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.
Category Archives: conceptual
Annie Abrahams & Curt Cloninger -<em> Double Blind</em>
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.
Jim Punk – T®1p±Ⓨ(|┐╱▒◤△▽///╱ ╱
T®1p±Ⓨ(|┐╱▒◤△▽///╱ ╱ (2010, 12MB, 2:37 min.)
By jimpunk, master of the remix & the ma$h-ups.
Two from Kate Dickinson
19th ( 2010, 1MB, 1:00 min, silent)
Are You Ready? ( 2008, 20MB, 52 secs)
Two contrasting short movies from Leeds, UK, artist Kate Dickinson.
The second should provoke a smile (did for me) but it’s
the first, in which not a great deal happens & in a deliberately
confined area of the screen to boot, that I particularly liked.
There’s a melancholy about its view of an overcast
Leeds landscape which is amplified by cropping a good deal of it out.
The resulting minimalism marshalls the viewer’s attention in a quite hypnotic way.
Derek Larson – Isness as Bourges
Vito Acconci #1
Claim Excerpts (clip, 1971, 1MB, 29 secs)
Face Off (clip, 1972, 1MB, 28 secs)
Open Book (clip, 1974, 1MB, 31 secs)
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.
More Steven Ball
ex Local Authority (2005, 156 MB, 6:59 min)
Over the Borough Island (2009, 63 MB, 1:51 min)
Two longer pieces from Steven Ball some of whose
Direct Language pieces we posted here last week.
Both pieces are great but I have particular soft spot for
ex Local Authority which, although I’m sure it
has all sorts of potent intellectual justifications for being is also,
quite simply, austerely & melancholically gorgeous.
Julien Maire – Digit
A live performance by Julien Maire.
Ask Vatne Brean –Two Short Movies
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.
Infosphere Aesthetics – disney NASA borg
Infosphere Aesthetics (2008, 13 MB, 3:12 min.)
Video documentation of “Infosphere Aesthetics” a solo show by
[dNASAb] at Cress Galleries, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Tarlabasi Crawl – Jeremiah Day
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.
Steven Ball – Direct Language
Direct Language 2.4 (2006, 6.5 MB, 2:55 min)
Direct Language 4.5 (2007, 7.5 MB, 1:20 min)
Direct Language 3.0 (2006, 1.5 MB, 52 sec, silent)
Strange fragments of worked over reality which
lodge in the unconscious like splinters.
From Steven Ball’s excellent Direct Language
project – well worth spending some time there.
More recent work from him soon.
Annie Abrahams – Squad
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.
Grrrridwave – EXYZT and Boris Edelstein
Grrrridwave (2006, 60 MB, 4:26 min.)
Collaborative installation between EXYZT and Boris Edelstein
of team Modul8 as part of the METAVILLA project
at the Architectural Biennale in Venice 2006.
Song of the Sandias Mtns by Derek Larson
Song of the Sandias Mtns (2009, 50MB, 58 sec.)
“Shot in the Sandias Mountains of New Mexico, this was
inspired by the myth of the West, the loss of an era of
decadent travel, joblessness and death.”
By Derek Larson.
Brantley Jones – Dead Plants
Dead Plants (2009, 36 MB, 1:24 min)
Another from the seemingly inexhaustible (but always pleasantly individual)
film seam at the School of Athens.
This is a lovely understated little study of ..er..dead plants, which fuses quirk,
a certain menace and a strange found beauty into something very satisfying.
Brantley Jones seems to live a double life – his website contains much more
“well made” stuff.
It will be interesting to see where he heads, eventually.
PS Also, how can you not warm to someone who lists the late great
David Foster Wallace as inspiration?
Mark Napier at [DAM]Berlin Gallery
Venus 2.0 (2009, 8 MB, 30 sec.)
[DAM]Berlin Gallery will exhibit new software works by artist
Mark Napier from 5th of December 2009 to 27th of January 2010.
‘Text Rain’ by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv
Text Rain (1999, 12 MB, 2:34 min.)
‘Text Rain’ is an interactive installation in which participants
lift and play with falling letters in real time. The falling letters
form lines of a poem about bodies and language.
By Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv.
For Little Girls
Beauty Kit (2005, 4.2MB, 2:16 min.)
This is a very dark take on advertising and cult of beauty
made by the talented video makers at Pleix.
By Mica Scalin.
Dieter Roth
Eileen Maxson – Tonite (Reprise)
Tonite (Reprise) (2009, 13 MB, 3:16 min)
By Eileen Maxson. Exhibited at video_dumbo 2009.
