Tribute to Reggie (excerpt) (2007, 52MB, 2:51 min.)
Vintage Yes Men from 2007, posing as representatives of Exxon-Mobil
and the National Petroleum Council in Calgary, Alberta, to deliver a keynote
speech presenting a new product – Vivoleum, a new fuel made from the
deceased bodies of human climate-change casualties.
‘Tribute to Reggie” was a promo video for the event.
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.
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.
7 Months of My Aesthetic Education (2005, 14 MB, 1:45 min.)
Speed up documentation from Tony Oursler‘s installation, “Studio: Seven Months of My
Aesthetic Education (Plus Some)” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005.
It combined video, sound, music and poetry to create environments that truly reflect the dissolving
boundaries of twenty-first-century culture. The work is inspired by Courbet
Measurement: Burn (2010, 50MB,1:52 min.)
“Part I of the Measurement series; displaying approximate measurements in
video space in reference to Mel Bochner‘s 1969 piece, Measurement: Shadow.”
Black or White, the Gravy Version (2010, 58 MB, 2:38 min.)
An outing, or perhaps more a forced march, for Michael Jackson’s
Black or White refracted through the prism of English
whimsy that is Edward Picot (well, on occasion; fans will know
his range is much, much broader) with co-conspirator Hoola Hoop Kid.
Never understood the Jackson appeal myself but this I like a great deal.
Wish, though, they’d called it ‘Black or White, the Gravy Mix‘.
Bell Deep (2005, 3 MB, 22 sec.)
Excerpt from Tony Oursler work from the group exhibition – “Fairy Tales Forever”
at the Aarhus Kunstmuseum museum in Denmark in 2005.
The exhibition was a tribute to Hans Christian Andersen
on the occasion of his 200th birthday.
Measurement: Meteor (2010, 15MB, 46 sec.)
“Part II of the Measurement series; displaying approximate measurements in
video space in reference to Mel Bochner‘s 1969 piece, Measurement: Shadow.”
Skyway (2009, 39 MB, 1:53 min)
A couple of months before her untimely death last year Millie Niss
sent me this video –
‘I have been working for a long time on and off (mostly off) these
days on a video showing industrial ruins on the outskirts of Buffalo,
shot from an elevated highway which is scheduled to be torn down…’
I remember thinking how beautiful and evocative it was and I assumed
Millie would publish it on the Sporkworld Blog in due course.
Sadly this never happened.
The other day I came across it & asked Millie’s mother and collaborator,
Martha Deed, for permission to post it here, which she gave,
so it’s a pleasure tinged with sadness to do so.
We’re going to take a summer break now.
We’ll be back on September 20th but in the meantime we’ll leave you
with this memorial to a fine artist & a fine human being.
William Eggleston interviewed by Michael Almereyda (2009, 61 MB, 5:31 min)
This candid interview with photographer William Eggleston was conducted by film
director Michael Almereyda on the occasion of the opening of Eggleston
We’re deeply sad to have to report the untimely death on Sunday of
Millie Niss, at the age of 36.
Anyone fortunate enough to have met her, either online or in person,
will have been struck by the combination of razor sharp intelligence,
a glorious sense of humour and personal kindness with a sense of utter
puzzlement at pomposity, bullshitting or self-agrandisement.
She just didn’t get the latter three.
In recent years, working in close collaboration with her mother, Martha Deed
she brought us the wonderful Sporkworld Microblog,
something that always felt to me that rarity, the invention
of a new form (or at least an unprecedentedly deep and
thorough realisation of the possibilities of a new medium,
effectively the same thing.)
It’s uncool to the deepest degree, being about domesticity,
illness, food, birds and animals glimpsed from a car or house window,
the life of a small blue-collar town -its problems and its festivals- and so much more,
but then cool -being a facade- was a concept lost on Millie and that’s why I
treasure all the more this beautiful work and I mourn her loss
as an artist, as a friend and as a marvellous human being.
We send our deepest condolences to Millie’s family but in particular to Martha.
As a small tribute we post once again their short collaborative film about Millie’s
attempt to deal with the absentee ballot form in last year’s presidential election.
“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.
Broken Bones (2006, 18.8MB, 3:11 min.)
After the murder of Bryan Harvey, half of the band House of Freaks,
I had wanted to make a music video for one of their songs as a small tribute,
but I was just too heartbroken to approach it.
I found the occasion on my last train ride home to Virginia.
I filmed this on the way down and edited it on my way back to New York.
While this talented duo had two legitimate pop hits in the 1980s
and an international fan base, their influence is far greater than
their current notoriety would suggest. I think so.
By Mica.
Mimi, Jack & Anna (2007, 14.6MB, 2:09 min.)
‘About half way through this, I realised I was unconsciously structuring it with the work
of Jacques Rivette in mind. So it’s a kind of tiny tribute to a master.
The music is my arrangement for Tuba Quartet of the Pixies’
Is She Weird? played by Tubalat on their Hall of Mirrors CD.
Thanks to them & thanks to Anna, Jack & Mimi.’
from Michael Szpakowski.
a beauty !
Josef Müller-Brockmann (2006, 30MB, 1:57 min.)
Wicked little animated tribute by Gary Butcher for the
Swiss graphic design legend Josef Müller-Brockmann.
The movie was made for the forty-eight posters exhibition
being held at the Image Now gallery in Dublin.
