Utterly ravishing Lumière from the never predictable,
always interesting, Rupert Howe.
On that summery note, we’re going to take a rest in the sunshine.
We love doing DVblog, but the daily deadline definitely takes
its toll after a bit.
We’ll be getting ready to hit the ground running again around 16th Sept.
& we’ll still keeping our eyes peeled for the new, for the weird &
(best of all!) for the wonderful.
Have a great summer!
Brittany, Doron, Michael.
Pop Mantra Video Documentation #4 (2008, 51.7MB, 5:17 min)
Pop Mantra Video Documentation #7 (2008, 50.5MB, 5:41 min)
I like & admire Curt Cloninger for his steadfastness of belief in both his religion
& his artistic work.
He’s also one of the best writers about new media around at the moment.
In both theory & practice he’s curious, inventive, knowledgable, quirky and passionate.
Unlike many in this sphere he’s also not afraid to think aloud in public, to take risks.
Even, (quelle horreur!), to risk appearing uncool.
Recently he’s been making work away from the web, some of it performative
& very interestingly so.
Here (& I stress what you see here is the documentation, not the piece
itself -a fine, but important, distinction) he repeatedly sings & plays a
single phrase from a popular song, in this instance Radiohead’s Karma Police, for several hours.
For me there are number of interesting resonances – minimalism, shamanism,
the kinds of ‘test’ that occur in many religious belief systems, a losing, dissolving
of the self (In additon to the eponymous “mantra” ,there’s an echo too, I think, of Sufism);
but also there is the straightforward investigation*** of the mechanics of playing,
of performing (& there’s a fractal quality to the rather symmetric & crystalline
structure of popular song that makes this kind of extracting both possible & immediately
approachable -it’s a world familiar enough to welcome us in.)
The two extracts are from different ends of this marathon
( & selecting & typing that word just conjured another association –
the of the twenties & thirties).
I find this work fascinating.
Fascinating & affecting too.
*** It’s almost always a laughable misuse of the word to say ‘investigation’
in an art-speak context. Here it seems correct & natural.
Ludwig Poos Schwabe (2007, 36MB, 1:20 min)
1st Ping-Pong Lesson With Lucha Lib (2008, 31.2MB, 4:18 min)
Even 18 years after the wall came down there’s still a quite palpable
residue of the great absurdist tradition that flourished under Stalinism in work
being made in the former Eastern bloc.
(Of course it goes back further, to
Sneaux Shoes launched a consumer-generated video campaign
with a stop-motion video of a human skateboard. The TV ad
features a skateboarder using a kid as a skateboard and performing
classic tricks like ollies, grinds and 360s.
PES who directed the video made it entirely in-camera (Canon D20)
and on location through the use of a stop-motion animation technique
known as pixilation. Says PES: “This spot is a great example of the
breadth of stop-motion. If something exists in the real world, it can be animated.”
Editing and sound design was done by Sam Welch at Homestead, New York.
Touch My Body (Oliver Laric version) (2008, 40.9MB, 4:18 min)
No Mariah (Caspar Stracke version) (2008, 52MB, 4:03 min)
OK, pay attention! This is complicated.
Ms Carey (or her corporate minders) release a video, which if she did have
a significant part to play in it shows such a staggering lack of self esteem
that a kind of dark despair begins to envelop me.
Artist Oliver Laric remixes it, removing all the backgrounds and replacing it with
green, for ease of a certain species of remixing.
There follows what is actually an interesting and nuanced exchange of views.
Then Caspar Stracke posts the second of our videos & MTAA make a
very funny joke.
Dust/Spring Evening (2005-7, 26.2MB, 1:57 min)
Dignity (2004, 40.4MB, 7:02 min)
Rain : Focus winter in the north (2004-9, 9.5MB, 1:12 min)
We showed a couple of rather restrained, pastoral pieces by Paul Kelly
in February of this year.
So, here’re three rather restrained, somewhat more urban pieces.
I admire the determinedly austere approach, to make much – or rather
to make us make much- of what is given to the camera (quite a lot, it has
to be said, in Dignity which is a touching portrait of man & dog), although
one does have visions of a kind of Yoda figure meditating in depth before every possible
editing decision to take the four years Focus apparently took to make.
I look forward to more.
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes (2008, 5.7MB, 2:28)
Beautifully poignant music video from Fleet Foxes,
directed by super talented Sean Pecknold.
Rent a wreck (2005, 21 MB, 3:13 min.)
Suburban Kids with Biblical Names is a swedish band formed
in December 2003 by Johan Hedberg and Peter Gunnarsson.
