Category Archives: documentary arts

Ant Farm – Media Burn

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Media Burn by Ant Farm (1975, 202MB, 25:46)

Infamous July 4, 1975 “pseudo-event” featuring a
speech by “JFK Jr.” and a 1959 Cadillac turned wacky
crash test car through a wall of burning television sets,
produced by video artists and activist collective Ant Farm.
The first four and a half minutes of this particular video
feature actual news coverage about the event.
The rest is the full speech and crash. Inspiration.
Video via the Media Burn archive.

Brody Condon – Performance Modifications

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DeathAnimations
Death Animations (2007, 22 MB, 2:58 min.)

“‘Death Animations’ by Brody Condon.
Closely linked to his past process of modification of existing computer games,
as well as performative events with medieval re-enactment and fantasy live
action role playing subcultures, the work is a re-creation in medieval fantasy
costume of Bruce Nauman

David Phillips and Paul Rowley

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Phillips & Rowley – latent heat (2004, 7.7MB, 3:25)


Phillips & Rowley – personal effort (2004, 2.1MB, 1:41)

Lovely, engaging work from this talented duo, originally
from Dublin and Memphis respectively. These two pieces
showcase some earlier work, but their later work is equally
enchanting. I’m particularly fond of their installation work,
but we’ll save that for another day.

Joan Healy: Deranged, but in a Good Way

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Sithair
Sithair (2007, 6.4MB, 1:49 min)

Cyberskin
Cyber Skin (2007, 38.8MB, 3:05 min)

Meat Market
Meat Market (2007, 39.6MB, 7:14 min)

I was lucky enough to see young Irish artist Joan Healy
present her work at a 2008 DATA event in Dublin.
It was strange.
First off, consciously or not, she has this innocent
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth demeanour and then she
shows this.. er..stuff
Documented here, in ascending order of weirdness, there’s a performance piece
where she transforms her hair into a musical instrument,
a piece where she satirises the current bio-art fashion by
getting into a box, exposing some of her back (the installation
claims this is especially grown cyber-skin)
& then attempting to draw to screen the patterns the punters trace
out on her.
Last is ..well.. (vegans avert your eyes), electronically assisted dancing meat
– you know.. chops.. steaks.. & the like..
After she gave her talk I said to her I thought her work was ‘utterly deranged’
She smiled sweetly and said she would take it as a compliment.
It was.