Logarilla >> Masks by Derek Larson
Zimoun – 216 prepared dc-motors / filler wire 1.0mm
216 prepared dc-motors / filler wire 1.0mm (2009, 10 MB, 36 sec.)
by Swiss artist Zimoun.
Two from Rick Silva
Colorado (2008, 93 MB, 8:41 min)
Massif (2009, 142 MB, 110:13 min)
Continuing a line of thought, of work, which seemed to begin with
his 2007 piece A Rough Mix Rick Silva creates two new pieces
in the wholly original style he has forged over the past few years.
(Contemplate those last words – it’s a rare claim to be able to make)
The two big themes seem to be landscape/environment & various
remixing practices ( of which Silva, of course, under various pseudonyms,
is a we-are-not-worthy master).
Thre’s a lot of greatly well-intentioned and almost equally dull “environmental” art
around, it being so zeitgeisty and all, but if this is how is could be
I want more.
Big downloads but, even if you’re on a slowish connection, well worth the wait.
(The movies here are obviously compressed & reduced in size -I would love to see them
full on in a gallery context!)
15 Minutes – Marque Cornblatt
15 Minutes – clip (1997, 8.2 MB, 5:09 min.)
Early clip made for the web.
Over the course of several weeks, guerrilla-style film and video crews followed
artists 24 hours a day, and along with actual news coverage, tell the tale
of taking the media and the art world hostage in an effort to manufacture
’15 Minutes’ of fame.
From Marque Cornblatt.
Mobile Research Station no.1
10366629 (2009, 7 MB, 1:26 min)
Here’s the blurb:
In a wilderness at the heart of Berlin a strange apparition has landed. Simon Faithfull
Brian Gibson – to the young, youth
to the young, youth (195?/2008, 13 MB, 2:04 min)
Poignant & beautiful work from DVblog contributor Brian Gibson
gently & quirkily re-configuring footage shot by his late grandfather
on a European visit in the 50s.
Brian’s work is always striking, always affecting, but the secret extra
ingredient is the luminous intelligence underlying everything he does.
‘New Me’ by Aleksandra Domanovic
New Me (2006, 21 MB, 4:04 min.)
Music video for Jamie Lidell by Aleksandra Domanovic.
Dom Cheverti – Throwing Chamberlains
Bowl/Glass (2009, 2 MB, 1:01 min)
Bowl/Flower/Vase (2009, 3 MB, 57 secs)
Little River (2009, 2 MB, 1:00 min)
Recommended to us by the sublime Sam Renseiw who,
when he speaks, we listen.
Nonetheless I had some difficulties in coming to grips with this.
Sam tells me it relates to some current You Tube thing whereby people
throw ping-pong balls into various receptacles with a high degree of accuracy.
Clearly I should stay in more.
So…in this case the balls are substituted by a species of cookie, apparently
known in Denmark as ‘chamberlains’.
(I asked Sam exactly what a chamberlain was.
He says:
“Chamberlains is an odd translation of ‘kammerjunker’ that
can both be a chamberlain and danish cookie/biscuit.
It is usually consumed in summer with “koldsk
The Yes Men Fix The World
The Yes Men Fix The World (2009, 37 MB, 2:30 min)
Coming to theaters in October, The Yes Men – Fix The World.
They have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives
of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits,
the Yes Men lie their way into business conferences and parody their
corporate targets in ever more extreme ways – basically doing everything
that they can to wake up their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
Kissin’
Kissin’ (2009, 29 MB, 2:11 min)
Doing what it says on the tin (unless you were anticipating a Russian concert pianist),
a vid both charming & solidly made from Shawn Kornhauser & Nick Sullivan
which somehow transcends its premise –“A Video About Being Young” ,
which it clearly is, but it feels like they’ve captured more &
this has something to do with the subtle, but nonetheless
crucial, use of sound which really opens the whole thing out.
Zimoun – Organic and Mechanical installations
Woodworms I (2009, 8 MB, 26 sec.)
Wind & Styrofoam I (2009, 10 MB, 29 sec.)
A couple of installations by Swiss artist Zimoun.
Woodworms I is a sound installation based on live sounds
of woodworms. In Wind & Styrofoam I, 5 stations generate
unpredictable movements of Styrofoam balls.
‘Plane Days’ by Benjamin Kracun & Ewan McNicol
Plane Days (Excerpt, 2009, 6 MB, 1:22 min)
“Old friends. Young friends. Lovers and loners.
