Woodworms I (2009, 8 MB, 26 sec.)
Wind & Styrofoam I (2009, 10 MB, 29 sec.)
A couple of installations by Swiss artist Zimoun.
Woodworms I is a sound installation based on live sounds
of woodworms. In Wind & Styrofoam I, 5 stations generate
unpredictable movements of Styrofoam balls.
In G.O.D. We Trust (2009, 52 MB, 5:04 min)
In G.O.D. We Trust remixes the political and economical hardships Barrack Obama
has to overcome within various religious contexts. In the series the 44th US president keeps
reincarnating into seven various prophets, spiritual leaders and deities in order to heal the
world, including Jesus Christ, Buddha, Elegua, Lady of Guadalupe, Krishna, Mohammad and
Abraham. The series uses the pillar belief, remix the important stories and substitute the key
elements of the religious texts with current political and economical climate. Rather than
idolizing Obama, In G.O.D. We Trust examines the hope and changes the popular 44th US
president promises to deliver and the obstacle along the way.
The title of the series appropriate the US national motto, but with a twist. In G.O.D. We Trust
the word GOD is an abbreviation of Global Obama Devotion. Contrary to the artist previous
works that criticize the manipulation of religions in politics, In GOD We Trust starts from the
religious teaching and reinterpret the moral values with current affair. The result is a spiritual
journey that even Atheist cannot deny it.”
By Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung. Audio by Mr Cloak and Dagger.
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)
I Can’t Deal With This Stupid Ringing Forever (2009, 56MB 2:29 min)
Donna Kuhn has joined the little pantheon (Sondheim’s another, as is Sam Renseiw)
of people whose work I’m just going
to post regularly because they are great.
No apology, no argument.
If you can’t see it, the problem is yours.
Great. Great. Great.
Autoportrait d’Oro (2009, 63MB, 11:04 min)
There’s so much to commend in this quiet & beautiful piece I’m
unsure, really, where to start.
Three things though, stand out.
One is the modesty, the restraint, of the conception
-there’s no horrible look-at-how clever/shocking/whatever I am
about it, just some serious *looking*.
The camera looks and we look with it, with its (and with the artist’s,
although he’s there in the frame too) help.
Second, this austerity of visual means allows the sound to play a really
significant role in the piece. Again the work doesn’t trumpet its own innovative
qualities but quietly (pun intended) it does something quite radical with sound and
with our attention to same.
Lastly, it’s just very, very well made – that sort of still amibience is just so difficult to capture
effectively because digital video can be very unforgiving in that context – interlacing
& pretty much any sort of compression can generate horribly visible artefects.
Here, even in this pretty compressed version, there are none -it just looks like a
transparent window to a small epiphany…
Hats off then, three times.
Deadlock (1970, 7.7MB, 46 sec)
from Roland Klick’s Deadlock with music by Can.
Listen to the title track here.
What a remarkable film.
What a remarkable band.
Breathing in B Flat (2007, 41MB, 5:31 min.)
Breathing in B Flat – a documentation of a live performance by Curt Cloninger.
In Repair – One Song, One Day (2005, 119MB, 18:42 min.)
John Mayer interview and studio footage, wherein he explains the writing
process in the studio of the song In Repair from the album Continuum.
With Steve Jordan and Charlie Hunter.
lev_interview_1 (2003, 2MB, 2:12 min.)
lev_interview_2 (2003, 2MB, 2:08 min.)
lev_interview_3 (2003, 2.5MB, 2:14 min.)
lev_interview_4 (2003, 2.7MB, 1:45 min.)
A 4 part interview on Soft Cinema with Lev Manovich –
the Mecca of new media arts.
DEAF 03, Rotterdam.
Also: “On Database Driven Movies”.
“Senses and memories of motherhood evoked by visiting Birkenau
(Auschwitz II) in Poland July 2008.”
I wonder whether memorialising the Holocaust isn’t too important a job to be
left to artists.
Anders Weberg’s piece is as well made as one would expect from him
and I have no doubt it is a sincere response.
Does it tell us anything new, though?
Does it contribute to any understanding which will make
repetition less likely?
As we get further away in time isn’t it the facts we have
to insist upon & isn’t there a danger that art -especially well made
art -aestheticises and dilutes?
Read the Primo Levi book. It sets the bar very high.
