Rick Silva – recap

Recap -trailer
Recap (trailer) (2006, 7.18MB, 1:12 min)

Says Rick Silva:
Recap is a remix of the cult classic graffiti movie
Wild Style (1982) where every piece of graffiti in
the original film has been digitally crossed out and tagged over
with the Recap tag.’

The full piece is available on DVD as an 82 minute video loop.

I find this piece intriguing. I’m pretty friendly to formalism –
it’s amazing what beauty & interest a good algorithm
(in the broadest sense) can deliver.
But here Rick Silva seems to have taken steps to eliminate
…perhaps too strong…rather…to render difficult
the emergence (partly because the original looks so great,
haven’t seen it, so even the trailer is, for me, quite irritating,
because by definition it covers up
[and maybe this
is the point – I think the setting & hence the mode of viewing
probably make a huge difference – I could see this working
brilliantly in a gallery where one takes in some of it & moves
on, digesting, but I think I would rather have extensive dental
work than sit & watch it as movie
] what
I long to see
.) of casual beauty.

Good though!
I don’t mean to be negative!
Better than bland of course, anytime!

Interview with Ubermorgen.com at DAM Gallery Berlin

interview_ubemorgen
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

Garrett Lynch performs Trav-erse

trav-erse_short
Trav-erse short (2011, 96 MB, 1:58 min)

This is shaping up to be Furtherfield fortnight & whyever not?
Here’s some footage I took there last Friday night, at the very entertaining
launch of the Art is Open Source/REFF – Roma Europa Fake Factory publication
& exhibition, (GO, if you’re in London) of a splendid performance by
Garrett Lynch of his Trav-erse, where he uses custom Max/MSP created software to
grab audio from an analogue world band receiver, manipulate and remix it.
I was struck both by the simplicity of the idea and the effectiveness of
its execution – a neat concept but also an excellent ear at work.
The sound from my stills cam video was unusable (shame, it sounded great
there) so in the latter section I’ve dubbed on sound from
an earlier performance of the piece in Cardiff, Wales in 2008.

Duchamp’s Urinal

Duchamp's Fountain
Duchamp’s Fountain (2011, 93MB, 1:59 min, silent)

Fascinating bit of footage from Kev Flanagan arising out
of a piece of work by Rob Myers (together with Curt Cloninger one
of the two smartest people I know) –here’s the original post
from his blog to give some context.
The whole thing sparked an interesting discussion on the Furtherfield
(see Monday’s post) originated Netbehaviour list this week.

Steven Ball – Aroundabout: Second Person Present

aroundabout
Aroundabout: Second Person Present (2011, 117MB, 4 min, silent)

Extracted from a longer work made for Steven Ball’s
Aroundabout blog


“I also showed it as part of a presentation of material from
Aroundabout I did at City Methodologies at the Slade,
where it was displayed looped continuously on a flat
screen monitor face up on the floor, while I ‘performed’
the blog with Powerpoint!”

Some of these expanded cinema folk do relish a challenge!

Even truncated & divorced from its performative context it stands
as a splendid bit of structural/formalist film/vid poetry.

Morrisa Maltz – Device Activated

device activated
Device Activated (2011, 10MB, 1:54 min)

And after Tuesday’s ad here’s another piece of personal work
from Morrisa Maltz and it’s simply glorious.
I’m tempted to say it feels like restoration comedy on some
sort of mind-altering compound but it’s much, much weirder,
more beautiful & haunting than that.

Keep ’em coming Morrisa!
We’ll show them as long as you let us!

KMA – ‘Flock’ in Liverpool

device activated
‘Flock’ in Liverpool (2008, 152MB, 2:44 min)

How many times do you read artists’ descriptions of their own work
and think ‘naaaaa…’ totally failing to recognise their stated ambitions
in what appears to you to be, at best, somewhat pedestrian and at
worst, a total disconnect from what they write.
This is the complete opposite of that, utterly living up to the makers’
stated intentions, and an absolute spine tingler to watch even through
the distance of video documentation.
Check out the KMA site for a complete description of the piece,
an ‘interactive light installation’ based around Swan Lake,
but not until you’ve watched this beautiful bit of documentary.
Particularly touching is the genuine joy in participation it evokes.

Very hard to pull off and very moving to see.