/spa/biennial lounge to
offer a site of relaxation and bodily engagement in an exhibition dominated
by isolated, sellable art objects.
All lounge products were purchased through online transactions (mostly
Target and Walmart), and were returned at the end of the exhibition.
My dystopic science fiction news video Global Countdown played on
a 55” flat panel monitor.
On opening night, visitors to FlowSpot could register for massages from
licensed massage therapists. While participants received massages they
could not see anything and listened to my directors commentary of the
Global Countdown video. The commentary consists of very basic visual
descriptions, with the goal being that the person receiving the massage
can visualize the video in their minds.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, I used the lounge as a science
fiction video set to make “FlowSpot Tests.” In these videos I engaged
with the lounge both conceptually and materially in a color coordinated
outfit.
Contact me if you are interested in opening a FlowSpot in your airport,
hotel, mall, bank, spa, biennial, gallery, cultural center, or any other
space that you own/lease/use.
See also.
Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min)
I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s work I’m going to devote
the whole first week of this DVblog season to it.
He initially sent us a longish piece, Networking with Andrew Norman Wilson
made with Nicholas O’Brien of Bad At Sports.
It’s wonderful but pretty huge so you should definitely go and
look at the Vimeo version there.
On Monday, Weds and Friday of this week we’ll post smaller
pieces extracted from that (but without the commentary or
‘interview’ as it is styled elsewhere [-the text on the BAS page linked above]) ,
On Tuesday and Thursday we’ll post two of Wilson’s FlowSpot Tests
with some accompanying explanation from him.
I find this work in general very exciting because it does a lot
of interesting, nuanced and often rather funny (and I’m in favour of funny –
there are very few great works of art which contain no funny at all)
and intially apparently contradictory things.
Let me give you my take on it.
The Webinars are all composed entirely of footage sourced from Pond5
“the worlds stock media marketplace” . The FlowSpot Tests are performative
pieces involving bizarre consumer items sourced from e-bay and wallmart and
deployed in a 21st Century updating of silent movie Lloyd-Keaton-Chaplin
deadpan involving, too, a certain degree of slapstick
and displaying a deliciously calibrated sense of the ridiculous.
The Webinars (a least when one takes account of their titles and certainly viewed
in the light of the commentary from “networking”) are a kind of consumerist
reductio-ad-absurdam.
The intent is celarly in some sense satirical but the pieces take risks in
that they don’t stop and end in critique – there is an understanding of
how toxically compelling some of this imagery is and to some extent they
toy with celebrating this.
Wilson is clearly a natural movie maker. He doesn’t restrain himself from
visual flourishes and jokes which are by no means integral to any
satirical case but make the pieces more fun to watch.
(The distortion effects applied to objects in the periphery of the
action in FlowSpot Test #5 are a case in point.)
Additionally, and most impressively, there is a muddying of the
waters in Networking… (and by implication the
Webinars and FlowSpot Tests) whereby
cogent and apparently straightforward philosophising is allowed
to cross pollinate/contaminate with the satire and vice versa,
leaving the viewer with -ahem- work to do.
This work is not glib; it takes risks – in order to maintain its
high level potency it risks misunderstanding.
A look at Wilson’s CV shows a spell spent working for a
labour union and I read the impulse behind these pieces
as radically anti-commodification and corporate mind rot.
Agit-prop, thankfully, it’s not, but “something rich and strange”
– radical art for interesting times to come.
Nice to see this when so many younger artists seem to be
tempted by a career orientated and somewhat cynical celebration
of that same deadend emptiness.
Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet, artist, performer and polymath,
who died in 1998, deserves to be more widely
known in the rest of the world.
I’ve often thought his work, in particular the visual
poems, prefigured much of the art of the early days
of the net (but mostly better: terser, wittier, riskier –
I think Brossa would have loved the net).
This elegant & delightful performance ( ‘Fi’ is Catalan
for ‘End’, in this context The End) was recorded
in Barcelona eight months before his death.
It requires a little patience; the reward being that
it can be viewed many more than one time, so it
seems like an appropriate thing to leave you with
over the summer.
Remember we’re always delighted to look at new work,
so if you’re making moving image yourself,
or you happen across great stuff don’t hesitate
to send us links.
We’re back on Monday, September the 26th – in
the meantime we wish you all a happy and relaxing summer.
A Walk with Jane Austen (1999, 144MB, 12:20 min)
‘the work is about exploring the veracity of history and of time,
and its constructs (in this case especially the notion of
“bodice-ripping” romance genres).
Playing with text and in-authenticity, the intention was to engage
an audience with notions of historical construction of women;
their facts and fictions, and the possibility of re-visioning histories.
