Category Archives: event

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.

Osvaldo Cibils – 2 Humans, 1 Paper

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2 Humans, 1 Paper (2013, 10MB, 3:38 min)

I first stumbled across Osvaldo Cibils and his marvellously eclectic and well..simply marvellous work
on Flickr but he seems to have all sorts of things going.
So simple but so, so telling. Kind of Buster Keaton meets Bruce Nauman meets something hard to pin down but lyrical, grotesque and smart all at once.
My kind of artist.
+++
2 humans 1 paper
video art/soundart.
performance with plotter paper 200 x 107 centimeters.
performers: fiorella alberti architect and osvaldo cibils artist.
place: artist’s studio. Via della Cervara, 55 – 38121 – Trento (TN) Italia
22 march 2013, 20 hours

Lucy Mills – Simply British

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Simply British (2013, 77MB, 4:03 min)

Hi Lucy,
I think it’s really good. Who did the Hard Day’s Night remix?
I really like the way it is clearly a powerful comment on lots of things to do with the contrast between Britishness & flag waving and national hubris &c. and the actual situation for many people, but it’s never simply a piece of agit-prop.
At first I thought its slowness in unfolding might be a problem but I like the way it makes us take the time to think, with the various repeated images (like the bus with the slogan on it) but also with different material developing against the background you establish, especially the ever present and heartbreaking Big Issue guy – it turns out to be slow burning as opposed to slow. I also like the 90 degree rotation of some of the stuff and the way that then fits rather nicely into empty-ish spaces in the other “channel”. Great work – congratulations!
michael

Play Local

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Play Local (2013, 69MB, 3:58 min)

Enchanting video by Tom White of a sound/music outreach project he ran in Peckham, South London on behalf, appropriately, of the South London Gallery.
There are so many piss-poor arts outreach projects. So nice to observe that this one was clearly brilliant.

Aleksandra Domanovic – La Biennale (Dictum Ac Factum)

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La Biennale (Dictum Ac Factum) (2009, 63MB, 1:40 min)

Nicely made, kind of de Chirico-ish in its
sense-of-place-that-never-was & the way it
haunts you long after viewing, this piece from
Aleksandra Domanovic featured as part of the
Padiglione Internet of the 2009 Venice Biennale.
Oh –Dictum ac Factum – ‘No Sooner Said than Done’, apparently.

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.

Curt Cloninger – Pop Mantra #4 (Rain Down On Me)

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rain down - 10:00 am
Rain Down On Me: 10:00 am (2012, 22MB, 1:27 min)

rain down - 3:43pm
Rain Down On Me: 3:43pm (2012, 20MB, 1:01 min)

rain down - 6:00pm
Rain Down On Me: 6:00pm (2012, 110MB, 6:32 min)

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 14 September 2012, 10am – 6pm:
Curt Cloninger repeatedly performs a short excerpt from the
Radiohead song “Paranoid Android” for eight hours blindfolded.
The performance is the fourth in an ongoing series.
Video documentation by Alice Sebrell

Full documentation

One Minutes – Volume #6

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emily richardson over the horizon extract
Emily Richardson -‘Over the Horizon’ (extract) (2012, 75MB, 1:10min)

We’ll start this season with an suggestion for something you
can physically attend and absolutely should, too, if you’re
anywhere near London this Thursday evening (Sept 27th).

As part of the London Underground Film Sessions
The Horse Hospital are premiering Volume 6 of Kerry Baldry‘s
exemplary ‘One Minutes’ compilations of …er… one-minute-in-length
artist moving image work.
Transparency dictates I reveal I have a piece in it, but any claims
for mine aside, I can confidently predict a wonderfully varied, well
curated, roller coaster of work.

This piece is an extract from a longer work by Emily Richardson
(and, of course, splendid though it is, showing a single piece
immediately traduces one of the principal attractions of the project
which is the heady variety and contrast of it all. Here and here
is some stuff from previous volumes)

Hope to see you there!

via Aram Bartholl – Magnotta SpeedShow

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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

Béla Halmos

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Béla Halmos – Legyenes (2010, 19MB, 4:10 min)

I just love this and I can’t completely rationalise it. Everything about it –
the fantastic playing of Béla Halmos and companion, the earnest intensity
of the dancers, the crowd’s glorious vocal participation (especially that very
Eastern European tight-throated high pitched rhythmic women’s singing) just makes me
weak at the knees with delight.
It was recorded at the 29th National Dance House festival in Budapest in 2010.

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.

Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen

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Sex Pistols - God Save the Queen
Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen (1977, 80MB, 3:16 min)

Grabbed from YouTube.
If you’re in the UK, this is to tide you over until it’s safe
to emerge without a vomit bag quickly to hand…

New Media in the Marketplace – Listen to the Podcast

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New Media in the Marketplace (2011, 37 MB, 52 min)

“Over the years, we’ve found that a number of the artists we support in our Emerging Fields category have questions about how they can better market and exhibit their work. They have questions about pricing and editioning; changing formats; what it is that they are actually selling when they offer a work for sale; what their obligations to representatives and collectors are after a sale; and whether or not they should even participate in an art market that is, in their eyes, more sympathetic and better able to represent works in more conventional or established media.

