Still Life: Gallery – Gareth Long

gallery
Still Life: Gallery (2002, 3.5 MB, 3:22 min.)

This piece was shot with a still camera. The images are ‘stitched’ together using
a combination of specialized software and by hand; the stills seamlessly joined to
create a new space. Because the space is made up of stills instead of video, any
and all action contained within the frame is arrested. The two major precepts of
video – motion and time – are thus implied but impenetrable.

from Gareth Long.

Jennifer Steinkamp – Mike Kelley

steinkamp_kelley
Mike Kelley (2007, 7.3 MB, 15 sec.)

‘Mike Kelley’ are high definition video projections of individual trees
with branches moving in a twirling pattern. Projected to fill the height
of the gallery’s walls, the images interact with the architecture of the gallery,
creating tension between the imaginary landscape and the physical space.

by Jennifer Steinkamp.

Liz Sterry – Borders

Borders
Borders (2010, 201 MB, 3:59 min, silent)

Worth every second of the download for this extraordinary
piece from young UK artist Liz Sterry, a digital arts student at the design school in Writtle, Essex, UK.
It’s an astonishingly assured bit of conceptual gorgeousness.
I’m particularly taken with..what’s the word.. the ..um..rightness of judgement
with which it was shot and assembled – on the surface thrown together
but everything combining so easily & elegantly to create something of
logic, power and great beauty.
*Transparency – where I currently teach.

1905 at 2 a.m. in the subway

0896
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.

Errol Morris: Donald Trump on Citizen Kane

trump_kane
Donald Trump on Citizen Kane (2004, 40.2MB, 3:22 min.)

by Errol Morris.
‘The last thing one would imagine Donald Trump talking about is Citizen Kane,
what many believe to the greatest film ever made, but here he is talking about
in one of the aborted projects by Errol Morris — like he has lived it, like he is a
reincarnation of Charles Foster Kane. The beauty is not just in the Errol Morris
meditative style or even what Trump has to say about Citizen Kane but what we
want to see. Mainly, that Trump’s life mirrors that of Kane and that this real life
epic character sees his own tragedy.
Talking about wealth, he says ‘In real life, wealth does in fact isolate you from other
people…it is a protective mechanism’. That quote speaks volumes. The salesman is
poking holes into his much marketed life. Asked on what advice he would give
Charles Foster Kane, Trump says boldly: ‘Get yourself a different woman!’.

Abbie Hoffman and gefilte fish


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.

I Want To See How You See – Pipilotti Rist

I Want To See How You See
I Want To See How You See (2003, 55.2MB, 4:48 min)

Hallucinatory, luscious, with a hint of darkness: approaching the
formulaic but, if so, certainly a winning formula for Rist & as
always undoubtedly beautifully & imaginatively wrought,
a video portrait of the writer & curator Cornelia Providoli,
found on the consistently excellent Lumen Eclipse site.

Anastasya Koshkin – Reliving and All Falling

Reliving and All Falling (2012, 206 MB, 4:42 min)

Lyric moving image poetry that keeps on giving, in proportion to time
spent with. I particularly admire the carefully structured and evocative
soundtrack – there’s a moment towards the end where a deep rumble starts
to suggest the rhythm of the waves we have been watching but never quite
completely coheres and this specific ambiguity typifies the richness of
the use of sound in general.
Visually, the angled image makes us more carefully examine and really see,
drink in, the casual beauties – in delicious high contrast B&W – placed before us.
Lovely.

