A Tough Dance (1902, 7.1MB, 47 sec.)
Bicycle Trick Riding (1899, 5.5MB, 37 sec.)
Three Acrobats (1899, 5.4MB, 36 sec.)
Three exhilarating chunks of early movie making from the
Library of Congress online collection of variety stage motion pictures.
I particularly love the deeply strange A ‘Tough’ Dance.
There’s also a great early animation collection on the LOC site.
Martin Archer Live at The Grapes, Sheffield (2006, 85.8MB, 9:52 min)
Great vid made by Jonny Drury of Martin Archer, a unique
& towering figure in British (here I was going to interpolate experimental but that
doesn’t really do justice to the intensely personal soundworld Archer has
forged over the years – a combination of fierce poetry, a huge
intellectual range & hunger & a love affair with sound & how it
can be ordered & dis-ordered & where one now feels he knows
exactly where he’s going, so experimental feels in a way
like an impertinence) music of the past 25 years,
performing at The Grapes pub in his home town of Sheffield, UK.
If you like this do check out his site, where you can buy a
staggering diversity of recordings from over the years.
Seasons (2006, 60.4MB, 15:25 min)
Work of heart-stopping delicacy & beauty from
Takashi Kawashima.
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.
The Cinema Effect (2011, 44 MB, 5:28 min)
An exhibition that reflects on the influence and impact of cinema in constructing
our visual culture, highlighting how cinematographic language has taken on various
artistic forms including video and installation art. The show features work by Julian Rosefeldt,
Isaac Julien, Runa Islam, Kerry Tribe, Paul Chan, Omer Fast, Mungo Thomson and Ian Charlesworth.
The show has been curated by Kerry Brougher, Anne Ellegood, Kelly Gordon, and Kristen Hileman.
from VernissageTV.
Shed is a long-term video and drawing project.
Christina McPhee talks about ‘Shed’ and her work in general.
from VernissageTV.
Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures (2010, 30 MB, 3:09 min)
“Sculpture made from 2 over the counter “Dancing Stands” (the tacky kinetic product
display stands you can often see in down market stores) which have been modified to
spin at slightly different speeds. When these modified stands are placed next to each
other they go in and out of phase about every 4 minutes. I first showed a version of
these sculptures in my show “Creative Pursuits” at the University of Michigan Museum
of Art. This is a video of a version of these sculptures in action at my show The Sharper
Image at the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (the music is Dj Icey, a nod to Miami)”
By Cory Arcangel.
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
Electronic Village Galleries Talk 6th May 2011 (2011, 164MB, 32:14 min)
Gosh -where to start?
Awhile back we were approached to assemble a selection of
work from DVblog for screening at a gallery in the UK.
This reel then took on a bit of a life of its own, showing
at the museum of club culture in Hull, UK and at the Buffalo Literary Center, New York.
(of course ‘a life of its own’ is completely unfair – it got shown because real
human beings –Kerry Baldry and Martha Deed respectively – put work into making it happen.)
Then Kate Southworth, who is running a brilliant pilot project
involving showing digital work in village halls in Cornwall, in the extreme
south-west of the UK, asked if I’d be interested in curating something
and the reel immediately sprang to mind..
To cut a long story short it was shown at the second EVG event at
Zennor village hall on 7th May and I went down to talk (at some
length, I notice with a certain degree of horror)
about digital video on the net, DVblog in particular and about the
artists involved in this selection.
Here, for better or for worse, is my talk, filmed, heroically, given my
restless delivery style, by Delpha Hudson.
If you’d like to reconstruct the programme for yourself it’s below, with links to
the original DVblog posts.
And if you’d be interested in screening it, please get in touch!
(We also have a reel of silent work which has been screened with
musical accompaniment and is available for more such outings.)
Creative Pursuits (2010, 12 MB, 1:03 min)
Images from Cory Arcangel show – Creative Pursuits at
the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Can I Get An Amen? (2004, 34.3MB, 18:08 min.)
from Nate Harrison.
This documentation of an installation by Nate Harrison,
includes an in depth lecture on the history of a single breakbeat.
It follows this small fragment of a song from its origin in a 60’s soul
recording through the invention of house and contemporary hip-hop.
It also speaks very eloquently on the important issues of copyright in
remix culture. This is fascinating to listen to.
By Mica
Martin on Wegman (1999, 3.75MB, 2:09 min.)
The introduction to the identity program from the PBS series
Art in the 21st Century in which host Steve Martin is featured
in this charming and quirky video by the artist William Wegman.
Painting 01 (1998-2001, 58MB, 2:51 min)
More from Eleanor Suess, this time an exploration of a painting
by UK artist Christopher McHugh.
She get’s the usual basics of this sort of thing – fidelity to McHugh’s wonderful colour
sense in particular – spot on, but, as I’m beginning to realise with all of Suess’s
work, there’s a good deal more to it than initially meets the eye.
(Which expression strikes a philosophical note when applied to two
predominantly visual practices)
It’s the modesty (in the best sense) of the that work does it.
The work refuses either to ingratiate or ambush.
We could do with more of this.
Nam June Paik: Venus (2009, 62 MB, 5:28 min)
At Art Cologne 2009 Hans Mayer Gallery showed a piece by Nam June Paik,
a painted aluminium infrastructure with a multi painted satellite dish,
24 color TV sets and laser disc player. In this video, Hans Mayer gives us a
short introduction to the work. From VernissageTV.
Food Terror (2008, 73MB, 4:36 min)
More from Manchester’s Doodlebug.
This one is particularly splendid and
meal times will never be the same again.
Here’s the text Michael Barnes-Wynters sent me but
I don’t really know what it means:
Doodlebug Presents…25/10/08 at Contact feat.
