Kino Da! (1981, 5.6 MB,1:42 min )
Kino Da! , a wonderful portrait of the poet and communist Jack Hirschman
by the American experimental filmmaker Henry Hills is just one of the Hills films
that can be viewed at . More about Hills and his work see – henryhills.com
Basement Jaxx – Red Alert (1999, 10.5MB, 3:42)
Fatboy Slim – Don’t Let The Man Get You Down (2003, 9MB, 3:08)
Lady Sovereign – Love Me or Hate Me (2006, 12.2MB, 2:43)
Three videos from Brian Beletic.
His work spans the last decade,
these posted in chronological order.
Basement Jaxx’s video is conceptual: what if
music was illegal? Love the idea and execution.
The track itself takes me back to my younger,
raving days.
Fatboy Slim and Lady Sovereign also should be
proud of their Beletic vids. Both garner at least
a few chuckles and some definite appreciation for
the editing.
Tribute to Reggie (excerpt) (2007, 52MB, 2:51 min.)
Vintage Yes Men from 2007, posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil
and the National Petroleum Council in Calgary, Alberta, to deliver a keynote
speech presenting a new product – Vivoleum, a new fuel made from the
deceased bodies of human climate-change casualties.
‘Tribute to Reggie” was a promo video for the event.
The Lesbian Rangers (2005, 18 MB, 1:41 min.)
Welcome to Reorientation 2005 (2005, 34.8 MB, 2:17 min.)
Victory at The Rock (2005, 72.4 MB, 4:45 min.)
Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are Winnipeg-based collaborators whose
internationally acclaimed work addresses feminist, lesbian, and social concerns
with tremendous wit. “The Lesbian Rangers” were founded in 1997, to help people
learn about fascinating and fragile lesbian ecosystem. Rangers Dempsey and Millan
led the first expedition to Banff National Park, and continue to offer lesbian leadership today.
(thanks jillian)
Abbie Making Gefilte Fish (1973, 140MB, 21:04)
Footage of Abbie Hoffman making gefilte fish with Laura Cavestani
(who made the video) in his kitchen, 1973.
Like Abbie, I think art is in the everyday, and it sure is a fun
(and rather informative) twenty minutes if you’ve got it to spare.
Art for Abbie was education, constant revolution, evolution, and living for free.
Art and freedom were one in the same, inextricable from each other.
We miss you man.
Simply British (2013, 77MB, 4:03 min)
Hi Lucy,
I think it’s really good. Who did the Hard Day’s Night remix?
I really like the way it is clearly a powerful comment on lots of things to do with the contrast between Britishness & flag waving and national hubris &c. and the actual situation for many people, but it’s never simply a piece of agit-prop.
At first I thought its slowness in unfolding might be a problem but I like the way it makes us take the time to think, with the various repeated images (like the bus with the slogan on it) but also with different material developing against the background you establish, especially the ever present and heartbreaking Big Issue guy – it turns out to be slow burning as opposed to slow. I also like the 90 degree rotation of some of the stuff and the way that then fits rather nicely into empty-ish spaces in the other “channel”. Great work – congratulations!
michael
I Wasn’t always Dressed Like This [Trailer] (2013, 120MB, 1:42 min)
If the substantive piece (which I gather is about 33 minutes in length) is
anything like as good as this trailer promises it will be stunning.
This has all the hallmarks of the previous piece by Betty Martins – When the Souls Arrive – we posted here : beautifully made, scrupulously attentive to those being observed/interviewed but with its own quite particular gentle and steely authorial stamp.
(I usually hate anthropomorphising art – you know the thing, ‘this piece investigates’ &c. – except here
I am sorely tempted to say that Martin’s work ‘knows how to listen’. Of course what I mean is Martins knows how to listen, carefully and empathetically, and then to re-configure parts of that listening and looking and understanding too as moving image soaked with detail and feeling.)
In addition the subject matter could not be more timely: a broadside of delicate
beauty in the face of bigotry.
The Story of Stuff (2008, 54.1MB, 21:20)
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard is a twenty
minute video about waste, recycling, corporations,
and sustainability. Even a radical like me finds it
occasionally heavy-handed, but then, this is serious
stuff. Nicely done, worth the twenty minutes you’d
otherwise spend watching crap TV, no?