Anastasya Koshkin on Vimeo

Douglas Fishbone

Towards a Common Understanding (excerpt)
Towards a Common Understanding (excerpt) (2007, 9.4MB, 6:50min)

Douglas Fishbone is one of my favorite video art jokesters.
He leaves no stone unturned in his search for a common
understanding, which takes him to the furthest reaches
of the world wide web and back.
I have been trying to find a video of his online to
include here for a while now, then I just asked him and
he graciously sent me this video for the faithful DVBlog viewers.
Beware, there are many disturbing images in this video but none
of them on screen for more than a few seconds and all quite spectacular.
By Mica

Lucy Mills – Simply British


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

Nicki Rolls – Dream Home & Don’t Know Y


Dream Home (2012, 61MB, 1:00 min)


Don’t Know Y (2010, 116MB, 2:23 min)

I first encountered Nikki Rolls’ work through Kerry Baldry’s splendid One Minutes series.( In fact we featured another piece by her in our very first post about that series)

As with so many of the artists included in that series she’s an amply justified curatorial choice;
her work is subtle, thought provoking and very beautiful.
She makes tiny ( or sometimes none, except to select) interventions into found (sometimes “found from herself”) images or footage which have a transformative effect and an expressive force much greater than one might have any right to predict. Beautiful.

Pieces of OiZ


Christoph Brunner – schwarzenbergplatz (2005, 9.8MB, 0:46)


Christoph Brunner – schwarzenbergplatz 2 (2005, 13.5MB, 1:03)

Orte in Zeiten is a filmmaking process conceived
by Christoph Brunner that continuously re-exposes film
to make surreal loops of space and time.
These two clips were taken during the development
of OiZ, which roughly translates to “places in time”.

LOMEG_ROM – Now Is Not 2009


LOMEG_ROM – Now Is Not 2009 (2009, 91.2MB, 26:28)

Absolutely stunning docu-voodle from 2010 by “b.k.” of Oslo’s
LOMEG_ROM (sadly, note the retrospectively rather
plaintive ‘we’ll soon be posting again’, dated 2010).
Just when you think fireworks are
overrated or that you’ve seen it all… I am endlessly
impressed with this duo’s ability to tease out the
nuances of space and time.

Sam Easterton – Animal Vegetable Video

ardvark
Ardvark (2001, 1.6MB, 15 sec.)

scorpion
Scorpion (2001, 1.1MB, 10 sec.)

tumble1
Tumbleweeds (2001, 1.2MB, 10 sec.)

wolf
Wolf (2001, 1.1MB, 10 sec.)

Since 1988, Sam Easterton has been using tiny
‘helmet mounted’ cameras to create an archive of videos filmed
from the perspective of plants and animals.

By Mica

Matt McCormick and The Shins


Matt McCormick – The Past and Pending (2003, 34MB, 5:17)


Matt McCormick – Australia (2007, 29MB, 3:57)

Matt McCormick is one of those heroes I never knew I had.
He makes insanely tight music videos and local commercials
around the Portland area, in addition to being a friend to hipster
bands and a musician himself.
These are two award-winning videos for the band The Shins,
who I’ve posted from before, though I have no affiliation or
particular love for them.
They just end up extra special on film, especially through
McCormick’s visions of A-Team remakes and leisurely photo drives.

Albert Nanning – Exit


Exit (2008, 48.6MB, 4:50 min)

Says Albert Nanning:

‘I’m a writer (poems mostly) and photographer, living and working
in Amsterdam. My age is 41. See also. The last five years I’ve made
so many pictures due to the digital workflow that by accident
I discovered a way to give all those pictures that I don’t use
a kind of meaning by putting them in a clip that I made.
Most pictures are from Amsterdam. I made
the clip with iMovie.’

& nicely it works too…

Alan Sondheim – Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds


Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds (2008, 5.6MB, 24 secs)

It’s funny – even when Sondheim does picturesque there’s
something very defiantly personal about his take on it.
Here it’s the way that the sequence of images just occasionally
looks as if it hadn’t been thrown together at random but
most of the time it does.
And this does not matter -in fact it’s an asset -there’s a shamanic
urgency to everything Sondheim does which is wholly engaging.

Bob Ross is alive. The Joy of Painting..

miron_bilski
Bob Ross is alive (2008, 22MB, 2:50 min.)

joy_painting
The Joy of Painting (2008, 15MB, 5:45 min.)

