Relation in Space (1976, 2 MB, 26 sec.)
Expansion in Space (1977, 5 MB, 1:18 min.)
In “Relation in Space” (1976) Marina Abramovic & Ulay ran around the room – two
bodies repeatedly move past each other. They collide at great speed like two planets,
mixing male and female energy into a third component called
Rilkes Tongue (2006?, 73 MB, 1:44 min)
Alan:
“something to stare at
This is a few years old, but hasn’t been put up; the dancer is Maud
Liardon, either Foofwa or I held the camera and made the video and
effects reminiscent of G. Moreau come to life, the church is in the
Swiss Alps, Rilke was buried behind it, murals of tormented hell,
angelic world of Elegies, we were transported”
…Alan Sondheim is one of the artists whose work you can see if
you can get to Nottingham, UK this Thursday – Sunday, 11th-14th Nov, 12-5 pm, in the first offline
appearance by DVblog, where a 45 minute program of work first posted here
will be continuously screened at The Wasp Room, part of Tether Studios.
Details:
Tether Studios,
17a Huntingdon Street
Nottingham
NG1 3JH
tel: 07729124336
mail@tether.org.uk
Artists featured:
Kerry Baldry, Steven Ball, Robert Croma, Rupert Howe, JimPunk, Donna Kuhn, Morrisa Maltz, Millie Niss, Giles Perkins, Sam Renseiw, Alan Sondheim, Nathaniel Stern, Liz Sterry, Eddie Whelan
Also – if you’re reading this & are interested in screening this program -we have both PAL and NTSC
DVDs available. Just mail us!
Binary Code (1994-98, 2MB, 52 secs)
On the Ephemeral Nature of Little Movies (1994-98, 3MB, 1:05 min)
I mentioned the Manovich Little Movies in the post I did the
other week on Eryk Salvaggio’s ‘Unfinished Mpeg Haiku’.
In the course of writing that I went to Manovich’s site to look at them
& was surprised to find that their page was in some disarray
and the movies themselves had been removed.
Nor could I find them either in the version archived on the Rhizome Artbase.
It seems a shame for them not to be available -they’re historical
(and in many ways amazingly presecient) documents at the least,
although I find them – especially the last one – gripping and touching too.
Then I remembered the wonderful Wayback Machine and I found them
there, all snug and safe and sound.
We’ll post them here in twos in the next week or so,
in the order in which they appeared in Manovich’s
original presentation of them.
Although the image linking to it has been removed from the site
Manovich’s very interesting statement remains.
(I guess if that goes too you’ll still be able to Wayback it)
“Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including
The Loner, 1980 and EVOL 1984. These works involve elaborate sound tracks,
painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special effects created by the artist.
The early videotapes have been exhibited extensively in alternative spaces and museums..
His early installation works are immersive dark-room environments with video, sound,
and language mixed with colorful constructed sculptural elements. In these projects,
Oursler experimented with methods of removing the moving image from the video monitor
using reflections in water, mirrors, glass and other devices..” – from wikipedia
War Criminal (2003 -2010, 22MB, 3:18 min)
When I first saw this piece from Nigel Ayers I assumed, quite wrongly, he
was involved with some heavy duty image manipulation in the cause of a
kind of conceptualist ‘activism’ (and I sat scratching my head at just how difficult it
must have been to get that image onto so many moving figures).
DOH! The facts are much weirder and much, much better…
Great stuff! Hats off! Not worthy, not worthy!
First Line (2002, 165kb, 7 secs)
Second Line (2002, 224kb, 10 secs)
If I remember rightly Eryk Salvaggio posted a link to this tiny piece
on the Rhizome list in 2002, at a time when the Rhizome Artbase was
still rejecting some embryonic video or video like works as ‘not net-idiomatic’.
The post was something of an epiphany for me and I suspect
when the history of online video comes to be written this work,
together with the Manovich Little Movies, will loom large
(As beginning to find a way towards precisely a ‘net-idiomatic’
video practice).
Also: I thought then (and I still think now) it is wonderful work.
Here’s what Salvaggio said about it at the time:
Mpeg Haikus
these are short films which work in their original digital formats
as 30 to 60 second mpeg files. The idea was to stay “egoless”
as in the nature of a haiku, and so there is no design – the films
and the files are presented by whatever defaults your browser
uses. The first, “Unfinished Mpeg Haiku,” is a short 30 seconds
of an airplane’s vapor trails across the sky, the second, a 30
second loop of a bird hopping on industrial machinery.
The third line is not represented, but is intended to be the
viewer’s response, ie. dismissal, understanding, happiness,
sadness- whatever meaning the viewer makes.
Jor El (1978-2006, 38MB, 3:29 min.)
Marlon Brando, the CG character, rather spookily reappears as
Jor-El in Superman Returns.