Emergence – Locusts (2008, 233.8MB, 11:19)
From celebrated MC Invincible, a docu-music-video
about the history of gentrification and capitalism’s
destruction of communities in Detroit.
Video features several local activists, including
Grace Lee Boggs and (full disclosure) my good friend
Ron Scott.
This intense collaboration gives me chills every
time I watch it.
I’ll let the rest speak for itself.
The Good Consumer (2008, 18.2MB, 5:27)
In honor of , a satirical video about
being a good consumer. BND falls on Nov. 28 in North
America, but everyone else “celebrates” on Nov. 29.
So this whether this video is right on time for you or
a day early, we’re still pretty sure you will appreciate
the message.
Made by Neil Boorman from Bonfire of the Brands.
The Shock Doctrine (2007, 19.1MB, 6:47 min.)
Internet video version of Naomi Klein’s 2007 book, much more than an advertisement.
Heavy.
Hard to watch, as it should be.
‘America’s free market’ policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. {source}
Produced by Klein and Alfonso Cuarón, directed by Jonas Cuarón.
I’m Dreaming of a White President (2012, 15MB, 3:16 min)
Great bit of film-making to match a genius song.
But…but…
Of course you want Obama to win just
to wrongfoot the racists et. al. but you
can’t help wishing he’d actually done something
to merit the mad hostility of the rich, the bigots
and the terminally gullible.
The One That Got Away (2005, 19MB, 9:02 min.)
In the Fall of 2004,Marisa Olson gained worldwide attention
while training to audition for American Idol
Eat up, Little Pearl – trailer (2012, 42MB, 3:26min)
Absolutely wonderful promotional/performance video from US performance/dance
outfit Mad King Thomas (whom I know little about but would love to see),
the vid directed, apparently, by Kevin Obsatz who was behind the
video haikus we posted in July.
Video…&..er…troupe…all great, great.
History of the Demonstrations (2012, 211MB, 15:53 min)
A Statement by Luaty Beirão (2012, 34MB, 7:05 min)
Three connected movies, which connect in a very direct way with the world about us.
For the last couple of years, simultaneously with the ‘Arab spring’ there have been
a number of similar movements around the world where ordinary folk have stood up for
the right to free speech and the right to a decent life, mostly both.
This happened on a small scale in the Southern African country of Angola where the inheritors
of the magnificent struggle against imperialism in the 70s seem to have forgotten their roots,
perhaps lulled by power and the good life it can bring to a few. A small but dogged and effective
campaign for democracy and against corruption, poverty and police state begaviour sprang up amongst
young people there.
The first video is a documentary relating the beginning, growth of this movement and subsequent
attempted government repression.
( You can find some more info , from Human Rights Watch, here)
Our second video is a track by the Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão, better known as Ikonoklasta
which is a tremendously entertaining bit of agit-prop against the regime.
It clearly struck home because the Angolan security forces have attempted to frame Beirão by
secreting a substantial amount of cocaine in a bicycle wheel in his possession on a flight
from Angola to Portugal.
The third video is Luaty Beirão’s statement upon and account of these events.
Watch the videos and draw you own conclusions – I do not for a moment believe Beirão is guilty
of anything except bravery and standing up to oppression.
We’ll leave you with these videos for the summer a reminder there’s art and there’s life and there’s
not a lot of space between.
We’re going to take a break until mid September-ish when we’ll be back with mostly
art videos but anything else that amuses, inspires or outrages us.
If you have stuff you think we’d like, send us links – we look at everything we’re sent.
It remains only to wish you all a nice and relaxing summer if you can manage it.
Magnotta SpeedShow (2012, 20.4, 3:07 min)
Magnotta SpeedShow – A vanity surf performance.
“One week after Magnotta got caught we present a vanity surf performance at the exact same Internetcafe in Berlin where Magnotta was arrested while vanity surfing! Be invited to join and vanity surf yourself!”
“Killing is bad, mailing bodyparts is worse, vanity surfing (while getting caught) is cool!”
“Internet cafes are not just vaguely unglamorous places for ethnic minorities and communications challenged, they do have a genuinely bad reputation.” [Olia Lialina – ‘Still There’] Where else a social network killer can be caught? Of course in the Internet cafe!”
[shot and edited(!) on a smart phone ]
Internetcafe Helin, Karl-Marx-Straße 156, Berlin
Tuesday 12th of June, 2012, 8-10 pm
by Constant Dullaart, CuratingYoutube, Olia Lialina & Aram Bartholl
The Kosher Butcher (2010, 84MB, 8:56 min.)