Bob Ross came to prominence as the creator of ‘The Joy of Painting’,
a program on public television in the US. Here are a couple of great parodies
that poke fun at Bob and his calm and enduring nature.
Top is from Dutch filmmaker Miron Bilski (from the viral video award)
Bottom is from artists Max Kotelchuck and Peter Nowogrodzki.

Lucy Mills – Sunday Afternoon Narcissism

sunday afternoon narcissism
Sunday Afternoon Narcissism (2012, 190MB, 2:46 min)

Hypnotic and disorientating chunk of enchantment from London artist
Lucy Mills.
Only one cavil and that’s the title – the self-deprecation involved might
serve to camouflage the actual richness of this piece, at least from the
casual viewer*.

Let’s be optimistic and assume careful viewing, which work of
this quality certainly merits.

* Although, on reflection, the ‘Sunday Afternoon’ also suggests a certain
dreamy languor quite in keeping with just how gently ravishing it all is.

Dan Osborne – Behold the Light (at Night)

intitled
Behold the Light (at Night) (2008, 87MB, 6:27 min)

We initially posted this in 2008 when we encountered Dan Osborne’s work
for the first time.
Recently he seems to be actively rejecting some of his earlier work so I hope
he doesn’t mind us reposting this. In my view he’s a very talented artist
with a quite singular vision.
We said then:

There’s something pleasantly reminiscent of Linklater’s Slacker
in this piece from Dan Osborne.
I don’t mean to suggest it’s derivative; I don’t think it is, or only
in the completely unescapable way of coming-after. This piece
has it’s own identity, which at first I wasn’t sure whether it was
completely random, but then little bits of structuring begin to
assert themselves. In particular I like the fades which occur
immediately prior to anything substantive happening.
A lot of it looks very good too – there’s no doubt the man
has an eye – the 3-D glasses sequence, the fire women,
the musical instruments procession (although am I alone in
finding something slighty snotty about the shot of the bemused onlookers?).
That little cavil aside this is interesting stuff & I look forward to seeing
how Osborne’s work develops.

3 from John Murphy

Hanging Around
Hanging Around (2008, 14.7MB, 1:35 min)

Cuckoo Land
Cuckoo Land (2008, 28.6MB, 3:03 min)

Alone
Alone (2008, 6.2MB, 51 secs)

2008 work from John Murphy, whose work we’ve featured here before.

Three videos which differ sharply in tone and which despite
a apparent simplicity of construction resonate long afterwards.
Case study: Cuckoo Land.
* found footage
**the good old forwards/backwards routine

still amusing/engaging enough in this case to hold one’s attention, but
***the muzak Grieg piano concerto
on the way back seemed a bit like over-egging it at first but
I find it speaks to me here more than the rather crude formal
device might warrant.

Partly this is due to the setting. Each piece gains in depth from its
association with the others, but I wonder also whether
it isn’t a sign of great artistic confidence on Murphy’s part:
“Here’s what I did – make of it what you will!”

Unattended Body


Arzu Ozkal Telhan – Unattended Body (2005, 56MB, 5:00)

Arzu Ozkal Telhan’s “Unattended Body” is a
spectacular meditation on public space,
observational video at perhaps its finest.

The artists also says:
“Unattended body mainly discusses how an
existence at it’s most banal (Heidegger) can
be simply perceived as a disturbance or a
potential threat if it does not act in its expected
way for the society.”

Normally three long segments, they’ve
been edited together here as a five minute
clip, all shown at once, which I actually prefer.
What is so painfully boring to others is ever
so exciting for the rest of us.

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.
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!

David Phillips and Paul Rowley


Phillips & Rowley – latent heat (2004, 7.7MB, 3:25)


Phillips & Rowley – personal effort (2004, 2.1MB, 1:41)

Lovely, engaging work from this talented duo, originally
from Dublin and Memphis respectively. These two pieces
showcase some earlier work, but their later work is equally
enchanting. I’m particularly fond of their installation work,
but we’ll save that for another day.

