2 a.m. in the subway (1905, 8 MB, 56 sec.)
A subway platform, a policeman and a conductor, a well-dressed man
with a cigar and two women dressed in long skirts and jackets.
One of the women causes a sensation by raising her skirt and
revealing her stocking. Artificial legs are displayed out the subway car window.
Hilarious. From – The Open Video Project.
Eric Lerner – Mr. Deja Vu (2006, 27.2MB, 3:48)
From Eric Lerner‘s collection of Mr.CityMen.
freudwasafraud (2006, 6.1MB, 2:32 min)
‘There’s nothing like spending a little quality time with the
latest top ten questions about your potential state of mind.’
podcast from Charlene Rule aka scratch video.
Sonnet by William Shakespeare (2011, 64 MB, 2:31 min)
“Here is a video I made a few months ago.
It’s a recitation of Shakespeare’s #135th sonnet.
In the background are Dexter Dalwood’s paintings,
which are collaged from other famous paintings.
The piece engages ideas of appropriation and identity.”
A beauty by Will Goss.
Abbie Making Gefilte Fish (1973, 156.4MB, 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.
Appraisal Part #3 (2011, 159MB, 9:47 min)
Appraisal Part #4 (2011, 143MB, 9:40 min)
Latest two in Edward Picot’s wonderful Dr Hairy series.
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.
Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet, artist, performer and polymath,
who died in 1998, deserves to be more widely
known in the rest of the world.
I’ve often thought his work, in particular the visual
poems, prefigured much of the art of the early days
of the net (but mostly better: terser, wittier, riskier –
I think Brossa would have loved the net).
This elegant & delightful performance ( ‘Fi’ is Catalan
for ‘End’, in this context The End) was recorded
in Barcelona eight months before his death.
It requires a little patience; the reward being that
it can be viewed many more than one time, so it
seems like an appropriate thing to leave you with
over the summer.
Remember we’re always delighted to look at new work,
so if you’re making moving image yourself,
or you happen across great stuff don’t hesitate
to send us links.
We’re back on Monday, September the 26th – in
the meantime we wish you all a happy and relaxing summer.
Boxing Rants (2011, 28 MB, 3:11 min)
Documentation of an interactive video performance by
G.H. Hovagimyan that took place at Postmasters Gallery in NY,
from a series of performances titled ‘Being and Event’.
Native Dancer (2011, 92MB, 2:08 min)
Genbush (2006, 17MB, 6:03 min)
Two pieces from Alan Sondheim -one we originally posted in 2006
and one very recent. The new piece –Native Dancer –
is a particularly affecting example of recent motion capture/avatar work.
It properly forms part of a triptych but I think it is the outstanding of the
three and I’m going to exercise curatorial perogative & post it singly.
It enchants me -I don’t know exactly why, I think the reasons could be
quite banal -there’s something of the children’s TV sci-fi epic about it perhaps…
Don’t know, just love it.
And here’s what we originally said about the other piece, which I see no reason to change:
Humor is perhaps not a quality that springs immediately
to mind when discussing the work of Alan Sondheim.
Wrong! His work is saturated in it, often a species of
graveyard or gallows wit.
Here, though, he just lets loose, plays.
But the man is incapable of doing anything that doesn’t
resonate with layer upon layer of meaning too!
03.07.06 (2006, 5.3MB, 1:54 min.)
03.12.06 (2006, 3.7MB, 1:08 min.)
03.17.06 (2006, 3.8MB, 1:13 min.)
Back in 2006, when video blogging just started, Andrew Schneider
was the funniest person on the internet.
From Astoria, Queens, it’s the whether|man.
Appraisal Part #1 (2011, 232MB, 10:14 min)
Appraisal Part #2 (2011, 151MB, 9:40 min)
Edward Picot’s bizarre and wonderful Dr Hairy series, the adventures of a hirsute
UK general practitioner coping with NHS (the NHS we love, don’t misunderstand us)
bureaucracy, continues with these first two episodes of Appraisal.
Picot’s comic timing just gets better & better (& occasionally strays into some
almost Beckettian territory) – it’s fascinating to watch a long
project like this unfold. If you missed the preceding episodes they’re here (as are some other
gems, some equally amusing, some altogether different in style and mood)
Phasing Dancing Stand Sculptures (2010, 30 MB, 3:09 min)
“Sculpture made from 2 over the counter “Dancing Stands” (the tacky kinetic product
display stands you can often see in down market stores) which have been modified to
spin at slightly different speeds. When these modified stands are placed next to each
other they go in and out of phase about every 4 minutes. I first showed a version of
these sculptures in my show “Creative Pursuits” at the University of Michigan Museum
of Art. This is a video of a version of these sculptures in action at my show The Sharper
Image at the Museum of Contemporary Art Miami (the music is Dj Icey, a nod to Miami)”
By Cory Arcangel.