“.. Israeli provocateur Lior Shvil presented “The Kosher Butcher,” a darkly humorous commentary on Mideast politics in which he portrays a meatpacking Sweeney Todd.”
Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen (1977, 80MB, 3:16 min)
Grabbed from YouTube.
If you’re in the UK, this is to tide you over until it’s safe
to emerge without a vomit bag quickly to hand…
Media Burn by Ant Farm (1975, 202MB, 25:46)
Infamous July 4, 1975 “pseudo-event” featuring a
speech by “JFK Jr.” and a 1959 Cadillac turned wacky
crash test car through a wall of burning television sets,
produced by video artists and activist collective Ant Farm.
The first four and a half minutes of this particular video
feature actual news coverage about the event.
The rest is the full speech and crash. Inspiration.
Video via the Media Burn archive.
On Presidents and Superheroes (2009, 7MB, 1:15 min)
Another piece from Manchester Cornerhouse’s excellent Subversion show.
This post is a collaboration with Furtherfield – they’re hosting ….
Larissa Sansour: A Happy Days (2006, 13MB, 2:57 min)
Following on from the work we showed last week from the
excellent Subversions show, here’s another piece by
Larissa Sansour.
This is featured in the other UK show featuring work
from the Arabic speaking world, this time specifically
from artists with roots in Palestine, Navigations at
the Barbican in London.
There’s some tremendous work on show there, not least this
one – all the work Sansour I’ve so far seen has delighted me
by being much better than a verbal description might lead one
to expect. So with this one you might hear:
“To the tune of the theme from Happy Days Larissa Sansour
edits together stills of herself, a Palestinian woman,
in various locations in the occupied territories.”
And you might think:
“Ho-hum, seen it all, virtuous agit-prop, with the usual sledgehammer irony”
and you would be totally wrong.
Of course the irony is there, and anger, of course, but
there’s a lightness of treatment – the Sansour “character”,
the everyday found surrealism of some of the shots, the
little jokes (the titles: “The Palestinian”
– “The Israeli Army as…Itself” &c.)
which, without negating any political content, makes the
whole thing richly human and a pleasure to watch and watch again.
Navigations is definitely worth a visit – there is a great variety
of very engaging work.
Two complaints though – unlike the lovingly assembled and spacious show
in Manchester, Navigations feels like a somewhat cramped and token
footnote to the “proper business” of the Palestine Film Festival –
publicity for it only appears on the Barbicam website in this context.
(Better than a couple of weeks back when a search for “Navigations” on the Barbican
website yielded precisely – nothing.)
This is disrespectful to artist moving image work in general and
also, I think, to the artists concerned.
Secondly the fact that it sits, looking a tad temporary, on the
busy walk-through mezzanine on four small identical screens, with long
compilation times, gives it an anthropological rather than an art
exhibition character, whilst the (yawn!) Bauhaus blockbuster takes place
upstairs in the galleries proper. This is again disrespectful to
the artists and specifically to them as Palestinian artists:
footnotes, curiosities, on the margins.
Work of this strength and diversity would have made a great large scale
show.
What a shame that the Barbican, with all its resources, doesn’t
seem to understand both why and how it should have attempted something
similar.
Nonetheless, if in London, you should go!
The World’s Largest TV Studio (1972, 17.2MB, 7:10 min.)
A historic piece of political video from
the 1972 Miami Democratic Convention, this excerpt featuring an interview
with Michael Shamberg, author of Guerilla Television & founder member of Top Value
Television. (Also founder of Raindance & subsequently big shot Hollywood Producer).
Found in the broadcasting section of the Southwest Museum of Engineering Communications
and Computation, which is actually stuffed with goodies.
Festival of Money (2012, 111MB, 8:06 min)
Amusing & depressing both, because it is so spot on, a lovely bit of
satire from Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow of Furtherfield fame.
Most artists, of course, are from the 99%…this is a timely reminder of
where our interests lie and don’t lie…
overland (2010, 131MB, 2:58 min)
And sadly, the last in our little season of movies by Ruth Catlow. This is another
train movie, no conceptual underpinnings to speak of this time, just a beautiful,
bleached out pastels, lo-fi ( mobile?) account of the Serbian section of a journey by train to Istanbul
last year when she was refusing ‘to fly for art’, something more people should do more often if
the results here are anything to go by.