Jeremy D. Slater


Jeremy D. Slater – Manic Chinatown Bicycle (2007, 15.6MB, 2:01)


Jeremy D. Slater – Kanjiscroll (2007, 11.1MB, 0:41)

Two travel videos – albeit different sorts of it –
from Jeremy Slater, who primarily works in sound.
But I like his video work – minimal, often observational
in one way or another – so here are two samples.

Tony Arnold – Foundation

foundation
Foundation(2011, 153MB, 14:01 min)

Here’s a striking and very beautiful piece of work from
Mississippi based artist Tony Arnold.
There is clear evidence of his discovery and love affair
with the greats of the American experimental film tradition but
he’s obviously gifted and visionary and very much his own
person. (I love his choice of music, sounds a bit like Ornette
Coleman but I think it’s not…wonderful, anyway)

Duncan Speakman – Is Life Boring?


Duncan Speakman – Is Life Boring? (2005, 5.3MB, 1:17 min.)

From Duncan Speakman (yes, his real name) and the now abandoned 29fragiledays.
Duncan moved onto the less populated Delicate Museum, but I enjoy his older work much more (maybe because there is simply more of it?).
No contrived voice-overs (at least not at first), I’m also given enough time to meditate on the video.
Sometimes short is too short.
This is one of the best pieces from his previous incarnation.

Anri Sala – Time After Time

Time After Time
Time After Time (2003, 45.5MB, 5:39 min)

I was initially rather mystified by the vogue in UK galleries for
the work of Albanian artist Anri Sala but after a while the penny
dropped.
The courage to embrace the poetry of detail, of stillness,
apparent lack of incident & furthermore to trust
one’s viewers to accompany one to that place…
Elegant, sad, lugubrious & also, I think, much more crafted
than first meets the eye.
Great.

Dan Canyon

Quilts Never Sleep
Quilts Never Sleep (short version) (2007, 20.9MB, 3:07 min)

Me... U
Me… U (2007, 80MB, 12:45 min)

Two very different but attractive & telling pieces from Dan Canyon.
The first was part of a show of – you guessed it – quilts in London in 2006,
about which read more here.
The second could’ve been made for dvblog, well, at least for me, as I’m a fool
for all things turntablist, & features the splendidly monickered Mickey Morphingaz.

Cory Arcangel – Urbandale

urbandale
Urbandale (2000, 43MB, 7:30 min.)

“Urbandale”, an ASCII/ANSI movie by Cory Arcangel.
“Filmed at Urbandale Plaza in the eastern suburbs of Buffalo N.Y.,
“urbandale” is a study of America’s suburban sprawl stripped to its barest
essentials and void of unnecessary contemporary cultural influence. This
film captures the sly, bland smile strip plazas cast at modern culture.
The film, rendered in text, focuses on the repetitive motion of food
stuffs being cooked in the lobby of a discount department store.”

“Urbandale” was a 2000 commission of New_Radio_and_Performing_Arts for it’s Turbulence project.
PS
This is a mp4 version of the original urbandalePNG video. (quality of the video has been degraded)

Sondheim, Foofwa – <em>Blanking</em>

blanking
Blanking (2011, 30MB, 1:07 min)

for Carol Novack

‘I was working on this, shot with Foofwa d’Imobilite at Eyebeam,
when I heard the news that Carol Novack had died. for many of us,
this was unexpected and awful, as if the year couldn’t end
without just one more tragedy.

