Category Archives: happening

Ruth Catlow -Time is speeding up

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Time is speeding up (2016, 11MB, 1:00 min)

This is a beautiful piece, a distillation down to a minute of a three month installation by Ruth Catlow, artist and co-director of the marvellous Furtherfield.
She explains its premise and construction better than I can, so I’ll hand over to her:

This networked video performance and installation is about how life seems to speed up as we get older; based on the reflection that when I was one day old, a day was my whole life but on the second day one day was only half my life etc.
The work was commissioned for ‘We Are Not Alone’, an exhibition for 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, UK.


During exhibition opening hours between 23rd January -24th April 2016, viewers could watch a live looping video online. At the exhibition people could pose for the web cam, or might be caught looking at the video in which they were soon to be portrayed.
Using a computer programme called Geological Time Piece that I created with Gareth Foote a still webcam image was captured every 3-5 minutes during exhibition opening hours. The camera pointed at a wall in the gallery, upon which a changing text was displayed. The software added each image as a frame to a looping video, of fixed 3 minute duration. The frame density increased every 3 minutes, as each images was added to the video.
In the exhibition space full of movement – of light and shade and people coming and going – people could insert themselves into the video by standing between the webcam and the text. Over three months the human presences started to flicker and disappear and the moving image progressively conveyed a more geological sense of time, the arc of daylight moving through the space, the architecture, and other more static things came to dominate the image. The computer programme stopped running when the exhibition closed by which time the video contained over 3600 images. The final video runs for a minute at 60fps.

‘running to catch a train’ – a performance by Paula Musgrove

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running to catch a train (2016, 103MB, 9:07 min)

I’m gently waking DVblog up to post this extraordinary piece of work from Paula Musgrove, with videography from Yasmin Cox (both year two Art & Design students at WSD where – transparency! – I currently teach.)
The performance took place at the private view of the end of year show and the video was then inserted as is,replacing the original performance soundtrack and joining the various physical outputs of the performance to form the substantive exhibition piece ( As you can see in the poster image.)
I think it is marvellous, subtle and profoundly moving work and I hope we will all hear a good deal more from Paula over the coming years.

Osvaldo Cibils – 2 Humans, 1 Paper

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2 Humans, 1 Paper (2013, 10MB, 3:38 min)

I first stumbled across Osvaldo Cibils and his marvellously eclectic and well..simply marvellous work
on Flickr but he seems to have all sorts of things going.
So simple but so, so telling. Kind of Buster Keaton meets Bruce Nauman meets something hard to pin down but lyrical, grotesque and smart all at once.
My kind of artist.
+++
2 humans 1 paper
video art/soundart.
performance with plotter paper 200 x 107 centimeters.
performers: fiorella alberti architect and osvaldo cibils artist.
place: artist’s studio. Via della Cervara, 55 – 38121 – Trento (TN) Italia
22 march 2013, 20 hours

Curt Cloninger – Pop Mantra #4 (Rain Down On Me)

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rain down - 10:00 am
Rain Down On Me: 10:00 am (2012, 22MB, 1:27 min)

rain down - 3:43pm
Rain Down On Me: 3:43pm (2012, 20MB, 1:01 min)

rain down - 6:00pm
Rain Down On Me: 6:00pm (2012, 110MB, 6:32 min)

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 14 September 2012, 10am – 6pm:
Curt Cloninger repeatedly performs a short excerpt from the
Radiohead song “Paranoid Android” for eight hours blindfolded.
The performance is the fourth in an ongoing series.
Video documentation by Alice Sebrell

Full documentation

Morrisa Maltz – Character 2/3 – Inverted Rose

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character_2_3
Character 2/3 – Inverted Rose (2012, 43MB, 55 secs)

2nd in the series of 3, the first of which we posted last week.
I think these are lovely and haunting and I’m impressed by Morrisa
Maltz’s diligence and imagination.
(I love what she does with sound, too)
Is it just me or do these slightly conjure Isadora Duncan for anyone else?
Last one on Friday.

