Annie Abrahams & Curt Cloninger -<em> Double Blind</em>

double blind
Double Blind (clip) ( 2010, 70MB, 5:38 min)

“Annie Abrahams (from the Living Room in Montpellier, France)
and Curt Cloninger (from Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center
in Asheville, North Carolina, US) repeatedly sang “love, love, love”
(a short excerpt from a pop song) as a kind of duet, in real
time/space and online.

In order to isolate them from their surroundings and make them
more attentive to the other, they were both blindfolded.
While singing they evolved and mutated the original song excerpt,
collaborating and communicating in a space/time of alterity.
The artists have never met each other in the flesh.

There was no set duration.
They sang until the last one of them decided to stop.
In both places a space was reserved for the live performance
and another for the video and audio projection.
A camera was fixed on each of their faces singing to each other.
This live video of both faces was projected both in the
Living Room space and in the Black Mountain College
Museum and Arts Center space.
The performance was also visible on the web at http://selfworld.net.”


Interesting and affecting convergence of the performative work
Curt Cloninger has been doing of late with the
strange, wonderful & categorisation denying oeuvre of Annie Abrahams.

We feature here only a tiny extract from the 4 hour plus performance
of Double Blind – the complete documentation will be on show
as part of Annie Abraham’s first UK solo show at HTTP gallery
in North London, in addition to new works and performances.
The opening is on Friday night & all are welcome – if you’re in
or near London it’ll be well worth getting along to.

Complete Double Blind documentation & links

Picot et al – Dr Hairy & the London Hospital

London Hospital
London Hospital ( 2010, 49MB, 9:59)

Writer & artist Edward Picot doubles as an administrator
in the UK health service & lets his hair down with this
deeply odd but amusing bit of lo-fi puppetry made in
collaboration with Julian Le Saux & Dr David Hindmarsh.

Just in case there are any knuckleheads out there
(and of course this is unlikely as you have the good taste
to read DVblog) who imagine this is an attack of any sort on
socialised medicine, the authors have kindly provided the
following statement:

“The creators of this piece would like to point out that they all work in
the National Health Service and are completely devoted to it.”

Vito Acconci #1

Borders
Claim Excerpts (clip, 1971, 1MB, 29 secs)

Borders
Face Off (clip, 1972, 1MB, 28 secs)

Borders
Open Book (clip, 1974, 1MB, 31 secs)

Borders
Two Track (clip, 1971, 1MB, 31 secs)

Four tiny (in every respect) but nonetheless great clips
from the fearless, troubling & wonderful Vito Acconci in his writer &
video artist phase.
The clips are from the Video Data Bank site where you’ll
be pleased to know you can with seminal
(perhaps not the best choice of word) pieces by
Acconci and others for a mere $3600…
Or you could go and check out more of his work on UBUWEB..
Some stuff about the later Acconci coming shortly.

Liz Sterry – Borders

Borders
Borders (2010, 201 MB, 3:59 min, silent)

Worth every second of the download for this extraordinary
piece from young UK artist Liz Sterry, a digital arts student at the design school
in Writtle, Essex, UK*.
It’s an astonishingly assured bit of conceptual gorgeousness.
I’m particularly taken with..what’s the word.. the ..um..rightness of judgement
with which it was shot and assembled – on the surface thrown together
but everything combining so easily & elegantly to create something of
logic, power and great beauty.

*Transparency – where I currently teach.

Paul Rodriguez – Flowers

Flowers
Flowers (2010, 52 MB, 3:16 min)

I really hated this piece, a music video for Former Ghosts,
the first time I saw it, although I’d previously enjoyed work
by Paul Rodriguez and posted some here.
My first impressions were confirmed by a trawl through
the publicity material surrounding it:
“A naked dude gets peed on in this disturbing clip from the electro-goth
project led by Freddy Ruppert. Director: Paul Rodriguez….”

which seemed a tad..er..calculating
I was so bemused by how much I took against the piece
that I watched it several times over to try and analyse my reactions
and the more I looked at it the more the sheer deftness,
care and feel for the medium with which it is made began to
prevail over my dislike of the content.
Rodriguez confirms himself a filmmaker of real talent, with a great eye
and superb attention to detail.
I’m not sure someone possessed of his gifts needs to work so hard to
make us look his way but I remain very interested to see where he goes next.

Julien Maire – Digit

julienmaire1
Digit (2006, 6 MB, 1:27 min.)

A live performance by Julien Maire.

Ask Vatne Brean –Two Short Movies

Freely Improvised Music With Digital Effects On Analog Wind Instrument In Depth Against Painted Directed Italian Reality Game Show On a Flat Screen
Freely Improvised Music With Digital Effects On Analog Wind Instrument In Depth Against Painted Directed Italian Reality Game Show On a Flat Screen (2009, 20 MB, 3:27 min)

Small creatures everywhere looking for adventures
Small creatures everywhere looking for adventures (2009, 14 MB, 2:24 min)

But not short titles eh Ask?
Work of skill, verve, charm & oddness from Ask Vatne Brean
about whom I know nothing , except I think he is Norwegian.

Update: He is Norwegian & is an 18 year old
music student.
Impressive & somewhat scary – I look forward to seeing how his
work develops.

Tarlabasi Crawl – Jeremiah Day

tarlabashi_crawl
Tarlabasi Crawl (2009, 18 MB, 8:23 min.)

Jeremiah Day is interested in resistance movements, as well as the flux of
knowledge, stories and identity through the migration of people and histories.

Annie Abrahams – Squad

squad
Squad (2009, 32 MB, 3:18 min)

Utterly bonkers* & totally splendid video documentation of a performance
by Annie Abrahams, Colette Tron et Emmanuelle Delafraye.
Annie Abrahams performs the movements whilst the others
read texts on the subject of fear, garnered, I believe, from the internet.

* in a good way; committed, unafraid, vulnerable, generous.

Sondheim – 2 Short Dance Loops

poseurs
Poseurs (2009, 2 MB, 3 sec silent loop)

twitchch
Twitchch (2009, 5 MB, 6 sec silent loop)

Two short pieces by Alan Sondheim, with Azure Carter
and Foofwa d’Imobilit