They make and record their music in the hallway or the storehouse
at the home of Peter’s parents. Johan makes simple drafts of the songs
and then Peter polish them and turn them into shiny pop songs.
Screen Kiss (clip) (2005, 3.1MB, 1:00 min.)
Jillian is trying to make Billy Bob Thornton jealous, inserting
herself into existing film clips and getting kisses from Daniel Day Lewis,
Vincent Gallo, Johnny Depp, and Billy Bob
Undisclosed Beauty (2008, 8.7MB, 3:13 min)
We’ve shown Anders Weberg’s work here on a number of occasions.
He’s clearly a serious artist & has made some very potent work,
I find myself a bit at a loss with this latest piece – it doesn’t work for me.
My assumption is that it’s me who is not looking right, but I find the
aestheticising of what looks like some quite violent and disturbing
imagery both trite and somewhat suspect.
(And the music over-eggs it for me too…)
The piece recently won a prize in Ljubljana so I could well be in a minority.
Of course it’s the mark of a rich & challenging body of work that the artist is ahead
of the commentators so I look forward perhaps to reconsidering in weeks, months or years…
patafilm #609 (2008, 18.2MB, 4:27 min)
No excuse offered or needed to show work by the Danish
magician, Sam Renseiw. (When I called him the ‘genius Dane’
here a little while ago, he wrote me, modestly demurring,
but he is, Dear Reader, he is. Both.)
He says “…still imbricated in the subtle magic of simple things
and situations…”, which is unusually accurate for an artist
self assessment.
Beautiful work.
Thibaut Is Singing On Oberstein Road (2008, 15.5MB, 2:36 min)
Rules of Engagement (2008, 18.1MB, 2:15 min)
Tremendous work from Robert Croma.
The Iraq piece is harrowing but you should watch it nonetheless.
The Thibaut piece is simply exhilarating.
I was trying to figure out what exactly makes this work so outstanding.
I don’t think it’s just the fact that it is technically so good (although it is).
It’s to do with Croma’s taste, judgement & instinct, or at least how he
deploys these to tell us something, or rather to intuit-to-us something
about being a human being.
You couldn’t make a rule of it, for that would render it inert & mechanical,
but, loosely, in these two pieces, it seems to me to lie in a going-beyond
-the-expected – a process with its heart in the little codas which open
out the pieces in a quite extraordinary way.
So the Iraq piece, though supremely well done, is initially not a
million miles away from much other remix type work, but it is the final
calling-to-attention, the framing, of the gait of one of the people
whom we have just seen obliterated that re-doubles its horror
but also creates the tiniest ground for hope in the inescapable
(thanks to Croma) clear recognition of our common humanity.
A similar process occurs in the Thibaut piece
– its potency initially seems to reside in the simplicity of the
camera exploring the still, the conjunction of the new and old
imaging technology and the simple & moving fact of evocation
of time passed.
It’s beautiful; and many would have been tempted to leave it there.
The final section is a risk – it could have have the opposite effect
to what it actually does; it could have closed off, made pat.
Here perhaps the technical fluency does play a defining role but the
effect is the exact opposite of closure -we’re left, once again, in a very
different way, filled with a sense of the mystery & complexity & possibility
(& the fragility) of being human.
Rather wonderful piece from Shawn Kornhauser & Brandon Joyce
who seem to exist in a strange crevice between real Philadelphia & well…some other one.
The layers of japes & spoofery multiply exponentially but something near the truth,
whatever that is, can be found here, here &
here.
I think.
3 of 7(2002, 74.7MB, 4:00 min)
Two (from a series of seven) heartbreakingly beautiful, lump-in-the-throat-evocative
lyric poems about being young, disguised as music video/documentaries.
Dan Canyon is a natural filmmaker. He so is.
What more to say, except nice to see Blackheef pronounced correctly?
Robert Todd – Creation Myth (2007, 39.3MB, 5:46)
Robert Todd is a master of 16mm. With an enormous
catalog behind him and no sign of his work ceasing in
the near future, Todd is slowly migrating his work onto
his personal website.
What a treat for us.
This piece, Creation Myth, is one of several I will repost
here over time, to show respect for these subtle, moving
visions.
Todd says: “Love of sky, love of earth and air, with
water helping us along form the backdrop to this
reflection of life-essence and its evolution.”
And, full disclosure: Rob has previously been my
professor, and I personally consider him one of
the kindest, most knowledgeable and professional
working artists under whom I have had the privilege
of studying. I wish I had been better able to absorb
his teachings at the time. He is truly a Bolex genius.