They all wait, hoping, to see something they
The Commoners – by Jessica Bardsley & Penny Lane
The Commoners (Excerpt, 2009, 37 MB, 1:25 min)
“In 1890, one man had the idea to collect every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare
and release them into Central Park. The only bird to survive in the New World was the European
Starling, now one of the commonest birds in America. Its introduction is now widely considered
a major environmental disaster.
The Commoners is a moving image essay about starlings, poetry, and the purist rhetoric used
to describe “invasive species.” It is also about the paths people forge through history, intentionally
or not, as they attempt to change the natural world.”
Written & directed by Jessica Bardsley & Penny Lane.
From video_dumbo 2009.
Lesbian Rangers – Victory at The Rock
MTAA and Mike Koller – iPhone Drum Circle
iPhone Drum Circle (2009, 40 MB, 5:10 min)
On Sunday September 20 at 2pm, MTAA, Mike Koller and friends set out
a brightly colored blanket surround by a circle of chairs at McCarren Park,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They had amplified iPhones on which they have
downloaded touchscreen drum and bongo applications and they “jammed.”
iPhone Drum Circle (aka IPDC)
video_dumbo 2009
Unknown Court TV (2009, 13 MB, 3:16 min)
by Eileen Maxson.
DU3L@ G4NRYU 15L4ND (2009, 14 MB, 2:30 min)
by Jon Rafman.
Works from the magnificent video_dumbo 2009,
A weekend long screening of new contemporary video art, video installations and more.
From Sep.25 – Sep.27 In Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY.
Olga Panedes Massenet – City of Fear
City of Fear (2008, 118MB 4:13 min)
Tad.. er.. earnest & a bit Burroughs lite at moments,
but gripping to watch, moves along nicely and clearly the work
of someone with serious skills, strong visual sense and something to say.
The green slime section must’ve been fun to do.
More here.
Florian Cramer – Floppy Films
nkdlunch (2009, 1:24MB 2:44 min)
coraria (2009, 1:35MB 2:09 min)
Ultimately, personally, I admire these more than I like them.
It’s clever/witty stuff, no doubt, squeezing sections of films,
or mash-ups thereof, down to the size of the old floppies
but you just feel it pretty much stops there. Is there much
to actually watch/engage with & if there is, how much of this
arises from the original material before the conceptual
shenanigans commence?
This is especially marked in ‘Coraria’, which feels entirely
parasitic upon John Cage and upon the tremendous performance &
photogenic qualities of Cora Schmeiser.
Hmm. You decide.
[There’s a more detailed ( & sympathetic!) account here
& you can buy the pieces on floppy, should you feel so moved, here]
Owen O’Toole – Super8 films
Frames (1985, 31 MB, 6:25 min)
Early experimental Super8 films by Owen O’Toole.
Short interview with him here.
Oliver Laric – Versions
Versions (2009, 57 MB, 6:25 min)
By Oliver Laric.
From The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia.
More Eddie Whelan
Two tiny Sporkworld loops
A Small Spork Lumiere (2009, 3MB, 9 sec silent loop)
Fireworks (2009, 2MB, 43 sec silent loop)
Two from the ever reliable, delightful, and in its quiet & unassuming
(but frequently deadly – it’s the Columbo of art blogs) way, mould-breaking
Sporkworld Microblog, which if you don’t follow religiously, you should.
Ironically, given the setting, A Small Spork Lumiere could constitute a kind
of ostensive definition of dryness.
Cut Piece – Yoko Ono
Cut Piece (1965, 36.5MB, 9 min)
‘Ono had first done the performance in 1964, in Japan,
and again at Carnegie Hall, in New York, in 1965.
Ono sat motionless on the stage after inviting the audience
to come up and cut away her clothing, covering her breasts
at the moment of unbosoming.’
from Bedazzled .
More Strangeness from Joan Healy
Beautiful Katamari Royal Rainbow (2008, 17MB 5:08 min)
Mad as a box of badgers but also very smart & winning, Joan Healy is a one-off.
We’ve featured her before, here’re some new vids of her work.
Even more here…
I Can’t Deal With This Stupid Ringing Forever – Donna Kuhn
I Can’t Deal With This Stupid Ringing Forever (2009, 56MB 2:29 min)
Donna Kuhn has joined the little pantheon (Sondheim’s another, as is Sam Renseiw)
of people whose work I’m just going
to post regularly because they are great.
