Peppermint & Nadir – Wilderness Trouble

Posted on January 12, 2007 by michael

Wilderness Trouble Version 1.0* (2007, 9.2MB, 3:31 min.)

When we posted their splendid Series of Practical Performances in the Wilderness
which will be returning here before long, we said lots of nice things about that.
No reason to change our minds now -this fizzes with both ideas & technique in much the same way (although the repetition lies in excellence sustained rather than any marking of time).
For me a litmus test of anything artistic is can it do the affective equivalent
of fart & chew gum, ie can it encompass radically different moods or themes
in a coherent way, that is, foreshadow in the particular, in tiny concrete detail,
something much broader & deeper.
Well, here, yes, sure.
A genuinely comic lightness of tone is yoked to some quite big themes,
but not awkwardly..in fact they make it look easy..don’t think it is though.
Neat.
from ecoarttech.

*This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License

then and now – Antonio Mendoza

Posted on January 10, 2007 by doron

then and now (2006, 5MB, 20 sec. loop)

“although it’s only twenty seconds there’s a bunch of stuff from DVblog in it:
iggy’s hand, the gnarls barkley video, a piece from the nuclear attack video,
and the begining of another video from some guy called Moljevic.
and, of course, there’s that great riff from yes. “
Antonio Mendoza.

‘I feel like a frigging performing monkey’

Posted on January 9, 2007 by michael

Breakfast (2006, 8.6MB, 3:46 min.)

There’s a quiet surrealism that is a feature (not the defining feature, but very much
there) of Martha Deed’s work. Well…it’s somewhere in the surreal, magical-realist,
what-have-you ballpark & it arises, I think, out of a careful & dispassionate (but not
lacking in warmth) observation of small things, sometimes domestic,
sometimes a telling detail of something bigger & darker.
Here she’s in domestic mode & it’s & light & charming but don’t mistake that for
trivial. it’s not.

Ginsberg reads from </em>Howl<em>

Posted on January 8, 2007 by michael

from Howl part 2 (1997, 7.5MB, 4:07 min)

The mighty Allen Ginsberg, buffoon, trickster, personality, conscience, catalyst
above all genuine, genuine poet; our Whitman, sometimes bad but never boring,
who in so many ways shaped ‘the best minds of his generation’,
reads from part two of ‘Howl’ shortly before his death in 1997.
From the excellent allenginsberg.org

Lost Worlds

Posted on December 29, 2006 by michael

Wakefield Gala – clip (1920s?, 1.1MB, 23 sec.)

Munitions Factory – clip (1940s, 884KB, 21 sec.)

Berry Picking – clip (1950s ?, 891KB, 20 sec.)

Three clips from the Yorkshire Film Archive in the UK.
& a glimpse of some lost worlds.
It’s a crime more of these films are not digitised & available
for immediate view & that the online documentation is so poor.
Makes one doubly thankful for the wonderful Prelinger Archive…

Isaac Julien – DV and film work

Posted on December 28, 2006 by doron

Encore II (radioactive) (2004, 11.5MB, 3:31 min.)

Isaac Julien is one of Britain’s most innovative and provocative filmmakers.
He has been involved with forging a new language around black representation.
Although his works largely retain a conventional narrative approach, they are shot
through with strategies which then serve to disrupt the stability of this narrative.
Above – Encore II from tank.tv.

Vagabondia (clip, 2000, 6.6MB, 1:46 min.)