Quilts Never Sleep (short version) (2007, 20.9MB, 3:07 min)
Two very different but attractive & telling pieces from Dan Canyon.
The first was part of a show of – you guessed it – quilts in London in 2006,
about which read more here.
The second could’ve been made for dvblog, well, at least for me, as I’m a fool
for all things turntablist, & features the splendidly monickered Mickey Morphingaz.
Blanking (2011, 30MB, 1:07 min)
for Carol Novack
‘I was working on this, shot with Foofwa d’Imobilite at Eyebeam,
when I heard the news that Carol Novack had died. for many of us,
this was unexpected and awful, as if the year couldn’t end
without just one more tragedy.
Foofwa and I had talked about our
work together, earlier, about issues of pain, wounding, death;
I think this piece, made at the time, is all I could do, I speak
through image and sound, these words already lost, resting in
peace
thank you Foofwa and Jamie and Jackson at Eyebeam’
Alan Sondheim
Saved By The Bell/Mofones (2011, 33MB, 54 secs)
The title of this post being words that seldom pass my lips but which in this case
are entirely to the point.
The splendidly creative video artist Morrisa Maltz whose work we’ve been delighted
to feature here several times made these..um..arty-i-phone holders, which are, it has
to be said, rather good and to cut a long story short their commercial potential was
spotted and now she is a C….E….O & Urban Outfitters are selling her stuff.
You can read a fuller account here and you can view & buy here.
I hope she spends all of any money she makes on giving herself time to make more of the
very smart and fetching art videos she’s so good at.
Anyway this is a promotional vid for the moFones, lovingly carved from “Saved by the Bell”.
She even does marketing classily.
prisoners (2008, 25.4MB, 2:36 min)
Nearest thing to a Picasso we yet have, in my view.
Whatever history decides, there’s no denying one point
of Sondheim/Picasso commonality – an almost compulsive
productivity.
I’d push it further -they both constantly transform lead into
gold. Picasso & his seat & handlebars, Sondheim, for example,
these bits of video.
The music, a kind of hallucinogenic, shredded-up
slow funk/blues, is also particularly noteworthy.
Here, for good measure, is Alan’s accompanying rubric:
prisoners of motion capture, prisoners of west virginia
prisoners of caloric, froid, prisoners of gravitation
prisoners of art, mayhem, vandal, prisoners of desecration
o to be a prisoner of life again (above the clouds
o to be a prisoner of love again (within the waters
o to be a prisoner of truth again (beyond the earths
o to be a prisoner of dance again (before the fires
prisoners of fires, froid, prisoners of aerostat and transport
transport of prisoners, clouds, waters, earths, fluids
yes, prisoners of fluids, prisoners of fluids and places
prisoners of west virginia, of fluids, places, life, love,
truth and dance again
Struggle for Existence (2004, 18MB, 1:58 min.)
“By linking Darwin’s “The truth of universal struggle for existence” with a Taiwanese children’s game, The video represents two individuals’ slaughter in the virtual battle field and reflects on the ideology of boundary dividing, self-defending patriotism and bellicosity.”
by – Yu-Chen Wang.
The Singing Sculpture (1992, 830k, 41 sec.)
“Singing Sculpture documents one of Gilbert & George’s most famous “living sculpture” pieces.
Covered in multicolored bronze paint, the artists sing and interchange parts of the English
music hall standard “Underneath the Arches.” Through their stylized performance,
Gilbert & George deliberately blur the lines between life and art, reality and contrivance.
This ambiguity does not rely on a transformation from living to sculptural form. On the contrary,
they have merged the two in order to obliterate, rather than emphasize, the distinctions between life and art.” – Walker Art Center
from Video Data Bank
The Word Girl (1985, 7.62MB, 3:14 min)
Oh Patti (1988, 20.3MB, 4:14 min)
Two of the most perfect pop songs ever made, the first from
1985’s Cupid & Psyche & the second from 1988’s Provision
(& which features a trumpet solo from Miles Davis of staggering
economy & otherworldly beauty).
Pet Sounds excepted, pop music just doesn’t come better.
The vids aren’t just an adjunct – of course they have historical
interest (that weird decade!), but there’s something fragile
& haunting & mysterious there which survives the occasional impossible
to overlook moment of naffness.
Wonderful.
The Golden Age (2011, 181MB, 5:34 min)
We’ve posted Toby Tatum’s work
before and it’s work with a definite charge to it and ambitious too.
I think this piece is more wholly successful than its predecessor but I’m still not totally convinced.
It’s something to do with the aim of conjuring a very precise & particular
dream-world which strikes me as an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of approach,
in that the tiniest false note disrupts the sought for spell.
Therefore Tatum creates a very high bar indeed for himself and his performers.
If one compares similarly oneiric work by Cocteau, Lynch or Hadžihalilović,
however dense and rich the atmosphere gets, there is variation with humour
or banality preparing us for more poetry to come and somehow too, framing it,
setting it off.
That sounds more critical that I want to be for this is, in every respect, a
very nicely realised and haunting piece.
Next week, or the week after, we’ll post an interview with Tatum about his work.
Martha Rosler – Semiotics of a Kitchen (1975, 18.3MB, 6:29)
An A-Z look at the tools of a kitchen, of domesticity,
of the self in the midst of frustrated ennui.
Historically significant feminist performance art that reminds us,
“When the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.”
Rosler is one of my favorites.
Abbie Making Gefilte Fish (1973, 156.4MB, 21:04)
Footage of Abbie Hoffman making gefilte fish with Laura Cavestani
(who made the video) in his kitchen, 1973.
Like Abbie, I think art is in the everyday, and it sure is a fun
(and rather informative) twenty minutes if you’ve got it to spare.
Art for Abbie was education, constant revolution, evolution, and living for free.
Art and freedom were one in the same, inextricable from each other.
We miss you man.