From Rhythm & Hues studios.
Martin Pickles – Dinosaur (2010, 130 MB, 1:01 min)
Nicki Rolls – 1961 Revisited (2010, 114 MB, 58 secs)
Two pieces from a touring screening of one minute films,
the fourth such from British filmmaker Kerry Baldry.
It’s a really well put together and gripping hour
(transparency dictates I confess I have a piece in it
but I won’t foist that on you here), with a strike rate well above
most of this kind of compilatation.
Here are two of my favourite pieces; both, in different
ways, little gems of cinematic poetry.
Although Martin Pickle’s piece is amusing there’s
something enchanting about the changing seasonal
landscape & light of West London and how it manifests on screen,
which raises the work from anecdote to something more complicated
and lasting.
The Nicki Rolls piece had me in the palm of its hand within about a second.
(I’m a total sucker for near stillness and for the movement of light)
Then I started to think about what exactly I was watching.
You might like to give it some thought too.
Again, the twist breaks the confines of the one minute form
to resonate long after.
I haven’t see the other three compilations but I hope we could maybe
feature a couple of pieces from each in the not too distant future.
Next week we’ll have a piece by Kerry herself.
William Eggleston interviewed by Michael Almereyda (2009, 61 MB, 5:31 min)
This candid interview with photographer William Eggleston was conducted by film
director Michael Almereyda on the occasion of the opening of Eggleston
Dream Song #14 (1967, 8MB, 1:43 min)
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,
who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.
Another Dream Song.
For details see original post
Dream Song #29 (1967, 11MB, 2:20 min)
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
s
documenta performance (1977, 6 MB, 1:35 min.)
The 1977 “documenta” show, which became known as the ‘media documenta’,
opened its doors with a live satellite telecast from Kassel.
Nam June Paik appeared together with Charlotte Moorman and used the slot
for a Dadaistic, allusive excursion through his performance and installation works.
from ZKM Videosammlung.
clip #1 (1995, 7.6MB, 32 sec.)
clip #2 (1995, 3.2MB, 14 sec.)
clip #3 (1995, 4.1MB, 17 sec.)
Some lovely footage of the great free improv guitarist Derek Bailey,
who died in 2005, working with be-bop hoofer Will Gaines.
As with so much Bailey did, it seems at first deeply
odd & then, in equal measure, wonderful.
Important to understand this wasn’t some sort of gimmick:
Gaines had known Bailey since the sixties & although much of his
fame was garnered firmly in the mainstream, he has spent a great
deal of time working with cutting edge improvisors.
Enjoy two wonderful artists at the top of their game.
From European Free Improvisation.
videoconstructions2 (1978, 5MB, 1:16 min.)
The Chair (1980, 36MB, 9:54 min.)
Buky Schwartz (1932-2009), an Israeli sculptor and video artist
who passed away last year, was known for his deceptive videos
that interplay between illusory appearance and the actual ‘reality’.
The 2 vids here were exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York in 1981.
From the splendid Videoart.net
Utterly compelling clip from a 1960s German documentary featuring a
spine tingling live performance in a Piraeus taverna by the great
rembetiko singer Markos Vamvakaris.
I could watch & listen all day.
PS I think atakti means ‘bad’ or ‘naughty’
The Lost Shoe (2010, 16MB, 4:35 min)
Martha Deed, one of our favourite people, & co-founder with
the much missed Millie Niss of the fantastic Sporkworld Microblog,
which we’ve raved about before & which we can’t recommend too
highly, has a paper publication coming out, a book of poems, for which
she created this chilling and beautifully made video “trailer”.
Watch the trailer then
Advice (clip, 2006, 2MB, 58 secs)
Acconci Studio Presentation (2006, 36MB, 29:02 min)
More from the splendid Vito Acconci, this time from
his later architecture and design period.
One vid is a little lollipop -advice to the young-
extracted from a longer interview and profile on
designboom.com.
The second is a much more substantial
and utterly fascinating presentation given at the launch of
LAB magazine in 2006.
What an astonishing human being!
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.
A Month of Sundays (2009, 65 MB, 4:54 min)
Last &, in my view, the best of Sebastian Hernandez’ DIY or Die
series of documentaries, which we’ve been delighted to
be able to feature here in the past few weeks.
I found them all well made, engaging and informative.
This one I also found profoundly moving.
We look forward to featuring more of Sebastian’s work
in the not too distant future.
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.
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.
THE HERETICS (2009, 124 MB, 10:08 min)
THE HERETICS, A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics
Frames (1985, 31 MB, 6:25 min)
Early experimental Super8 films by Owen O’Toole.
Short interview with him here.
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 .
The Fish (date unknown, 754KB, 1:12 min)
The Fish
wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like
an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the
sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices
