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

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

Residential Erection – Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

residentialerection
Residential Erection (2008, 48 MB, 4:35 min)


More Steven Ball

ex Local Authority
ex Local Authority (2005, 156 MB, 6:59 min)

Over the Borough Island
Over the Borough Island (2009, 63 MB, 1:51 min)

Two longer pieces from Steven Ball some of whose
Direct Language pieces we posted here last week.
Both pieces are great but I have particular soft spot for
ex Local Authority which, although I’m sure it
has all sorts of potent intellectual justifications for being is also,
quite simply, austerely & melancholically gorgeous.

Ask Vatne Brean –Two Short Movies

Freely Improvised Music With Digital Effects On Analog Wind Instrument In Depth Against Painted Directed Italian Reality Game Show On a Flat Screen
Freely Improvised Music With Digital Effects On Analog Wind Instrument In Depth Against Painted Directed Italian Reality Game Show On a Flat Screen (2009, 20 MB, 3:27 min)

Small creatures everywhere looking for adventures
Small creatures everywhere looking for adventures (2009, 14 MB, 2:24 min)

But not short titles eh Ask?
Work of skill, verve, charm & oddness from Ask Vatne Brean
about whom I know nothing , except I think he is Norwegian.

Update: He is Norwegian & is an 18 year old
music student.
Impressive & somewhat scary – I look forward to seeing how his
work develops.

Because Washington Is Hollywood For Ugly People – Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

washugly
Because Washington Is Hollywood For Ugly People (2007, 79 MB, 7:24 min)


Brantley Jones – Dead Plants

Dead Plants
Dead Plants (2009, 36 MB, 1:24 min)

Another from the seemingly inexhaustible (but always pleasantly individual)
film seam at the School of Athens.
This is a lovely understated little study of ..er..dead plants, which fuses quirk,
a certain menace and a strange found beauty into something very satisfying.
Brantley Jones seems to live a double life – his website contains much more
“well made” stuff.
It will be interesting to see where he heads, eventually.

PS Also, how can you not warm to someone who lists the late great
David Foster Wallace as inspiration?

‘Text Rain’ by Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv

textrain
Text Rain (1999, 12 MB, 2:34 min.)

‘Text Rain’ is an interactive installation in which participants
lift and play with falling letters in real time. The falling letters
form lines of a poem about bodies and language.

By Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv.

Zimoun – 216 prepared dc-motors / filler wire 1.0mm

zimoun3
216 prepared dc-motors / filler wire 1.0mm (2009, 10 MB, 36 sec.)

by Swiss artist Zimoun.

Kissin’

torc
Kissin’ (2009, 29 MB, 2:11 min)

Doing what it says on the tin (unless you were anticipating a Russian concert pianist),
a vid both charming & solidly made from Shawn Kornhauser & Nick Sullivan
which somehow transcends its premise –“A Video About Being Young” ,
which it clearly is, but it feels like they’ve captured more &
this has something to do with the subtle, but nonetheless
crucial, use of sound which really opens the whole thing out.

Gas Zappers by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

gaszappers
Gas Zappers (2007, 61 MB, 5:45 min)