Barney Doodlebug at i-Kast 2012

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i-kast 2012
iKast 2012 (2012, 70MB, 3:23min)

i-kast voodoodoodles
iKast voodoodoodles (2012, 89MB, 2:35min)

voodoo1
voodoo 1 (2012, 362MB, 9:58min)

Here’s some more gripping work from Michael Barnes-Wynters a.k.a Barney Doodlebug
who previously opened my eyes to a thriving live arts scene in Manchester, UK.
Featured here are two videos of a new piece by Michael which figured in i-Kast,
“a live intervention transmission for www.artplayer.tv with artists roney fraser-munroe,
naomi kashiwagi and michael barnes-wynters” in May of this year.
The first video is an excellent short documentary overview of the event
with interviews with key figures.

Michael is going to be running an event for 15-25 year olds as part of the season
in the new Tate Modern space “The Tanks” on Thursday 23 August.

Pierre Huyghe

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Pierre Huyghe #1
Pierre Huyghe #1 (NK, 2.69MB, 1:43 min)

Pierre Huyghe #2
Pierre Huyghe #2 (NK, 1.59MB, 3:03 min)

Pierre Huyghe #3
Pierre Huyghe #3 (NK, 2.33MB, 1:29 min)

Pierre Huyghe #4
Pierre Huyghe #4 (NK, 2.29MB, 1:30 min)

Four short videos by the often vexing, occasionally brilliant, Pierre Huyghe
from the website of the PBS Art in the 21st Century series.

Roel Wouters – zZz – Grip

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Grip
Grip (2007, 101 MB, 4:13 min.)

Grip is a video clip for the band zZz.
It is a one take, top shot video with trampoline gymnasts simulating
video effects, and has been recorded live as part of the opening “Nederclips”,
a showcase of Dutch videoclips at the Stedelijk Museum.
The important criteria were that the audience at the opening would be able to
witness the whole shoot, and that the videoclip would be added to the exhibition
immediately after the shoot.
The project developed by Roel Wouters.

Ant Farm – Media Burn

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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.

Nathaniel Stern & Scott Kildall – Tweets in Space

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Tweets in Space
Tweets in Space (2012, 52MB, 2:27 min)

Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern of Wikipedia Art return with another
project both odd, lyrical and utopian.
“Tweets in Space” will beam Twitter discussions from participants worldwide
towards GJ667Cc: a planet 22 light years away that apparently might support
earth-like life.
Anyone can take part, simply by adding #tweetsinspace to their tweets during
two performance times in September, when Stern and Kildall will be doing live
projections at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in New Mexico,
and boldly tweeting where none have tweeted before.

They say:
“This differs from every past alien transmission in that it is not only
a public performance, but also performs a public: it is a real-time
conversation between hopeful peers sending their thoughts to everywhere
and nowhere.
Our soon-to-be alien friends will receive unmediated thoughts and responses
about politics, philosophy, pop culture, dinner, dancing cats and everything
in between.
By engaging the millions of voices in the Twitterverse and dispatching them
into the larger Universe, “Tweets in Space” activates a potent discussion
about communication and life that traverses beyond our borders or understanding.
It promises more than could ever be delivered.”

This is their fundraising video – please consider making a donation to make the
project happen and also publicise and share it on lists, facebook, twitter, etc.

Ben Pranger – my life is not a happening

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my life is not a happening
my life is not a happening (2007, 17.3MB, 1:31 min)

I really like this genre of physical theatre/dance/happening/what-you-will
put through the video mangler (apparently jitter does its stuff here)
& the splendidly named Ben Pranger & his accomplices
carry it off rather nicely.
I gather this piece arose out of some workshops in 2007.
I love the excitement of that sort of voyage of discovery; there’s a kind
of frontier feel to it which is really captured here.
It’s also a philosopher’s stone job – out of apparently prosaic fragments
comes forth a small kind of magic.

The World's Largest TV Studio

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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.

Gov. Scott Walker gets checked, Mic Checked!

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scott walker mic checked
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

Joan Brossa – Fi

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brossa.jpg
Fi (2011, 51MB, 9:57 min)

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.

Delpha Hudson – A Walk with Jane Austen

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a_walk_with_jane_austen1.jpg
A Walk with Jane Austen (1999, 144MB, 12:20 min)

‘the work is about exploring the veracity of history and of time,
and its constructs (in this case especially the notion of
“bodice-ripping” romance genres).
Playing with text and in-authenticity, the intention was to engage
an audience with notions of historical construction of women;
their facts and fictions, and the possibility of re-visioning histories.
– Delpha Hudson

Engaging hybrid of site specific performance and movie making,
the somewhat improvisatory quality lending it all a pleasantly
languid & unhurried air.
At the very end the sun joins in to striking effect & I love the rogue
arm at our right as the spectators leave.
Hudson is a charismatic & commanding performer –
we’ll have another of her performance pieces here in the Autumn.