Ronald fraser-munro’s RFM-UNPLUCKED. manc. poet
amanda milligan’s ‘mz.milly does…’ debut outting
with ‘On Becoming a Human Being’ (AV mix).
a sneak preview of Urbis’s Black Panther artist
Emory Douglas expo. French guerilla photgrapher
JR’s ‘Women are Heroes’ plus Terrorist’s FOOD TERROR mix.
I think we’re watching that last item.
Anyway, it’s great.
More soon.
Iggy, Cincinnati, 1970 (1970, 28.7MB, 5:05 min.)
Layer upon layer of skin-tingling wonder & bizarreness
(is that a word?) from Iggy & the Stooges in 1970,
long before he discovered car insurance.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
From the excellent WFMU’s Beware of the Blog.
puzzle (2006, 19.2MB, 3:51 min)
Puzzleweasel is the sonic output of Peter Dahlgren.
Gavito & Plazaola (n/k, 13.5MB, 3:44 min.)
‘The secret of tango is in this moment of improvisation that
happens between step and step. It is to make the impossible thing
possible: to dance silence. This is essential to learn in tangodance,
the real dance, that of the silence, of following the melody.’
– Carlos Gavito
Watch the late Carlos Gavito & his partner Maria Plazaola
play havoc with the space time continuum in this extraordinary
piece in which time slows down, speeds up & actually comes to a
halt at least once.
Mesmerizing.
[ Found on this very strange tango site with lots more videos]
Interview with Annika Larsson (2011, 134 MB, 3:47 min)
An interview with the Swedish video artist Annika Larsson.
In this interview Larsson talks about her approach towards a
post-produced composition of reality, about the psychological
hidden dynamics hidden in the characters of her video pieces
and about the evolution of her work, amongst other things.
from Studio Banana TV.
untitled (2005, 1.5MB, 1:50 min.)
Nice bit of guerilla art/action/video by Judith Supine and friend.
Took some bottle, I think.
Interview with Trisha Brown (2007, 11 MB, 3:06)
Anyone in or near London should absolutely get to see the
“Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown & Gordon Matta-Clark –
Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s” show,
currently at the Barbican. It’s fantastic!
I was particularly lucky to be there when a performance of the
Trisha Brown ‘walking on walls’ piece happened (worth
ringing in advance to see what performances are on and when)
I knew it would be interesting but, somewhat to my surprise,
I was immediately & intensely emotionally engaged by it too, finding
it lump-in-the-throat-&-tear-in-the-eye moving…
Although we’re concentrating here on Trisha Brown with an interview
conducted in 2007 at the Documenta 12 event (and after you’ve
watched that, the Guardian has a nice audio slideshow about the
walking on walls piece), all three artists shine in this show.
It’s all great but particularly interesting are the rooms of drawings
related to their various performance practices.
Joseph Beuys – Transformer (1979, 10 MB, 3 min)
Excerpt from a 60-minute documentary featuring avant-garde
German artist Joseph Beuys during a 1979 exhibit at the
Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
Robert Roth Reads from ‘Health Proxy’ (2011, 76 MB, 6:30min)
I can’t be objective aboutRobert Roth – he’s a dear friend and his
tremendous & utterly singular book Health Proxy ( Buy it here)
would most definitely be my choice for that desert island.
In this little movie, odd and charming both, by fellow writer
George Spencer, he reads an extract from it, twice.
Everything Is Urgent (2008, 4 MB, 42 sec (Excerpt)
Ran Slavin
confronts the human figure in conjunction with the annoying barking of a dog. 4 figures, 2 young men and women, stand in front of an unknown audience, in front of a void and bark ferociously.
Driven away from systematic and social norms, the human barking figures attack us from within the digital domain, outward.
They present an uncompromising hybrid human, a cross between man and animal. Do they try to warn us, scare us like an omen or blame us? We see a human but hear an animal. Like a shout of desperation of a person who can no longer use his voice.
2008, 4:12 min. Single or 4 channel installation
Trav-erse short (2011, 96 MB, 1:58 min)
This is shaping up to be Furtherfield fortnight & whyever not?
Here’s some footage I took there last Friday night, at the very entertaining
launch of the Art is Open Source/REFF – Roma Europa Fake Factory publication
& exhibition, (GO, if you’re in London) of a splendid performance by
Garrett Lynch of his Trav-erse, where he uses custom Max/MSP created software to
grab audio from an analogue world band receiver, manipulate and remix it.
I was struck both by the simplicity of the idea and the effectiveness of
its execution – a neat concept but also an excellent ear at work.
The sound from my stills cam video was unusable (shame, it sounded great
there) so in the latter section I’ve dubbed on sound from
an earlier performance of the piece in Cardiff, Wales in 2008.
Duchamp’s Fountain (2011, 93MB, 1:59 min, silent)
Fascinating bit of footage from Kev Flanagan arising out
of a piece of work by Rob Myers (together with Curt Cloninger one
of the two smartest people I know) –here’s the original post
from his blog to give some context.
The whole thing sparked an interesting discussion on the Furtherfield
(see Monday’s post) originated Netbehaviour list this week.
Soziale Plastik (1969, 9 MB, 1:47 min)
Joseph Beuys accepts the challenge to expose himself to the anonymous spectator,
in speechless close-up on a video monitor: the artist as
Furtherfield (2011, 103MB, 5:28 min)
Great film about the wonderful UK arts organisation Furtherfield
– you can see & hear me* in it, enthusing further at a couple of points.
Beautifully made by Pete Gomes, it really captures something of
what makes Furtherfield such a big & special deal.
* So let that stand for a full declaration of interest:
I work with them, they’re my friends, they’ve shown
my work – none of which makes any of the nice things
said by me or anyone in the film any less true…
