Andrew Norman Wilson – Webinars & FlowSpot Tests

Posted on September 26, 2011 by michael

Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min)

I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s work I’m going to devote
the whole first week of this DVblog season to it.

He initially sent us a longish piece, Networking with Andrew Norman Wilson
made with Nicholas O’Brien of Bad At Sports.
It’s wonderful but pretty huge so you should definitely go and
look at the Vimeo version there.

On Monday, Weds and Friday of this week we’ll post smaller
pieces extracted from that (but without the commentary or
‘interview’ as it is styled elsewhere [-the text on the BAS page linked above]) ,
On Tuesday and Thursday we’ll post two of Wilson’s FlowSpot Tests
with some accompanying explanation from him.

I find this work in general very exciting because it does a lot
of interesting, nuanced and often rather funny (and I’m in favour of funny –
there are very few great works of art which contain no funny at all)
and intially apparently contradictory things.

Let me give you my take on it.
The Webinars are all composed entirely of footage sourced from Pond5
“the worlds stock media marketplace” . The FlowSpot Tests are performative
pieces involving bizarre consumer items sourced from e-bay and wallmart and
deployed in a 21st Century updating of silent movie Lloyd-Keaton-Chaplin
deadpan involving, too, a certain degree of slapstick
and displaying a deliciously calibrated sense of the ridiculous.
The Webinars (a least when one takes account of their titles and certainly viewed
in the light of the commentary from “networking”) are a kind of consumerist
reductio-ad-absurdam.
The intent is celarly in some sense satirical but the pieces take risks in
that they don’t stop and end in critique – there is an understanding of
how toxically compelling some of this imagery is and to some extent they
toy with celebrating this.
Wilson is clearly a natural movie maker. He doesn’t restrain himself from
visual flourishes and jokes which are by no means integral to any
satirical case but make the pieces more fun to watch.
(The distortion effects applied to objects in the periphery of the
action in FlowSpot Test #5 are a case in point.)
Additionally, and most impressively, there is a muddying of the
waters in Networking… (and by implication the
Webinars and FlowSpot Tests) whereby
cogent and apparently straightforward philosophising is allowed
to cross pollinate/contaminate with the satire and vice versa,
leaving the viewer with -ahem- work to do.
This work is not glib; it takes risks – in order to maintain its
high level potency it risks misunderstanding.

A look at Wilson’s CV shows a spell spent working for a
labour union and I read the impulse behind these pieces
as radically anti-commodification and corporate mind rot.
Agit-prop, thankfully, it’s not, but “something rich and strange”
– radical art for interesting times to come.
Nice to see this when so many younger artists seem to be
tempted by a career orientated and somewhat cynical celebration
of that same deadend emptiness.

Joan Brossa – Fi

Posted on July 22, 2011 by michael

Fi (2011, 51MB, 9:57 min)

Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet, artist, performer and polymath,
who died in 1998, deserves to be more widely
known in the rest of the world.
I’ve often thought his work, in particular the visual
poems, prefigured much of the art of the early days
of the net (but mostly better: terser, wittier, riskier –
I think Brossa would have loved the net).
This elegant & delightful performance ( ‘Fi’ is Catalan
for ‘End’, in this context The End) was recorded
in Barcelona eight months before his death.

It requires a little patience; the reward being that
it can be viewed many more than one time, so it
seems like an appropriate thing to leave you with
over the summer.
Remember we’re always delighted to look at new work,
so if you’re making moving image yourself,
or you happen across great stuff don’t hesitate
to send us links.

We’re back on Monday, September the 26th – in
the meantime we wish you all a happy and relaxing summer.

G.H. Hovagimyan – Boxing Rants

Posted on July 20, 2011 by doron

Boxing Rants (2011, 28 MB, 3:11 min)

Documentation of an interactive video performance by
G.H. Hovagimyan that took place at Postmasters Gallery in NY,
from a series of performances titled ‘Being and Event’.

Delpha Hudson – A Walk with Jane Austen

Posted on July 19, 2011 by michael

A Walk with Jane Austen (1999, 144MB, 12:20 min)

‘the work is about exploring the veracity of history and of time,
and its constructs (in this case especially the notion of
“bodice-ripping” romance genres).
Playing with text and in-authenticity, the intention was to engage
an audience with notions of historical construction of women;
their facts and fictions, and the possibility of re-visioning histories.
– Delpha Hudson

Engaging hybrid of site specific performance and movie making,
the somewhat improvisatory quality lending it all a pleasantly
languid & unhurried air.
At the very end the sun joins in to striking effect & I love the rogue
arm at our right as the spectators leave.
Hudson is a charismatic & commanding performer –
we’ll have another of her performance pieces here in the Autumn.

Sondheim – Unmissable , Unmatchable

Posted on July 15, 2011 by michael

Native Dancer (2011, 92MB, 2:08 min)

Genbush (2006, 17MB, 6:03 min)

Two pieces from Alan Sondheim -one we originally posted in 2006
and one very recent. The new piece –Native Dancer –
is a particularly affecting example of recent motion capture/avatar work.
It properly forms part of a triptych but I think it is the outstanding of the
three and I’m going to exercise curatorial perogative & post it singly.
It enchants me -I don’t know exactly why, I think the reasons could be
quite banal -there’s something of the children’s TV sci-fi epic about it perhaps…
Don’t know, just love it.
And here’s what we originally said about the other piece, which I see no reason to change:

Humor is perhaps not a quality that springs immediately
to mind when discussing the work of Alan Sondheim.
Wrong! His work is saturated in it, often a species of
graveyard or gallows wit.
Here, though, he just lets loose, plays.
But the man is incapable of doing anything that doesn’t
resonate with layer upon layer of meaning too!

Charlie Roberts

Posted on July 13, 2011 by michael

Band-Aid (2007, 54.4MB, 21:53 min)

Temple To Aeolos (2003, 1.52MB, 43 sec)

Well executed & not a little disturbing work from Charlie Roberts,
a man whose CV features the interesting combination of
performance video & ..er.. inflatable sculpture.
Bit of both here, both a compelling watch…

Baldessari sings LeWitt

Posted on July 6, 2011 by michael

Baldessari Sings LeWitt (excerpt) (1972, 30.5MB, 3:38 min)

In which John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt’s
sentences on conceptual art.

From the indispensible Ubuweb.

Arni & Kinski

Posted on June 30, 2011 by brian

glosoli (2005, 45.3MB, 6:14 min)

hoppipolla (2006, 34.7MB, 4:38 min)

Iceland’s own, Stefan Arni and Siggi Kinski, have provided
“pure aesthetic beauty” to back these two wonderful Sigur Ros tracks.

Found on their site.

Martin Archer live at The Grapes

Posted on June 29, 2011 by michael

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.