More from Ruth, of course, as she produces it…
New Media in the Marketplace (2011, 37 MB, 52 min)
“Over the years, we’ve found that a number of the artists we support in our Emerging Fields category have questions about how they can better market and exhibit their work. They have questions about pricing and editioning; changing formats; what it is that they are actually selling when they offer a work for sale; what their obligations to representatives and collectors are after a sale; and whether or not they should even participate in an art market that is, in their eyes, more sympathetic and better able to represent works in more conventional or established media.
On November 2, Creative Capital hosted a webinar for grantees to explore some of these issues and answer specific questions from artists working in new media. The panelists were Jason Salavon (2000 Visual Arts), Karolina Sobecka (2009 Emerging Fields), Stephen Vitiello (2006 Emerging Fields) and Marina Zurkow (2001 Visual Arts). Sean Elwood, Creative Capital’s Director of Programs & Initiatives, served as the facilitator.”
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST FROM THIS DISCUSSION
Podcast from Creative Capital.
NO, Global Tour trailer (2010, 21 MB, 3:11 min)
Team Gallery, Lisson Gallery , Galería Helga de Alvear & Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani,
in association with Artprojx Cinema, present the UK premiere of NO, Global Tour,
2010 by Santiago Sierra.
The 120 minute film consists of the manufacture and transportation of two monumental sculptures
in the form of the word “NO”, travelling through different territories on a flatbed truck.
The NO, GLOBAL TOUR has resulted in a feature film that documents the passage of this
large NO through various world cities.
A monumental sculpture – unchanged both in its form and immediate meaning – that gradually
assumes a complex semantic load during a journey full of eventualities, accidents, and unexpected events.
Gov. Scott Walker gets checked, Mic Checked! (2011, 81MB, 3:45 min)
If you don’t feel inspired & cheered up by this tremendous video please do the checking your pulse thing… Stand Up Chicago
Business (2007, 67.9MB, 9:33 min)
I find it easier to admire this piece, to respect its clear integrity,
than to actually like it much – it’s a pretty hardcore glitch
assemblage & it doesn’t let up …oooooh noooo… not at all
(Strikes me as a bit of a video analog for something like Lou Reed’s (in)famous
)
It’ll be interesting to see where Junu Ahn goes next…
Clouds…Courts (2007, 10MB, 4:45 min.)
Clouds…Words (2007, 7.85MB, 3:35 min.)
John Murphy is an Irish artist living and working in Madrid Spain.
Clouds…Courts shows us the late afternoon sky and we hear
Craig Murray formerly UK’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan
speaking about torture and England’s role in the Iraq war.
In Clouds…Words we hear about ways to die in Iraq, according
to a BBC journalist while watching the early spring sky in Madrid.
Occupy DC Interviews 10/10/2011 (2011, 73MB, 58 sec)
Demonstrating what we all might have said rhetorically, but really demonstrating it –
that a smart seven year old (with a little tech help from her parents)
can do a better job than any of the official media, Celia Cooley interviews
Occupy DC participants in a piece that both delights and makes one fiercely
proud to be one of the 99%.
Great job!
By Celia Cooley.
The Incorporation of Demands for Liberation (2011, 13MB, 3:24 min)
Brilliant!
Last piece from ANW, for the moment, although we
certainly hope to feature more in the future –
some of the most original and exciting work I’ve seen recently.
For some context see Monday’s post.
Flow Spot Test #6 (2011, 18MB, 3:34 min)
“Just downloading apps at my Blanc Laptop Cart when all
of a sudden BenJi, an old teammate from XpresSpa shows up.
He happens to be subcontracted now by the American Airlines
subsidiary AffinityAlliance as an evaluator of potential for their
Oneworld Alliance codeshare lounges (of which FlowSpot is the
newest member).”
Flow Spot Test #5 (2011, 57MB, 2:03 min)
“Just having my early afternoon session of Body-Work with
Nnah, my Body-Designer.”
Says ANW, of the FlowSpot Tests:
For a large-scale exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
I created a color coordinated airport/hotel/mall/bank/spa/biennial lounge to
offer a site of relaxation and bodily engagement in an exhibition dominated
by isolated, sellable art objects.
All lounge products were purchased through online transactions (mostly
Target and Walmart), and were returned at the end of the exhibition.
