Wal-Mart (2005, 9.4 MB, 2:48 min)
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price was the documentary film sensation
that’s changing the largest company on earth. The film features the
deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities
struggling to survive in a Wal-Mart world.
It’s an emotional journey that will challenge the way you think, feel.. and shop.
Directed by Robert Greenwald.
Cut Piece (1965, 36.5MB, 9 min)
‘Ono had first done the performance in 1964, in Japan,
and again at Carnegie Hall, in New York, in 1965.
Ono sat motionless on the stage after inviting the audience
to come up and cut away her clothing, covering her breasts
at the moment of unbosoming.’
from Bedazzled .
Wikipedia Remix (2009, 34.7MB, 6:19 min)
Another Wikipedia Art remix, this time a splendidly accurate riff
on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf from Sean Fletcher and Isabel Reichert
Wikipedia Heart (2009, 36MB, 3:12 min)
Wikipedia Art (2009, 15.3MB, 1:32 min)
Being two songs by David Kent Watson inspired by the Scott Kildall/Nathaniel Stern
Wikipedia Art project, which has engendered some huffing & puffing amongst the humourless & imaginatively challenged.
The songs are neat – skillfully made, performed and recorded, & beneath the surface whimsy
there’s some depth ( in particular “Heart” seems to found a whole new hybrid discipline of
epistemological meditation through popular song).
This is in keeping with the whole WA project which unlike so many art projects which claim
to investigate something ( & usually my heart sinks when I see the word) actually does
and very effectively too.
Not only that (and I would expect this from anything involving Stern, whose work in whatever medium
or genre, is always touched with poetry) there’s a wonderfully twisted lyricism* to the WA project, which is very difficult to sum up in the usually one line required for much second rate conceptualism -the Duchamp epigone crew- which is possibly why it seems to have mostly drawn responses ranging from surly to mystified and back to grumpy in discussion in places like Art Fag City and Rhizome.
Now, generously & mischievously, Kildall & Stern have thrown the whole thing open for remixing, which is where these songs appear**.
The remixes in turn form an ongoing contribution to the padiglione internet of the current Venice Biennale -here’s the open call for contributions so what are you waiting for?!
And of course, coming back full circle to David Kent Watson, clearly one to watch. Bravo.
* & I use the term precisely & advisedly, not simply as a term of general approbation.
What I mean is this: it’s the very not-rightness, surface clumsiness
of the WA project that makes it resonate so much. This is what those who want their
art laid out like the ABC or like wonder pills, miss. It’s the failure, or refusal, of glibness,
the stimulus to real thought, that spawns the poetry of it.
Even the language the Wikipedia serf-bureaucrats use as they flounder blindly, hilariously and painfully
seems to have been dusted with a kind of magic satire brush.
** D.o.I – I have a couple of things in there also.
A video from my blog “My Year in Art”
documenting my interactions with artists and their work.
Paul Wirhun speaks about his work The Skull Project.
By Mica Scalin.
Isabelle Dinoire (2006, 8MB, 2:30 min)
Feb. 6, 2006
“Made this video tonight about order generic viagra Isabelle Dinoire, the french woman that had
a face transplant and made her first public appearance yesterday.”
– Abe Linkoln.
Read the discussion about the controversial video on Rhizome.
Reach – A Lecture Musical (2005, 15.3MB, 3 min.)
This video gives me chills, it is simply hilarious.
Performing a musical number to such a captive
and unsuspecting audience is wicked.
Takes a lot of guts to pull a stunt like this.
Prangstgr
By Mica Scalin.
Light Criticism (2007, 14MB, 2:21 min.)
Light Criticism is a project by Steve Lambert (the Anti-Advertising Agency)
with Graffiti Research Lab.
From Eyebeam R&D Open Lab.
I know we featured the folks at Sporkworld only recently
but they just posted this and it’s wonderful
– & somewhat topical…
Watch it all – it’s deadly serious but Millie Niss
makes her points with the kind of comic timing
many would kill for.
