Jordan McKenzie – Serra Frottage

serra_frottage
Serra Frottage (2009, 13 MB, 3:17 min)

Whenever I’m travelling through, or near to London’s Liverpool Street station
I try and make time to pass by the wonderful Richard Serra sculpture,
Fulcrum, at the Broadgate end.
I really love it, one of the most successful pieces of public art I’ve
ever seen.
I mentioned this to a friend and he sent me a link to this piece,
one of a series of ‘minimal interventions’ by Jordan McKenzie
who clearly also um – –loves– – Serra’s work.

Crystal Stilts/Kate Thomas – Departure

Departure
Departure (2009, 34 MB, 4:24 min)

I love this video for two, apparently almost entirely independent
(but maybe, in some strange, deep way, connected) reasons.
First – the music is great. I listen very little popular music these
days (which is why I’m 2 years late with this) as most of it, even
(especially!) the so called indie stuff gives the impression of
having been focus-grouped into bland submission before being let
limply loose not to offend anyone.
This, contrariwise, oozes life & not-giving-a-fuck from every note
(especially the splendidly slightly out of tune vocals; but it’s all a joy).
Secondly, director of the video, Kate Thomas, about whom I know
nothing and could find out no more, had the totally brilliant idea
of simply stringing together some footage of French students
and workers standing up for themselves against the riot cops in 68.
If this all doesn’t make you weep with barely suppressed joy please
check your pulse.

Joy Garnett’s Unmonumental Videos

Found Art (Nolita) Unmonumental 484
Found Art (Nolita) Unmonumental 484 (2011, 36 MB, 26 secs)

Found Art (Chelsea) Unmonumental 507
Found Art (Chelsea) Unmonumental 507 (2011, 32 MB, 23 secs)

Joy Garnett is not only a fascinating and accomplished painter but
she takes a neat photo too.
There’s a huge set of images on her Flickr pages entitled
Unmonumental – a recording and honouring of the melancholy beauty
of the neglected, ephemeral, the broken and the passing.
Recently she’s added videos to the collection and here’re two
of them.
They are utterly beguiling and we’re going to show the whole
lot over the next weeks and months.

Eleanor Suess – Map 2b

suess-map 2b
Map 2b (1996, 33 MB, 1:29min)

We’ve got hold of a few movies spanning nearly 15 years from
Eleanor Suess who has staked out a very interesting position on the
borders of architecture and fine art (and specifically film/video art).
We’ll start with an early, and rather ravishing, handmade piece:

“Using a 16mm handmade film technique a DOLA/OS map of Perth
is transformed into a spatial surface. The territory of the drawing
is explored and navigated, the gridlines dominating the optical
soundtrack, marking the speed of the film as it passes in front
of the viewer

Steven Ball – Aroundabout: Second Person Present

aroundabout
Aroundabout: Second Person Present (2011, 117MB, 4 min, silent)

Extracted from a longer work made for Steven Ball’s
Aroundabout blog


“I also showed it as part of a presentation of material from
Aroundabout I did at City Methodologies at the Slade,
where it was displayed looped continuously on a flat
screen monitor face up on the floor, while I ‘performed’
the blog with Powerpoint!”

Some of these expanded cinema folk do relish a challenge!

Even truncated & divorced from its performative context it stands
as a splendid bit of structural/formalist film/vid poetry.

KMA – ‘Flock’ in Liverpool

device activated
‘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.

Alan Sondheim – Over The Edge

mathematics
Over The Edge (2010, 49MB, 1:37 min)

Alan Dojoji Pushes Fau Ferdinand in the Water because
She’s not Paying Him any ATTENTION!


so the story will be about I’m trying DESPERATELY TO GET YOUR ATTENTION,
but you’re ignoring me because you’re away or sleeping or not watching the
terrific goings-on in OpenSim so I sneak up on you (because you’re not
looking) and push you into the water which is very difficult because
pushing avatars requires the greatest skill, making sure that the pusher
is right behind the pushee, otherwise the pushee escapes, so you’re pushed
into the water and just as you’re falling you wake up and type “UOY” which
can only mean it’s a backwards world, and then we’re both in the water and
I’m dancing furiously and AGAIN YOU’RE PAYING NO ATTENTION!

Alan Sondheim

Sondheim & an Ad…

rilkes tongue
Rilkes Tongue (2006?, 73 MB, 1:44 min)

Alan:
“something to stare at

This is a few years old, but hasn’t been put up; the dancer is Maud
Liardon, either Foofwa or I held the camera and made the video and
effects reminiscent of G. Moreau come to life, the church is in the
Swiss Alps, Rilke was buried behind it, murals of tormented hell,
angelic world of Elegies, we were transported”

PLUS
tether

…Alan Sondheim is one of the artists whose work you can see if
you can get to Nottingham, UK this Thursday – Sunday, 11th-14th Nov, 12-5 pm, in the first offline
appearance by DVblog, where a 45 minute program of work first posted here
will be continuously screened at The Wasp Room, part of Tether Studios.

Details:
Tether Studios,
17a Huntingdon Street
Nottingham
NG1 3JH

tel: 07729124336

mail@tether.org.uk

Artists featured:
Kerry Baldry, Steven Ball, Robert Croma, Rupert Howe, JimPunk, Donna Kuhn, Morrisa Maltz, Millie Niss, Giles Perkins, Sam Renseiw, Alan Sondheim, Nathaniel Stern, Liz Sterry, Eddie Whelan

Also – if you’re reading this & are interested in screening this program -we have both PAL and NTSC
DVDs available. Just mail us!