Category Archives: portraiture

In G.O.D. We Trust – Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

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ingodwetrust
In G.O.D. We Trust (2009, 52 MB, 5:04 min)

In G.O.D. We Trust remixes the political and economical hardships Barrack Obama
has to overcome within various religious contexts. In the series the 44th US president keeps
reincarnating into seven various prophets, spiritual leaders and deities in order to heal the
world, including Jesus Christ, Buddha, Elegua, Lady of Guadalupe, Krishna, Mohammad and
Abraham. The series uses the pillar belief, remix the important stories and substitute the key
elements of the religious texts with current political and economical climate. Rather than
idolizing Obama, In G.O.D. We Trust examines the hope and changes the popular 44th US
president promises to deliver and the obstacle along the way.

The title of the series appropriate the US national motto, but with a twist. In G.O.D. We Trust
the word GOD is an abbreviation of Global Obama Devotion. Contrary to the artist previous
works that criticize the manipulation of religions in politics, In GOD We Trust starts from the
religious teaching and reinterpret the moral values with current affair. The result is a spiritual
journey that even Atheist cannot deny it.”

By Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung. Audio by Mr Cloak and Dagger.

South and mobile to the house of Mina

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South and mobile to the house of Mina (2009, 31MB 3:18 min)

From DVblog’s own Doron Golan, this is simply stunning.
What I find so exciting is that Doron combines here
(and I haven’t spoken to him about this piece so I don’t know
whether he himself sees it this way) his fascinating & often intense
recent studies in image manipulation with something of the improvisatory
quality & narrative forward motion of earlier pieces.

In a world where so much work is predicatable and safe, what a delight
& what a tonic for the head and heart both, to see work that stretches out
like this and which so resolutely rejects the safe, the dull, the glib & the banal.

Dave Milner – Redmires to Hillsborough and Back

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Redmires to Hillsborough and Back (2008, 274MB 21:09 min)

I love this piece, partly for sentimental reasons in that it
features the town (and in fact at two points the street)
of my birth and upbringing, but it’s not simply that.
I like the formal device upon which Dave Milner hangs this austere
& accurate portrait of a greyish October Sheffield.

Austere, but not without warmth or humour: Milner’s tussle with his SatNav,
his under the breath impatience at the traffic & the various other small
en-route mishaps lend a three dimensionality and a narrative forward
motion to what could be easily have been either a dry exercise or simply
a bit of ,for want of a better word, internet folk art…

Milner’s site, with both contemporary and (slightly) historical photos
of Sheffield and other places is compelling too.
Again, I plead guilty to a personal interest in the places times and
themes but it’s the thoroughness devoted to an evocation of place
and time that is both effective and moving.

Bruce Conkle

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Bruce Conkle (2009, 243MB, 5:32 min)

A very deftly made & absorbing documentary directed by Robert D’Esposito &
shot by Kevin Forrest about the excellent Portland, OR based artist Bruce Conkle.
It’s a bit of a download but worth it both as a nifty bit of filmmaking
(and everything is good – listen to that crystal clear sound!)
but also because Bruce’s work is great.
There’s a big fat HD version on the Vimeo link above ..

We’re leaving you with something chunky to contemplate
as we’re going to take a summer break now.
We’ll be back on September 14th (unless anything so
wonderful & time limited appears we just have to put our
Daiquiris down, shuffle into the house & post it…)
Have a good summer!

Lin Delpierre – Austere Beauty

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Autoportrait d’Oro (2009, 63MB, 11:04 min)

There’s so much to commend in this quiet & beautiful piece I’m
unsure, really, where to start.
Three things though, stand out.
One is the modesty, the restraint, of the conception
-there’s no horrible look-at-how clever/shocking/whatever I am
about it, just some serious *looking*.
The camera looks and we look with it, with its (and with the artist’s,
although he’s there in the frame too) help.
Second, this austerity of visual means allows the sound to play a really
significant role in the piece. Again the work doesn’t trumpet its own innovative
qualities but quietly (pun intended) it does something quite radical with sound and
with our attention to same.
Lastly, it’s just very, very well made – that sort of still amibience is just so difficult to capture
effectively because digital video can be very unforgiving in that context – interlacing
& pretty much any sort of compression can generate horribly visible artefects.
Here, even in this pretty compressed version, there are none -it just looks like a
transparent window to a small epiphany…
Hats off then, three times.

Lin Delpierre’s site.