Mad King Thomas/Kevin Obsatz – Eat up, Little Pearl – trailer

eat up little pearl - trailer
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.

The Framing of Luaty Beirão

History of the Demonstrations
History of the Demonstrations (2012, 211MB, 15:53 min)

Cuka
Cuka (2011, 35MB, 4:11 min)

Cuka
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.

via Aram Bartholl – Magnotta SpeedShow

magnotta
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

Ant Farm – Media Burn


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.

More Larissa Sansour – Happy Days

Larissa Sansour: Happy Days
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.
Apart from the two Sansour pieces there’s a tremendous semi-documentary
work
shot in a Miami auto paint and body shop by Shadi Habib Allah
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 – Cornerhouse show that it can be done and how to do it very well.
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 Yes Men – Vivoleum

yesmen tribute
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 World's Largest TV Studio

shamberg
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.