Category Archives: exhibition

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.

Nicki Rolls – Dream Home & Don’t Know Y

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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.

Jim Punk & Antonio Mendoza – Dysleksic

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dudeboat
dudeboat (2012, 2 MB, 11 secs)

misteriosoxxx
misteriosoxxx (2012, 4 MB, 41 secs)

Slightly traducing the spirit of the project where
the two artists mix, hack and otherwise mutate
and abut up to 9 videos simutaneously in the same web page
as a (very welcome) online adjunct to the current Drawing Surrealism
show at LACMA, we’re featuring a couple of the component parts.
(Because we love both these artists and we want to publicise
everything they do, which is never, ever, dull.)
To view it properly go (and keep on going back) to the
project page and to learn more go here.

David Askevold – Nova Scotia Fires

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Nova Scotia Fires
Nova Scotia Fires (1969, 5MB, 3:00 min)

I hadn’t, to my shame, heard of the late David Askevold until the Camden Arts Centre
put on a beautifully put together and gripping retrospective last year.
Here’s one of the pieces on show then. It’s not particularly great quality plus
it’s in a tiny window but it does conjure (perhaps an appropriately Askevoldian
choice of word) something of the impact -witty, smart and otherwordly – of his work.

* and there’s a good review of that here.

Alan Sondheim – Disappearing Body

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whirl1
Disappearing Body (2012, 44MB, 1:02min loop)

Time marches on but some things don’t change and one of these is
our unbounded admiration here for the work of Alan Sondheim.
This is a perhaps a lollipop in comparison to some of his work but
it is, as always, rich and beautiful and lodges both in the conscious
mind and in our dreams.

Says Sondheim:

Mark Esper’s Two-Tone Enlightenment work forms the basis
of this short video. The screen presents shadows as positive,
not negative; infrared light forms the projection source
which is read and interpreted by revolving LEDs.

The body disappears. In the video, I imitated the effect
using video echo in an attempt to erase the body almost
entirely. Mark’s piece is brilliant, and the video is a
byproduct; I take advantage of the illumination to create
a somewhat clumsy series of movements.

Thus the mechanical is made virtual, and the virtual made
mechanical; such reversals form the core of theory povera.

Jeremy Bailey – Transhuman Dance Recital #1

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transhuman.jpg
Transhuman Dance Recital #1 (2008, 56MB, 6:30 min.)

“If Jeff Koons had fallen for the Microsoft Help Paperclip rather than
vacuum cleaners or La Cicciolina, presumably the result would have
looked a lot like: ”The Jeremy Bailey Show”.

Says Jeremy Bailey: “From now on I dedicate myself to finding better
ways for humans to dance”

via Aram Bartholl – Magnotta SpeedShow

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magnotta
Magnotta SpeedShow (2012, 20.4, 3:07 min)

Magnotta SpeedShow – A vanity surf performance.

“One week after Magnotta got caught we present a vanity surf performance at the exact same Internetcafe in Berlin where Magnotta was arrested while vanity surfing! Be invited to join and vanity surf yourself!”

“Killing is bad, mailing bodyparts is worse, vanity surfing (while getting caught) is cool!”

“Internet cafes are not just vaguely unglamorous places for ethnic minorities and communications challenged, they do have a genuinely bad reputation.” [Olia Lialina – ‘Still There’] Where else a social network killer can be caught? Of course in the Internet cafe!”

[shot and edited(!) on a smart phone ]

Internetcafe Helin, Karl-Marx-Straße 156, Berlin
Tuesday 12th of June, 2012, 8-10 pm

by Constant Dullaart, CuratingYoutube, Olia Lialina & Aram Bartholl

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.

Dr Hairy – Mentoring

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Floating Green Leaves
Mentoring (2012, 255MB, 16:01 min)

Final one in the present series of Edward Picot’s Dr Hairy videos.
Great stuff, which we’ve enjoyed a great deal.
We eagerly anticipate series #2, perhaps we could suggest The Return of Dr Hairy,
Dr Hairy’s Repeat Prescription or The Beard is Back.
Glad to see he’ll be putting in an artworld appearance at
the new Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park, London.
Not to be missed if you’re in the area during the run of the show (not only
because Dr H is great but also because Furtherfield haven’t put together
a remotely dull show yet).