No apology, no argument.
If you can’t see it, the problem is yours.
Great. Great. Great.
Everyone I can think of who has died
Everyone I can think of who has died (2009, 49MB, 6:24 min.)
Edward Picot is writing the names of all the
people he can think of who have died onto leaves,
then floating them down a stream near his house.
The Path – a horror game by Tale of Tales
The Path (2009, 40MB, 2:34 min.)
“Probably the best independent game ever made” – Christopher Lim, “The Business Times”
“The Path is not a game, it is art” – Erwin Bergervoet, “Gamer.nl”
Trailer for “The Path“, by Tale of Tales.
Proust – The Interview – MTAA
Proust – The Interview (2009, 75MB, 5:52 min.)
The Interview (AKA Proust Questionnaire) MTAA.
more vids here.
2012 – Oliver Laric
2011 – Oliver Laric
Luke Murphy – Stream
This one uses meta-keywords from porn sites, rendered
as curved space and written in Duchamp
House of Dreams
House of Dreams (2009, 14MB, 2:57 min.)
A remix of Michael Szpakowski’s remix of Radiohead’s “House of Cards”.
Using images from Second Life and The Endless Forest, with some lyrics
which Edward Picot added in a whisper.
Breathing in B Flat
Breathing in B Flat (2007, 41MB, 5:31 min.)
Breathing in B Flat – a documentation of a live performance by Curt Cloninger.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: 1993-2007 Compilation
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Compilation (1993-2007, 172MB, 26 min.)
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is known for creating large-scale interactive
installations in public spaces. His
More Wikipedia Art remixing
Wikipedia Remix (2009, 34.7MB, 6:19 min)
Another Wikipedia Art remix, this time a splendidly accurate riff
on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf from Sean Fletcher and Isabel Reichert
Wikipedia Art/Wikipedia Heart – David Kent Watson
Wikipedia Heart (2009, 36MB, 3:12 min)
Wikipedia Art (2009, 15.3MB, 1:32 min)
Being two songs by David Kent Watson inspired by the Scott Kildall/Nathaniel Stern
Wikipedia Art project, which has engendered some huffing & puffing amongst the humourless & imaginatively challenged.
The songs are neat – skillfully made, performed and recorded, & beneath the surface whimsy
there’s some depth ( in particular “Heart” seems to found a whole new hybrid discipline of
epistemological meditation through popular song).
This is in keeping with the whole WA project which unlike so many art projects which claim
to investigate something ( & usually my heart sinks when I see the word) actually does
and very effectively too.
Not only that (and I would expect this from anything involving Stern, whose work in whatever medium
or genre, is always touched with poetry) there’s a wonderfully twisted lyricism* to the WA project, which is very difficult to sum up in the usually one line required for much second rate conceptualism -the Duchamp epigone crew- which is possibly why it seems to have mostly drawn responses ranging from surly to mystified and back to grumpy in discussion in places like Art Fag City and Rhizome.
Now, generously & mischievously, Kildall & Stern have thrown the whole thing open for remixing, which is where these songs appear**.
The remixes in turn form an ongoing contribution to the padiglione internet of the current Venice Biennale -here’s the open call for contributions so what are you waiting for?!
And of course, coming back full circle to David Kent Watson, clearly one to watch. Bravo.
* & I use the term precisely & advisedly, not simply as a term of general approbation.
What I mean is this: it’s the very not-rightness, surface clumsiness
of the WA project that makes it resonate so much. This is what those who want their
art laid out like the ABC or like wonder pills, miss. It’s the failure, or refusal, of glibness,
the stimulus to real thought, that spawns the poetry of it.
Even the language the Wikipedia serf-bureaucrats use as they flounder blindly, hilariously and painfully
seems to have been dusted with a kind of magic satire brush.
** D.o.I – I have a couple of things in there also.
Pussy Weevil – Marina Zurkow and Julian Bleeker
Pussy Weevil (2003, 4.5MB, 1 min.)
Pussy Weevil is a screen-based 2D animated
character, that responds to the viewer
Smile Project by Jason Van Anden
Smile Project (2003 ongoing, 12MB, 7:14 min.)
Neil and Iona are sculptures that dynamically interrelate
with each other and their audience, expressing themselves with
body language, facial expressions and strangely compelling sounds.
Jason Van Anden and The Smile Project.
The Clock Clock
Humans Since 1982 – The Clock Clock (2009, 3.3MB, 1:03)
By Humans Since 1982
Via the YouTube