My dystopic science fiction news video Global Countdown played on
a 55” flat panel monitor.
On opening night, visitors to FlowSpot could register for massages from
licensed massage therapists. While participants received massages they
could not see anything and listened to my directors commentary of the
Global Countdown video. The commentary consists of very basic visual
descriptions, with the goal being that the person receiving the massage
can visualize the video in their minds.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, I used the lounge as a science
fiction video set to make “FlowSpot Tests.” In these videos I engaged
with the lounge both conceptually and materially in a color coordinated
outfit.
Contact me if you are interested in opening a FlowSpot in your airport,
hotel, mall, bank, spa, biennial, gallery, cultural center, or any other
space that you own/lease/use.
See also.
Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min)
I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s work I’m going to devote
the whole first week of this DVblog season to it.
He initially sent us a longish piece, Networking with Andrew Norman Wilson
made with Nicholas O’Brien of Bad At Sports.
It’s wonderful but pretty huge so you should definitely go and
look at the Vimeo version there.
On Monday, Weds and Friday of this week we’ll post smaller
pieces extracted from that (but without the commentary or
‘interview’ as it is styled elsewhere [-the text on the BAS page linked above]) ,
On Tuesday and Thursday we’ll post two of Wilson’s FlowSpot Tests
with some accompanying explanation from him.
I find this work in general very exciting because it does a lot
of interesting, nuanced and often rather funny (and I’m in favour of funny –
there are very few great works of art which contain no funny at all)
and intially apparently contradictory things.
Let me give you my take on it.
The Webinars are all composed entirely of footage sourced from Pond5
“the worlds stock media marketplace” . The FlowSpot Tests are performative
pieces involving bizarre consumer items sourced from e-bay and wallmart and
deployed in a 21st Century updating of silent movie Lloyd-Keaton-Chaplin
deadpan involving, too, a certain degree of slapstick
and displaying a deliciously calibrated sense of the ridiculous.
The Webinars (a least when one takes account of their titles and certainly viewed
in the light of the commentary from “networking”) are a kind of consumerist
reductio-ad-absurdam.
The intent is celarly in some sense satirical but the pieces take risks in
that they don’t stop and end in critique – there is an understanding of
how toxically compelling some of this imagery is and to some extent they
toy with celebrating this.
Wilson is clearly a natural movie maker. He doesn’t restrain himself from
visual flourishes and jokes which are by no means integral to any
satirical case but make the pieces more fun to watch.
(The distortion effects applied to objects in the periphery of the
action in FlowSpot Test #5 are a case in point.)
Additionally, and most impressively, there is a muddying of the
waters in Networking… (and by implication the
Webinars and FlowSpot Tests) whereby
cogent and apparently straightforward philosophising is allowed
to cross pollinate/contaminate with the satire and vice versa,
leaving the viewer with -ahem- work to do.
This work is not glib; it takes risks – in order to maintain its
high level potency it risks misunderstanding.
A look at Wilson’s CV shows a spell spent working for a
labour union and I read the impulse behind these pieces
as radically anti-commodification and corporate mind rot.
Agit-prop, thankfully, it’s not, but “something rich and strange”
– radical art for interesting times to come.
Nice to see this when so many younger artists seem to be
tempted by a career orientated and somewhat cynical celebration
of that same deadend emptiness.
Layers (2007, 23 MB, 5:23 min)
“Layers is a mashup narrative machinima created with footage from Metal
Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2), Military footage from an Apache Helicopter
in Iraq (Public Domain/Department of Defense), and Shadow of the Colossus
(PS2). Recorded almost entirely through a sniper scope from the game, it
extends the conversation about the relationship between increasingly
sophisticated military technology and the drive towards visual realism in
videogames. What happens to the relationship between killer and victim
when they are separated by real and virtual distances? Adding the layer
of virtuality through the videogame complicates this relationship even further.”
by Joshua Fishburn.
Wikipedia:Technologies of Cooperation (2005, 70 MB, 1:30 hr.)
Lecture at Stanford University on Wikipedia by founder Jimmy Wales.