On November 2, Creative Capital hosted a webinar for grantees to explore some of these issues and answer specific questions from artists working in new media. The panelists were Jason Salavon (2000 Visual Arts), Karolina Sobecka (2009 Emerging Fields), Stephen Vitiello (2006 Emerging Fields) and Marina Zurkow (2001 Visual Arts). Sean Elwood, Creative Capital’s Director of Programs & Initiatives, served as the facilitator.”

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST FROM THIS DISCUSSION

Podcast from The Lab.

Gov. Scott Walker gets checked, Mic Checked!

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scott walker mic checked
Gov. Scott Walker gets checked, Mic Checked! (2011, 81MB, 3:45 min)

If you don’t feel inspired & cheered up by this tremendous video please do the checking
your pulse thing…
Stand Up Chicago

Celia Cooley – Occupy DC Interviews 10/10/2011

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Occupy DC Interviews 10/10/2011 (2011, 73MB, 58 sec)

Demonstrating what we all might have said rhetorically, but really demonstrating it –
that a smart seven year old (with a little tech help from her parents)
can do a better job than any of the official media, Celia Cooley interviews
Occupy DC participants in a piece that both delights and makes one fiercely
proud to be one of the 99%.
Great job.

Joan Brossa – Fi

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Fi (2011, 51MB, 9:57 min)

Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet, artist, performer and polymath,
who died in 1998, deserves to be more widely
known in the rest of the world.
I’ve often thought his work, in particular the visual
poems, prefigured much of the art of the early days
of the net (but mostly better: terser, wittier, riskier –
I think Brossa would have loved the net).
This elegant & delightful performance ( ‘Fi’ is Catalan
for ‘End’, in this context The End) was recorded
in Barcelona eight months before his death.

It requires a little patience; the reward being that
it can be viewed many more than one time, so it
seems like an appropriate thing to leave you with
over the summer.
Remember we’re always delighted to look at new work,
so if you’re making moving image yourself,
or you happen across great stuff don’t hesitate
to send us links.

We’re back on Monday, September the 26th – in
the meantime we wish you all a happy and relaxing summer.

Talking About DVblog

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Electronic Village Galleries Talk 6th May 2011 (2011, 164MB, 32:14 min)

Gosh -where to start?
Awhile back we were approached to assemble a selection of
work from DVblog for screening at a gallery in the UK.
This reel then took on a bit of a life of its own, showing
at the museum of club culture in Hull, UK and at the Buffalo Literary Center, New York.
(of course ‘a life of its own’ is completely unfair – it got shown because real
human beings –Kerry Baldry and Martha Deed respectively – put work into making it happen.)
Then Kate Southworth, who is running a brilliant pilot project
involving showing digital work in village halls in Cornwall, in the extreme
south-west of the UK, asked if I’d be interested in curating something
and the reel immediately sprang to mind..

To cut a long story short it was shown at the second EVG event at
Zennor village hall on 7th May and I went down to talk (at some
length, I notice with a certain degree of horror)
about digital video on the net, DVblog in particular and about the
artists involved in this selection.
Here, for better or for worse, is my talk, filmed, heroically, given my
restless delivery style, by Delpha Hudson.
If you’d like to reconstruct the programme for yourself it’s below, with links to
the original DVblog posts.

And if you’d be interested in screening it, please get in touch!
(We also have a reel of silent work which has been screened with
musical accompaniment and is available for more such outings.)

JimPunk, 2010: T

Michael Barnes-Wynters – Control #1

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Control #1
Control #1 [Seeking Kind in Human] (2009, 114MB, 4:52 min)

Michael got in touch via a mutual friend to tell me about what
seems to be an incredibly thriving live art scene in Manchester, UK.
To my shame, this is the first time I’ve come across it, so I’m going to
make up for this a little by posting three vids from Doodlebug, the
creative arts platform he founded.
This first is a performance by Michael himself with Sophie Yesilyurt.
It’s very powerful. What strikes me is how these performative things achieve
a huge effect, often with very simple means. I think those of us working
primarily in moving image have a good deal to learn from them.
More soon.

Klaus Lang –Zwillingsgipfel

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suess-map 2b
Zwillingsgipfel (2007, 122 MB, 8:02 min)

The music of the Austrian composer Klaus Lang ( not to be confused
with fellow Lang composers Bernhard or even David) is both very strange
and very beautiful. It’s a world where the tiniest gesture, the smallest
variation or nuance has great weight and presence. It’s no intellectual game
or posture though, but something, certainly for me, deeply affecting.
See what you think.
Bizarrely, I believe (and I’m open to correction) that “Zwillingsgipfel”
translates as “Twin Peaks”.