– Delpha Hudson
Engaging hybrid of site specific performance and movie making,
the somewhat improvisatory quality lending it all a pleasantly
languid & unhurried air.
At the very end the sun joins in to striking effect & I love the rogue
arm at our right as the spectators leave.
Hudson is a charismatic & commanding performer –
we’ll have another of her performance pieces here in the Autumn.
Arms Race (2007, 1.85MB, 1:02 min)
Handbag Surveillance (2007, 4.18MB, 2:05 min)
Anyone lucky enough to have already encountered Jess Loseby’s artwork
online or in a gallery will have realised immediately what a thoughtful,
courageous & dextrous artist she is. She hasn’t been so active of late &
her excellent site is offline now due to her continuing ill health
(although it is possible to explore it somewhat using the wayback machine).
This is a real loss: there is a warmth & humanity to her work
– an ability to find beauty in the ordinary, the overlooked
( & in our still sexist society, these categories often overlapping
with the domestic, the feminine) – which one often looks for in vain elsewhere.
Her work doesn’t strut, it enchants, (& then maybe sticks a
big fuck-off hatpin into you).
Video making isn’t central to what she does, but when she does it
she does it with all the qualities noted above.
Enjoy & learn.
Music for Handbag Surveillance by Clive Loseby.
We at DVblog join with many of her friends in wishing Jess well
and look forward to her return to active art making.
Native Dancer (2011, 92MB, 2:08 min)
Genbush (2006, 17MB, 6:03 min)
Two pieces from Alan Sondheim -one we originally posted in 2006
and one very recent. The new piece –Native Dancer –
is a particularly affecting example of recent motion capture/avatar work.
It properly forms part of a triptych but I think it is the outstanding of the
three and I’m going to exercise curatorial perogative & post it singly.
It enchants me -I don’t know exactly why, I think the reasons could be
quite banal -there’s something of the children’s TV sci-fi epic about it perhaps…
Don’t know, just love it.
And here’s what we originally said about the other piece, which I see no reason to change:
Humor is perhaps not a quality that springs immediately
to mind when discussing the work of Alan Sondheim.
Wrong! His work is saturated in it, often a species of
graveyard or gallows wit.
Here, though, he just lets loose, plays.
But the man is incapable of doing anything that doesn’t
resonate with layer upon layer of meaning too!
I Want To See How You See (2003, 55.2MB, 4:48 min)
Hallucinatory, luscious, with a hint of darkness: approaching the
formulaic but, if so, certainly a winning formula for Rist & as
always undoubtedly beautifully & imaginatively wrought,
a video portrait of the writer & curator Cornelia Providoli,
found on the consistently excellent Lumen Eclipse site.
Buffies – First Season (2002, 5.4MB, 1 min.)
Winsome bit of conceptual candyfloss from Chuck Jones in 2002.
One of his isolation studies, this piece comprises
‘Every utterance of the word ‘Buffy’ made during
the first season of ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’,
totaling nearly one minute.’
Big Moth (2011, 9MB, 3:05 min)
“Experimental film and sound collage with a spoken poem
about embodying a moth”
As you do, as you do…
Another piece of strange & haunting loveliness from Simon Mclennan*.
*I completely screwed up posting this last week – I prepared the post &
went on vacation for a few days forgetting to actually upload the only
copy of the movie we had, on my home machine, to the server. Arrgh!
Big apologies to Simon & here it is all working properly now.
Mr. & Mrs. Blue Skies (2006, 30MB, 5:30 min.)
‘September 7th marks three exciting years since meeting my wife.
In that time, my life has changed dramatically for the best.
It seems like I finally have a life!
This video should certainly remind you of being forced to sit through the
family vacation videos by your parents.
If it doesn’t then you should watch it a couple of times.’
Music: Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra
From Ajit @ squigglebooth
Baldessari Sings LeWitt (excerpt) (1972, 30.5MB, 3:38 min)
In which John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt’s
sentences on conceptual art.
From the indispensible Ubuweb.
Beautiful slow moving images accompanied by complex
layered sound collages from the videoblog fast moving animals in 2005.
Park House (2011, 10MB, 1:55 min)
Poetry, visual and aural, from Simon Mclennan.
(And what a compelling speaking voice he has.
How nice to have such a fine instrument)
Quite, quite lovely.
More soon.
November (2006, 80.1MB, 9:41 min)
Last week we heard the shocking & terrible news
of the untimely death of Patrick Simons, half, with
Kate Southworth, of the artistic (and life) partnership,
Glorious Ninth.
He was a smart, imaginative, funny and warm person.