Foofwa and I had talked about our
work together, earlier, about issues of pain, wounding, death;
I think this piece, made at the time, is all I could do, I speak
through image and sound, these words already lost, resting in
peace
thank you Foofwa and Jamie and Jackson at Eyebeam’

Alan Sondheim

Merry

a christmas medley from barnsley town centre
A Christmas Medley From Barnsley Town Centre (2011, 87MB, 1:29 min)

Normally we don’t post our own work here but I couldn’t resist this.
Also – it was a gift; no editing, just the take. (OK. I turned down the brightness
& jacked up the contrast a little.)
Barnsley is actually the friendliest of places, with a grumpy, wry, cheerfulness born of
generations of working-class solidarity, especially in the pits, though it’s now
ravaged by the cuts and closures of the past years.
From me & Doron, Happy Holidays and looking forward to a better world next year.
We’re taking a small holiday break & we’ll be back with something rather splendid
from Morrisa Maltz on January 2nd.

Ruth Catlow – overland

overland
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…

Patrick Power – lights and darkness


Steamlight (2006, 16.2MB, 2:51)


Watauga (2007, 203.1MB, 26:23)

Two extraordinary pieces from Patrick Power.
Its as if the Qatsi trilogy found a way to use a videoblog as a testing ground.
This is much more than a test, though.
Some of the most important work I have seen in a while.
Beautifully touching randomized archives.
Pushing the limits of contemplative observation.
Taking time to visually visit other places.
There is so much beauty in reflections and the synchronicities of our minds.

Sample these two, then go visit the rest of his collection. Patrick makes the world watchable.

Edit: Sadly, Patrick Power passed away in 2007. This post was created to honor this man’s work, and now sadly, we must honor that work as his legacy.

More from Regina Célia Pinto

Paintings
Painting (2007, 11 MB, 43 Sec)

Neste vídeo há uma grande delicadeza, uma fragilidade,
que não deve levar a pensar que essa peça de Regina Pinto
é de alguma forma ocasional ou menos artística.
Em vez disso, esse é o trabalho de um artista maduro,
sem nada a provar, e com a enorme liberdade que isso traz.
Um estudo de todo o corpo de seu trabalho evidencia
amplamente tudo isso e mostra quão profundamente
consistente e coerente ele se apresenta.
Poder-se-ia ainda acrescentar o quanto ele nos emociona,
o quanto é estranho e muito bonito.

There’s a delicacy, a fragility, about this piece
that shouldn’t lead one to think that Regina Célia Pinto’s
work is in any way casual or artless.
Rather, this is the work of a mature artist with
nothing to prove and the enormous freedom that brings.
A study of the whole body of her work
amply bears this out.
It shows just how consistent and deeply considered
it is and, one should add, how affecting, how strange
and how very beautiful.

Another from Ruth Catlow

as i looked up
travel images unseen (2011, 156MB, 6:01 min)

‘5 video clips taken on a simple video camera, through a window on a coach to the
plane from Istanbul and arriving in London by train. Selected by and stitched, unseen
by the creator who will never watch the video, ever.’

The gentlest conceptualism & quite, quite lovely too.
There’s something about knowing the premise that leaves one
very open – one could say innoculates one – to its formal consequences –
here a looseness which somehow gently stretches time, makes it grainier
but conversely sharpens our attention, perhaps to make up for the
maker’s own vow of abstention.
One more in the series to come.

Alan Sondheim – Two Movies

Beauty
Beauty (2007, 11.4MB, 1:04 min.)

Romania
Romania (2007, 19MB, 2:01 min.)

What to say, we’ve said it all, again & again, Sondheim’s
movies are a unique & indispensable body of work.
Specifically, anyone working in video on the net who
doesn’t know them is navigating blind.
For a free masterclass hop over to his site & work your
way through all the stuff with .mov or .mp4 extensions.
( I mean, don’t confine yourself to the movies but this
is dvblog)
You won’t have wasted your time.

Clouds by John Murphy

c1
Clouds…Courts (2007, 10MB, 4:45 min.)

c2
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.

Celia Cooley – Occupy DC Interviews 10/10/2011

indian_movie.jpg
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.