South Yorks (2011, 27MB, 2:40 min)
Possibly only amusing (or even intelligible) to those hailing
from the area, I’m going to post it because I do & it makes
me laugh a lot.
Bit of background on Kid Acne here.
Creative Pursuits (2010, 12 MB, 1:03 min)
Images from Cory Arcangel show – Creative Pursuits at
the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
Martin on Wegman (1999, 3.75MB, 2:09 min.)
The introduction to the identity program from the PBS series
Art in the 21st Century in which host Steve Martin is featured
in this charming and quirky video by the artist William Wegman.
HD VIDBLOG #119 (2006, 5.9MB, 3:09 min.)
“Why would somebody make something like this?”
by Prof. Chris Weagel from “human-dog”.
RUBBER (2011, 35 MB, 2:21 min)
Trailer for RUBBER, the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been
abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life.
RUBBER is a ‘smart, funny and wholly original tribute to the cinematic
concept of “no reason” ‘.
Director: Quentin Dupieux
MoFone commercial (2011, 8MB, 1:31 min)
First of two pieces this week from the very talented Morrisa Maltz,
this one is a commercial for some kind of art-phone venture she seems
to be involved in.
Whilst I might pass on the product, I’m stuck dumb by the glorious
verve and insouciance of the ad.
It’s interesting – her personal work is very identifiable ( in a good way, I
hasten to add, and, as you’ll see later this week it moves onwards).
This is utterly different but also a really really neat bit of film-making,
suggesting deep reserves of skill and smarts as well as vision.
I Hate Mozart [excerpt] (2006, 11MB, 4:03 min)
Excerpt from the 2006 production of Bernhard Lang’s opera
I Hate Mozart written for the Viennese Mozart Year festivities
of that year.
It’s interesting in a number of ways. Lang’s musical language is based upon the
loop, but loops treated within a fairly hardcore art music environment.
Sounds like a recipe for pretension or disaster. Strangely it’s neither,
but most compelling.
Secondly, the piece is that rare beast, too often promised and so rarely
delivered, a genuinely comic opera and all the more impressive for being
cast in an apparently recalcitrant & unforgiving musical language
for such a purpose.
Hats off, Mr Lang, hats off.
Frank Talking #3 (2010, 278MB, 10:01 min)
Latest instalment in Edward Picot’s Dr Hairy saga which feels like
a weird amalgam of Oliver Postgate, soap and Carry On.
It’s interesting to observe how bold, deft & convincing Picot has become with the lo-fi
techniques he deploys in these and, furthermore, how engaging the actual
narrative is.
Great stuff!
2010 Clip Arts (2010, 20MB, 3:21 min)
Stunningly executed, but, for me at least, somewhat vacuous
sequel to his 787 Clip Arts of 2006.
From oliverlaric.com
Over The Edge (2010, 49MB, 1:37 min)
Alan Dojoji Pushes Fau Ferdinand in the Water because
She’s not Paying Him any ATTENTION!
so the story will be about I’m trying DESPERATELY TO GET YOUR ATTENTION,
but you’re ignoring me because you’re away or sleeping or not watching the
terrific goings-on in OpenSim so I sneak up on you (because you’re not
looking) and push you into the water which is very difficult because
pushing avatars requires the greatest skill, making sure that the pusher
is right behind the pushee, otherwise the pushee escapes, so you’re pushed
into the water and just as you’re falling you wake up and type “UOY” which
can only mean it’s a backwards world, and then we’re both in the water and
I’m dancing furiously and AGAIN YOU’RE PAYING NO ATTENTION!
Alan Sondheim
European Vacation (2005, 25.6 MB, 2:18 min.)
Morning Routine (2005, 44.3 MB, 4:34 min.)
The Summer of Van Torre was hugely popular in 2005 in video blogging circles.
The wepisodes recount the life of Jon VanTorre, each week bringing him closer
to total cardiac arrest with Ether Baths, Spider-Man Nightmares, and Meat Sandwiches.
The series (which began in 2001) was presented online in 05 by Human Dog.
Here is an interview (2005, 67.5 MB, 13 min.) by Josh Leo with writers & directors
Jon VanTorre, Michael Schwartz and Chris Weagel.
The Earth Has Been Destroyed (2010, 194MB, 5:06 min)
Something new from the splendidly sideways Austrian art/mischief wranglers
Monochrom is always welcome and this piece is no exception.
Absurd ( Popcorn for Chrissakes!!), just about hanging together,
but hanging together artfully nonetheless; even a little bit chilling too.
Three Transitions (1973, 7 MB, 1:32 min.)
Peter Campus presents three introspective self-portraits that incorporate his dry humor.
Campus uses basic techniques of video technology and his own image to create
succinct, almost philosophical metaphors for the psychology of the self, articulating
transformations of internal and external selves, illusion and reality.
