Secret 044 (2007, 10 MB, 4:27 min.)
Another secret.
See original post for details.
Category Archives: portraiture
Shannon Noble – Newt
We haven’t had anything from Shannon Noble for a long time.
He’s quite elusive. His blog springs up, then disappears, then appears
again under a different name. Currently most of his stuff just seems to
be sitting, unlinked, in a folder on his site.
His work is always interesting (in the strong sense that one can
always learn from it) and hardly ever showy. Maybe his lack of need to show off
or jump up and down saying look at me, even when he’d be justified in so doing
is tied in with his apparent reluctance to promote his work.
Don’t get me wrong -I approve of the former -it makes the viewer do some work and there
are rewards to be had here for doing that work.
Here’s the first of two pieces, a bit like Robert Croma’s piece earlier this week,
not at all in mood or content but simply in being by someone who clearly knows
exactly what they are doing.
The use of sound is both deeply eccentric and wonderful.
More next week.
Robert Croma – La Descente
La Descente (2010, 96MB, 8:21 min)
It’s always great to have a new piece from Robert Croma –
recently this has been an all too rare event.
Great to report that his first in a year is as good as it is.
I know that the people-going-down-steps/up-or-down-escalators/though-doors movies
have come to constitute almost a micro-genre, but this is an exceptionally
meticulous and rich example.
In particular what makes it for me is the decision (wherever – camera, edit – in the workflow
it happened) to leave in the faces who gaze boldly back at the camera.
A lot of Croma’s work employs subtly deployed but thorough post-production
to heighten and poeticize further his material. Here it’s rather his visual acuity
and the years of experience accumulated both in still and moving image which leads
to this simple but devastating handling of his original footage.
Similarly his use of sound is unobtrusive but exceedingly well judged.
I hope it’s not a year to the next one.
Nigel Ayers – War Criminal
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!
Brian Bress – brainquest
Superman Returns & Brando too
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.
Gazira Babeli – iGods
Donna Kuhn – Please Don’t Look Like A Pear
Please Don’t Look Like A Pear (2010, 10 MB, 3:22 min)
I love Donna Kuhn’s work.
I’ve rhapsodised about it here before, so I’ll just note, first,
that she continues to develop in the most thoughtful & interesting of ways
& second that this video is very funny, poetic
& scarier than most horror movies.
( Donna: ‘people don’t believe that these are completely unembellished
craigslist personals ads’)
To do all three – a coup!
More soon please Donna!
Todd Polenberg – Monster/Identity Prosthetic
Monster/Identity Prosthetic (2009, 54 MB, 1:13 min)
Documentation from last years Spark Festival of a rather splendid
installation by Todd Polenberg.