untitled 1 (2010, 630kb, 7 sec.)
untitled 2 (2010, 1MB, 10 sec.)
trophy sports (2010, 768kb, 8 sec.)
three miniatures from nick vitou (ormo).
all cellphone uploads to facebook.
all shot on location while running replay for a local sports television network.
..DNF chancellor with a gold eye.
& check out his music endeavors at LAPS.
Opto-Isolator (2007, 6MB, 46 sec.)
“Opto-Isolator inverts the condition of spectatorship by exploring the questions:
“What if artworks could know how we were looking at them? And, given this
knowledge, how might they respond to us?” The sculpture presents a solitary
mechatronic blinking eye, at human scale, which responds to the gaze of visitors
with a variety of psychosocial eye-contact behaviors that are at once familiar and
unnerving. Among other forms of feedback, Opto-Isolator looks its viewer directly
in the eye; appears to intently study its viewer’s face; looks away coyly if it is stared
at for too long; and blinks precisely one second after its visitor blinks.”
By Golan Levin and Greg Baltus.
The other day,on a whim, I bought Takashi Ito’s collected works on DVD
from the BFI shop. I’d never heard of him before.
I’m so glad I did. It is utterly compelling and remarkable work.
Spacy is an early piece and the clip here is neither complete
not particularly good quality but it does give you a taste of Ito’s early
– almost formalist – style.
There’s such delight in seeing how this broadens into the flexible,
confidently handled and singular idiom of the later pieces, where a quite
musical rigor in the formal structuring is never absent but which
also underpins a beautifully ambiguous and rich expressivity.
The whole set was one of those all too rare tingle-down-the-spine
revelations which I gulped down in a couple of sittings.
This is outstanding & important work – I urge people to become acquainted with it.
Deaf Swedish Beaver TV (2010, 9MB, 1:03 min)
Sooooo un-PC on just soooo many levels
and quite quite wonderful too, a great Lumière from
DVblog’s own Brittany Shoot.
my dark horse is horny (2008, 18MB, 1:23 min.)
Disturbingly hilarious and weird video from Jaron Albertin.
rings #1 – #6 (2007, 25MB, 6:35 min.)
“Ongoing series of one-minute unedited shots which can each stands alone.
Improvised choreography multi-reprojected on body parts, counterpointed
by texts by Fernand Shirren, Maurice Bejart’s music advisor and rhythm teacher
of many dancers and choreographers, and a significant inspiration in Fuks’ work.
made collaboratively with and performed by Helen Varley Jamieson,
James Cunningham, Scotia Monkivitch and Suzon Fuks.”
Directed by Suzon Fuks.
Octopus (2010, 56MB, 1:15 min)
When we previously featured a piece by Jolipunk we took the
exceptional step of including a warning that it might disturb.
This new piece is interesting on several counts –
(1) The somewhat in-your-face Oldboy reference/homage
(I can’t believe there’s anyone interested in film who isn’t at least
aware of that scene)
(2) The sharp focus once again on the mouth and mouth
related transgression.
(3) That -at least in my case – it didn’t send me running
for the sick bucket or even force me to turn away; indeed there’s
something even elegant (especially after the beats kick in
around 47 secs) about it.
(4) The jumpy editing and ambiguous music (which flits rapidly
from mood to mood, ominous at one time, quite lighthearted
at others) which serve both to distance us from simple disgust
and from a too easy identification with the Chan-wook Park sequence.
Sometimes work is “interesting” without being good – here
the things that make it the one make it the other too.
A Cube Bavards (2009, 20MB, 2:47 min)
A Venir Le Monde Sera Beau (2009, 52MB, 9:51 min)
OK -comparisons, I’m aware, can sometimes obscure as much as they illuminate but
imagine, if you will, a female, French, slightly more lapidary, Matthew Barney and it does
seem to fit the bill.
Exemplary and wonderful strangeness from Veronique Hubert.
“Eyecode is an interactive installation whose display is wholly constructed
from its own history of being viewed. By means of a hidden camera, the system
records and replays brief video clips of its viewers’ eyes. Each clip is articulated
by the duration between two of the viewer’s blinks. The unnerving result is a
typographic tapestry of recursive observation.”
By Golan Levin.
Let Me Tell You Something Important (2010, 20MB, 17 secs)
Little taster, simultaneously spooky and ravishing, of the work of young LA based artist
Morrisa Maltz.
Very singular, very nicely executed, very good.
Something a little longer next week.