As a memorial we’re re-posting here a performance piece
they made a few years back with Ruth Catlow and
Marc Garrett of Furtherfield.
Appropriately you can read a tribute to Patrick from Ruth
and Marc here.
We’d like to express our deepest condolences to Kate, Bella and Aphra.
Here’s the copy from the original post in June 2007:
An enchanting piece of networked performance from
Kate Southworth & Patrick Simons a.k.a Glorious Ninth
with Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett from the indispensable
Furtherfield.org
I’ve admired Kate & Patrick’s work for a long time,
partly for its sheer visceral beauty, but there’s
an integrity, too, to what they do, a doggedness &
a willingness, recently in particular, to take risks -to
follow their instincts.
I think it pays off richly here.
Here’s a technical, blow by blow description.
Read it then forget it & just go with the strange &
compelling rhythms of the piece:
NOVEMBER
is a performance that utilises peer-to-peer instant messaging
technology, and the participants were able to see and hear each other on their
computers throughout. Working with their own pre-chosen texts, each
participant alternated between reading aloud and listening, amending and
improvising their performances in response to each other. At times a
cacophony of competing voices, the performance was a spontaneous and
unrehearsed encounter, exposing moments of vulnerability, intimacy, connection
and rhythm.
Celebrating Halloween and the changing of the season, four
participants met online to exchange collected data whilst eating prepared
garlic.
NOVEMBER is a networked performative encounter, recorded simultaneously
from Cornwall and London, UK.
laser tag (2006, 17.6MB, 4 min.)
The Graffiti Research Lab is dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers,
artists and protestors with open source tools for urban communication.
mobile opera (2006, 7.1 MB, 48 sec.)
from – fast moving animals.
Music: Rossini: ‘La Danza’. Voice: Beniamino Gigili
Out With Mother (2011, 73MB, 1:32 min)
I’m oscillating between finding this piece by Delpha Hudson really rather
beautiful and rather chilling (or both).
It’s perhaps the ambguity which makes it so effective, difficult to get a
precise fix on.
There’s no doubting that it’s a smart piece of work. I love the dual tempo thing
with the scene in the background unfolding slowly behind the more anxious and
busier foreground.
I’m assuming the speech like sound *is* sampled from an actual child -again the ambiguity
arising from, on the one hand its near musicality and on the other the
inevitable and immediate visceral response (certainly from anyone who’s ever had kids)
it provokes is a point adding to the richness of the thing.
Great. More from Delpha soon.
Wikipedia Art Intro (2011, 114MB, 2:29 min)
And, appropriately following on from yesterday’s post, a little intro
to the splendid Kildall/Stern Wikipedia Art project which is showing, as part
of a two person show at London’s Furtherfield gallery (formerly HTTP)
from this Friday.
(One individual piece by each artist too – promises to be a real treat)
Private view tonight 6:30 (Thurs.) – all welcome, maybe see you there.
This piece narrated in Stern’s breathless-puppy-dog-with-an-off-the-dial-IQ
trademark delivery with reassuringly measured interventions by the
no less smart & talented Kildall.
Edit by Foster Stilp, plus suitably keyed up and excited music by Stilp and
Kevin McGillivray, who together trade as Felixsofia
Distant Interiors (2011, 87MB, 2:16 min)
Drake Music is an organisation initiating and enabling a whole spectrum
of activity around disability and the arts (particularly music
but other artforms too).
This could be worthy, condescending and dull. It is none of these.
In recent years, under the inspired leadership of Carien Meijer,
DM has ensured it is situated primarily as a very forward looking
arts organisation which happens to work closely with disabled artists
to enable new and fresh work to emerge.
It has encouraged collaborations between disabled and non-disabled artists
and, in a sense, works towards its own future disappearance not only
by using technology to level the playing field but also by aspiring not
to pity or the sideshow but to serious, top level, work.
This is their first online commission, a remote collaboration between
video artist Melanie Clifford, composer Ailís Ní Ríain and artist Rebecca Key.
I like the fact that it is so confident in its austere and beautiful
language and aims, not to charm us, but to engage us.
The spiky and beautiful music is particularly exhilarating.
15 Years (2011, 60 MB, 3:08 min)
Reverse aging transformation of a 15 year self-portrait sequence
of Dan Hanna, forming the basis for the movie “StartStop” (2009).
Edited in HD. Used is 32 channel split screen asynchrony to create the illusion of flow.
By Steven Hoskins.
Memorial Stone (2011, 92 MB, 38:31 min)
“As technology moves forward.. all my work is falling apart.. I’d like to move
forward as well, into a more outside adventurous practice, so this video is an
attempt to document the ruins and the remains of my internet work”
– by Heath Bunting