More from Doodlebug

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foodieterror.mov
Food Terror (2008, 73MB, 4:36 min)

More from Manchester’s Doodlebug.
This one is particularly splendid and
meal times will never be the same again.
Here’s the text Michael Barnes-Wynters sent me but
I don’t really know what it means:

Doodlebug Presents…25/10/08 at Contact feat.
Ronald fraser-munro’s RFM-UNPLUCKED. manc. poet
amanda milligan’s ‘mz.milly does…’ debut outting
with ‘On Becoming a Human Being’ (AV mix).
a sneak preview of Urbis’s Black Panther artist
Emory Douglas expo. French guerilla photgrapher
JR’s ‘Women are Heroes’ plus Terrorist’s FOOD TERROR mix.

I think we’re watching that last item.
Anyway, it’s great.
More soon.

Jordan McKenzie – Serra Frottage

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serra_frottage
Serra Frottage (2009, 13 MB, 3:17 min)

Whenever I’m travelling through, or near to London’s Liverpool Street station
I try and make time to pass by the wonderful Richard Serra sculpture,
Fulcrum, at the Broadgate end.
I really love it, one of the most successful pieces of public art I’ve
ever seen.
I mentioned this to a friend and he sent me a link to this piece,
one of a series of ‘minimal interventions’ by Jordan McKenzie
who clearly also um – –loves– – Serra’s work.

Michael Barnes-Wynters – Control #1

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Control #1
Control #1 [Seeking Kind in Human] (2009, 114MB, 4:52 min)

Michael got in touch via a mutual friend to tell me about what
seems to be an incredibly thriving live art scene in Manchester, UK.
To my shame, this is the first time I’ve come across it, so I’m going to
make up for this a little by posting three vids from Doodlebug, the
creative arts platform he founded.
This first is a performance by Michael himself with Sophie Yesilyurt.
It’s very powerful. What strikes me is how these performative things achieve
a huge effect, often with very simple means. I think those of us working
primarily in moving image have a good deal to learn from them.
More soon.

Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow – At Winter Equinox We Burn the Sun

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the mouse escapes
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 Smith Family

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#1
#1 (2007, 1MB, 56 secs)

#2
#1 (2007, 1MB, 57 secs)

In 2007 I ran a little competition on my site centred aound
a musical setting I had made of a tiny poem by my friends and
collaborators Robert Roth & Carletta Joy Walker for
their magazine “And Then”.

I invited remixes, either musical or visual, of the song and
these two pieces, both utterly barking & delicately poetic at one
and the same time, came winging their way from the Smith Family
in Germany.
Wonderful!

Elodie Pong – ADN/ARN

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sfs_trailer
Trailer for ADN/ARN (2003, 8 MB, 4:04 min.)

“ADN/ARN was an interactive installation addressed to one person at the time,
filmed with 8 surveillance cameras, in which each visitor was invited to confide
and then contractually sell a personal secret. The initial system took place in
Lausanne at the Centre d’Arts sc

Marina Abramovic & Ulay: Relation Work (1976 – 1979)

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relation_in_space
Relation in Space (1976, 2 MB, 26 sec.)

expansion_in_space
Expansion in Space (1977, 5 MB, 1:18 min.)

In “Relation in Space” (1976) Marina Abramovic & Ulay ran around the room – two
bodies repeatedly move past each other. They collide at great speed like two planets,
mixing male and female energy into a third component called

Tony Oursler – EVOL 1984

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evol
EVOL (1984, 25 MB, 2:36 min.)

“Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including
The Loner, 1980 and EVOL 1984. These works involve elaborate sound tracks,
painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special effects created by the artist.
The early videotapes have been exhibited extensively in alternative spaces and museums..
His early installation works are immersive dark-room environments with video, sound,
and language mixed with colorful constructed sculptural elements. In these projects,
Oursler experimented with methods of removing the moving image from the video monitor
using reflections in water, mirrors, glass and other devices..” – from wikipedia

Jolipunk – Octopus

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Octopus
Octopus (2010, 56MB, 1:15 min)

When we previously featured a piece by Jolipunk we took the
exceptional step of including a warning that it might disturb.