Memorial Stone (2011, 92 MB, 38:31 min)
“As technology moves forward.. all my work is falling apart.. I’d like to move
forward as well, into a more outside adventurous practice, so this video is an
attempt to document the ruins and the remains of my internet work”
– by Heath Bunting
Cross Examination (2005, 11.4MB, 5:40 min)
Made in 2005, this is a really extraordinary piece for lots of reasons:
(1) It’s so carefully made ( & must have taken no little work)
(2) The chutzpah quotient is almost 100%
(3) There is more here than meets the eye
(4) The use of music (in its second appearance very reminiscent
of the school of Rifle/Hartley but spot on nonetheless)
(5) The warmth, genuine warmth; the real insight into people
As you see here Josh Weinstein, Brooklyn based film maker
does a lot of work for corporate clients. Hmmm.
Really, all you can think is, on the basis of this, they get way,
way more & better than they could possibly deserve.
Interview with Ubermorgen (2011, 41 MB, 6:51 min)
In Berlin, DAM Gallery presented two projects by the artist duo Ubermorgen.com.
The show featured a temporary WOPPOW flagship store featuring fashion with bullet
holes as trademarks and the Deephorizon project that presents oil paintings that are
directly linked to the BP oil spill. On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition,
VernissageTV met with ubermorgen.com
Departure (2009, 34 MB, 4:24 min)
I love this video for two, apparently almost entirely independent
(but maybe, in some strange, deep way, connected) reasons.
First – the music is great. I listen very little popular music these
days (which is why I’m 2 years late with this) as most of it, even
(especially!) the so called indie stuff gives the impression of
having been focus-grouped into bland submission before being let
limply loose not to offend anyone.
This, contrariwise, oozes life & not-giving-a-fuck from every note
(especially the splendidly slightly out of tune vocals; but it’s all a joy).
Secondly, director of the video, Kate Thomas, about whom I know
nothing and could find out no more, had the totally brilliant idea
of simply stringing together some footage of French students
and workers standing up for themselves against the riot cops in 68.
If this all doesn’t make you weep with barely suppressed joy please
check your pulse.
untitled (2005, 1.5MB, 1:50 min.)
Nice bit of guerilla art/action/video by Judith Supine and friend.
Took some bottle, I think.
Making Web MVideo (2011, 51 MB, 5:55 min)
“There was a lot of talk this week about WebM video after Google announced
that they were going to drop H.264 support from Chrome. This is huge news
for video makers, especially since Firefox 4 (which supports WebM) is almost done.
I figured it was time to look into WebM encoding tools again.”..
from Michael Verdi.
Omer Fast – The Casting (2008, 38 MB, 3:29 min)
Omer Fast, discusses his 2008 Whitney Biennial work, The Casting (2007),
a four-channel video featuring a young American army sergeant who recounts
two stories
Interview with Shirin Neshat (2010, 123 MB, 3:54 min)
Studio Banana TV interviews video artist, moviemaker
and photographer Shirin Neshat.
At Winter Equinox We Burn the Sun (2010, 37MB, 3:48 min)
And by way of wishing a Happy New Year to all, here’s a tremendous piece from my friends
Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow, the movers behind the indispensable Furtherfield.org & the Netbehaviour list.
Here they ritually burn a copy of the evil Murdoch’s UK organ The Sun & accompany this
with music both apposite and well executed.
I think this is shot very well. I don’t mean in a boring technical sense – who gives a? –
but that it is utterly alive, especially those beautiful final, almost vertical, shots.
There’s a delicious play here too on folkishness which treads a fine line in avoiding
being itself folksy.
Further – here’s a practical demonstration of how political art doesn’t have to
be dour or ploddingly earnest and indeed can summon a visceral beauty.
There’s a dialogue (or, perhaps better, an argument) between this celebration of the beauty
of the world, betokened in this scene and what passes therein, and the real ugliness and
anti-humanity of the paper and its contents.
Great Great Great.
The New Miranda (2003, 38MB, 2:17 min)
Blooper – Voodoo Chicks (200?, 1MB, 16 secs)
The Engines of Truth (2000?, 20MB, 5:08 min)
Our Patrick Lichty season resumes after quite the longest break ever,
partly because I misplaced the files he so generously gave us
in 2007.
Looking through these again it comes home very forcefully what
a significant role Lichty played in the development of a new language of art video,
one contemporaneous with the birth pangs and development of net art & later to
feed centrally into online art practice.
The pieces still impress as hugely imaginative and sometimes challenging
and apart from their physical size and compression don’t appear time worn
at all. In fact, in many ways they seem amazingly prescient, perhaps
even ahead of their time.
More soon.