Trisha Brown Interviewed

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suess-map 2b
Interview with Trisha Brown (2007, 11 MB, 3:06)

Anyone in or near London should absolutely get to see the
“Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown & Gordon Matta-Clark –
Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s” show,
currently at the Barbican. It’s fantastic!
I was particularly lucky to be there when a performance of the
Trisha Brown ‘walking on walls’ piece happened (worth
ringing in advance to see what performances are on and when)
I knew it would be interesting but, somewhat to my surprise,
I was immediately & intensely emotionally engaged by it too, finding
it lump-in-the-throat-&-tear-in-the-eye moving…
Although we’re concentrating here on Trisha Brown with an interview
conducted in 2007 at the Documenta 12 event (and after you’ve
watched that, the Guardian has a nice audio slideshow about the
walking on walls piece), all three artists shine in this show.
It’s all great but particularly interesting are the rooms of drawings
related to their various performance practices.

Garrett Lynch performs Trav-erse

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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.

KMA – ‘Flock’ in Liverpool

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‘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.

Bernhard Lang – I Hate Mozart

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mathematics
I Hate Mozart [excerpt] (2006, 11MB, 4:03 min)

Excerpt from the 2006 production of Bernhard Lang’s opera
I Hate Mozart written for the Viennese Mozart Year festivities
of that year.
It’s interesting in a number of ways. Lang’s musical language is based upon the
loop, but loops treated within a fairly hardcore art music environment.
Sounds like a recipe for pretension or disaster. Strangely it’s neither,
but most compelling.
Secondly, the piece is that rare beast, too often promised and so rarely
delivered, a genuinely comic opera and all the more impressive for being
cast in an apparently recalcitrant & unforgiving musical language
for such a purpose.
Hats off, Mr Lang, hats off.

Annie Abrahams

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mathematics
Mutant #2 (2010, 64MB, 4:04 min)

Annie Abrahams is a singular and compelling voice, her singularity
ironically copper-bottomed by her willingness to embrace the network
& collaboration thereon fearlessly, inquisitively and to always
striking effect. This piece is described as a video arising out of
the second session of a
“Telematic Performance / Experiment investigating communication and
relational dynamics in a dispersed group.”
and it’s bewitching.
The pages documenting it bear the motto
“Communication is never clean, smooth and transparent”
True – and to turn that truth into crystalline & affecting art is a little miracle.

Nuit blanches 2010 Metz, France with DIEZ and paradigme

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Nuit blanches 2010 – DIEZ and paradigme (2010, 41 MB, 1:55 min.)

Collaboration of Video mapping, light and sound installation, done for
Nuit blanches 2010 Metz.
Audio Visual design by paradigme.
Scenography and video mapping by DIEZ.

Mapping Festival – Motomichi and Otto

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motomichi1
Mapping Festival – Motomichi and Otto (2010, 100 MB, 5:25 min.)

Mapping Festival is organized by Modul8, the most popular VJ software in the
market and the venue “Usine / le Zo” is their primary space.
Here is a great collaboration at the event. Video mixing by Motomichi and
music performance by Otto von Schirach.

More Showstudio

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beasting
Beasting (2008, 3MB, 31 secs)

blackball
Blackball (2008, 10MB, 1:21 min)

God, I dislike this work! It’s the combination of the stellar
degree of smug self-congratulation with a faux experimentalism/pretension
to art similarly typified by the ludricous “creative” moniker
attached to exponents of advertising.
But..but..again – like some ads, not many, some – there’s
something to be learned here, especially from Beasting
which manages to be both deeply, Zoolanderishly, risible
(the branded underpants) but also generate a kind of deep,
myth-related frisson.
All the more vexing that somewhere here is real talent.

So…we hold our noses and post…

Enough! Six months, at least, before any more of this.
I’m going out for some air.

Readings

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readings
Readings (2008, 43 MB, 9:53 min.)

I must admit I’d never really heard of fashion video as a genre
until someone I teach showed me an astonishing piece by
Ruth Hogben & Gareth Pugh last week, which sent me off in search of more.
This piece comes from site called ShowStudio:

‘an award-winning fashion website, founded and directed by Nick Knight,
that has consistently pushed the boundaries of communicating fashion online.’

according to its ‘about’ page.

The piece we’re posting here is directed by Knight together with the designer
Hussein Chalayan, with editing by Ruth Hogben and music by Anthony, of Johnsons
fame.
It’s a tour de force, fizzing with ideas, a mesmerising watch,
and a fund of stealable ideas, so we’ll definitely be returning
for more, though I have to say I only see a dark void where
a living heart might have beat – there’s no speck of warmth
or humanity to it.

Elodie Pong

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Secret 044 (2007, 10 MB, 4:27 min.)

Another secret.
See original post for details.

Nigel Ayers – War Criminal

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War Criminal (2003 -2010, 22MB, 3:18 min)

When I first saw this piece from Nigel Ayers I assumed, quite wrongly, he
was involved with some heavy duty image manipulation in the cause of a
kind of conceptualist ‘activism’ (and I sat scratching my head at just how difficult it
must have been to get that image onto so many moving figures).

DOH! The facts are much weirder and much, much better…
Great stuff! Hats off! Not worthy, not worthy!

Let Nigel explain…