This new piece is interesting on several counts –
(1) The somewhat in-your-face Oldboy reference/homage
(I can’t believe there’s anyone interested in film who isn’t at least
aware of that scene)
(2) The sharp focus once again on the mouth and mouth
related transgression.
(3) That -at least in my case – it didn’t send me running
for the sick bucket or even force me to turn away; indeed there’s
something even elegant (especially after the beats kick in
around 47 secs) about it.
(4) The jumpy editing and ambiguous music (which flits rapidly
from mood to mood, ominous at one time, quite lighthearted
at others) which serve both to distance us from simple disgust
and from a too easy identification with the Chan-wook Park sequence.

Sometimes work is “interesting” without being good – here
the things that make it the one make it the other too.

Annie Abrahams & Curt Cloninger -<em> Double Blind</em>

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double blind
Double Blind (clip) ( 2010, 70MB, 5:38 min)

“Annie Abrahams (from the Living Room in Montpellier, France)
and Curt Cloninger (from Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center
in Asheville, North Carolina, US) repeatedly sang “love, love, love”
(a short excerpt from a pop song) as a kind of duet, in real
time/space and online.

In order to isolate them from their surroundings and make them
more attentive to the other, they were both blindfolded.
While singing they evolved and mutated the original song excerpt,
collaborating and communicating in a space/time of alterity.
The artists have never met each other in the flesh.

There was no set duration.
They sang until the last one of them decided to stop.
In both places a space was reserved for the live performance
and another for the video and audio projection.
A camera was fixed on each of their faces singing to each other.
This live video of both faces was projected both in the
Living Room space and in the Black Mountain College
Museum and Arts Center space.
The performance was also visible on the web at http://selfworld.net.”


Interesting and affecting convergence of the performative work
Curt Cloninger has been doing of late with the
strange, wonderful & categorisation denying oeuvre of Annie Abrahams.

We feature here only a tiny extract from the 4 hour plus performance
of Double Blind – the complete documentation will be on show
as part of Annie Abraham’s first UK solo show at HTTP gallery
in North London, in addition to new works and performances.
The opening is on Friday night & all are welcome – if you’re in
or near London it’ll be well worth getting along to.

Complete Double Blind documentation & links

Annie Abrahams – Squad

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squad
Squad (2009, 32 MB, 3:18 min)

Utterly bonkers* & totally splendid video documentation of a performance
by Annie Abrahams, Colette Tron et Emmanuelle Delafraye.
Annie Abrahams performs the movements whilst the others
read texts on the subject of fear, garnered, I believe, from the internet.

* in a good way; committed, unafraid, vulnerable, generous.

42 New Briggate – a film & a call for work

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Untitled 1, 2 and 3 (Bullet Series)
Untitled 1, 2 and 3 (Bullet Series) (2007, 4 MB, 40 secs)

Rather splendid film by Steven Allbutt shown as part of a film showcase
in 2007 at the 42 New Briggate Gallery in Leeds, UK.
Apart from the piece’s intrinsic merits I had said to curator Yvonne Carmichael
we’d post her call for short films to be projected in the gallery window
Dec 2009 -Feb 2010 if she sent me a nice QuickTime we could also post here.
She did & so here it is – please consider submitting something!

Mobile Research Station no.1

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10365282
10365282 (2009, 1 MB, 14 sec)

10366629
10366629 (2009, 7 MB, 1:26 min)

Here’s the blurb:

In a wilderness at the heart of Berlin a strange apparition has landed. Simon Faithfull

MTAA and Mike Koller – iPhone Drum Circle

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ipdc
iPhone Drum Circle (2009, 40 MB, 5:10 min)

On Sunday September 20 at 2pm, MTAA, Mike Koller and friends set out
a brightly colored blanket surround by a circle of chairs at McCarren Park,
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They had amplified iPhones on which they have
downloaded touchscreen drum and bongo applications and they “jammed.”

iPhone Drum Circle (aka IPDC)

More Strangeness from Joan Healy

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Creak (2008, 45MB 10:54 min)


Beautiful Katamari Royal Rainbow (2008, 17MB 5:08 min)

Mad as a box of badgers but also very smart & winning, Joan Healy is a one-off.
We’ve featured her before, here’re some new vids of her work.
Even more here…