Beach (2009, 64 MB, 4:57 min.)
“A happy family is shown on a beach in Tel Aviv, as 100 km away a girl runs
from the bombardment of a beach in Gaza. It’s a reality where tranquility may
turn into horror in an instant. The conflicting scenes on a TV on the blink raise
the impossibility of accepting an absolute picture of a reality.”
By Guli Silberstein.
efj360 (2010, 3 MB, 1:28 min.)
“Knitoscope Testimonies is the first web based video using “Knitoscope” software,
a program that translates digital video into a knitted animation. Knitoscope is a moving
image offshoot of microRevolt’s freeware knitPro. Knitoscope imports streaming video,
lowers the resolution, and then generates a stitch that correspondes with the pixels color.
The title “Knitoscope” is based on Edison’s early animation technology the kinetoscope,
which was a “coin operated peep show machine
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!
Save Your Skin (2007, 4 MB, 1:03 min)
Save Your Skin – stolen skins, scripted environment,
where the skins of avatars are being put on display.
A Second Life performance by Gazira Babeli.
A Letter From Beirut (2006, 36.9MB, 4:41 min.)
This video letter was made on July 21, 2006 at the studios of Beirut DC, a
film and cinema collective which runs the yearly Ayam Beirut Al Cinema’iya Film
Festival. This video letter was produced in collaboration with Samidoun, a grassroots
gathering of various organizations and individuals who were involved in relief
and media efforts from the first day of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. It was
also featured at the Biennial of Arab Cinema, organized by the Arab World
Institute in Paris.
Ashleigh Smith – Impossible Conversations (2010, 75 MB, 2:30 min)
Emma Haggis – Out of Sight, Out of Mind (2010, 118 MB, 2:18 min)
Lucy Mills – Response (2010, 108 MB, 2:02 min, silent)
So, first, I should say, Writtle is where I taught this year, but it cuts both ways:
I wouldn’t post these pieces by graduating students here on DVblog unless I
thought they were all great, which I do.
They’re also diverse, in a fascinating way.
There’s Ashleigh Smith’s haunting – stays with you long afterwards – game/real life hybrid,
Lucy Mills beauty industry critique – half mash-up, half rather brave performance,
(It’s interesting the way that all three pieces incorporate, to
some degree, elements of self performance) and Emma Haggis’s superbly made
and utterly captivating stop motion environmental piece.
In each case one can see a personal language well into its development.
(All these pieces or variants/derivatives thereof formed part of larger
installations; I’m impressed by the naturalness & lack of self consciousness
with with these three move between modes of working/presentation)
I hope they’re all still making work in ten years – given this
starting point then that would be a treat in store.
Interview with Chen Chieh Jen (2008, 40 MB, 6:05 min)
Studio Banana TV interviews Taiwanese videoartist Chen Chieh Jen.
Chen
Dark Stars (2006, 6.9MB, 1:30 min)
Two rather attractive & intriguing pieces by Marisa Olson
made at a 2006 residency at the Experimental Television Center.
Said Marisa:
“Both are made using a combination of analog & digital processes
and Dark Stars is almost completely analog.. but
then again, both appropriate found material from the internet.
From Here is the music video for Zach Layton’s remix of my song of the
same name. Dark Stars uses samples from one of those old VHS video
games”.
More from Marisa on DVblog here.
Pictures of Assholes (2006, 6.8MB 3.44Min.)
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes on those pesky celebrity-hounding paparazzi
with a novel new approach, his own video camera (and an impressive amount of patience).
In doing so, he manages to turn the entire relationship on it’s head with true situationist flair.
I found it fascinating to experience this from his perspective, and then, I was kind of shocked
that more famous people don’t do things like this and then publish it online?
I mean, if they really want us normal people to feel sympathy for what their fame and our culture of celebrity worship does to their daily lives..
In any case, Levitt is clearly a cut above, go see whatever movies he’s in.
By Mica.
Rave Culture (1998, 16MB, 11:19 min.)
Shot on location at six Chicago parties over the course of a year,
this film explores multiple issues surrounding the rave scene,
including public opinion, promoters, drugs, police, and the culture
created by this phenomenon.
By Tom Frisch.
What makes for a grievable life? – Ashley Watson (2009, 19.2MB, 5:39)
From Ashley Watson, a truly poignant piece about
how we choose to value certain lives and not others.
H/t to my friend Deb
