Tears For The Future (2008, 78MB, 4:15 min.)
Video by Javier Morales and John Michael Boling.
Music by Javier. Commissioned by Map Magazine.
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Edward Picot & Rachel – Moley’s adventures – Chapter 1
Chapter 1 (2009, 27.3MB, 4:49 min)
Edward Picot has made an intelligent and generous contribution to
the creation of a serious critical tradition around web based literature,
(although his interests are wide and by no means limited to the written word).
A lot of people, me included, have cause to be grateful to him for his
acute, measured but sympathetic assessments of their work.
Apart from his invaluable critical writing he’s also a writer and maker
of work himself.
One of the engines driving his recent creative work has been his
relationship with his young daughter Rachel.
His fantasy story The Puzzle Box,written for Rachel, was one of last year’s
delights.
Here he turns his hand to video in a more active collaboration with Rachel.
This is work that has its roots in a particularly English form of lo-fi
moving image storytelling (I know the late Oliver Postgate is a figure Edward greatly admires.)
Does it work? – in truth, not 100% – I think we feel we are trespassing slightly
on a very personal world. ‘Slightly’, though, is the operative word – there’s
something here, no doubt, & old fashioned as it may be in some
respects there’s something about the kind of adult child collaboration rendered
possible by the digital which is unlike anything previously -a kind of levelling
of the playing field…
Anyway, we’ll post all three episodes over the next weeks and allow you to
make your own minds up.
A lot of Robert Croma
Future and the Dream (2009, 298MB, 53:36 min)
A 53 minute piece from the indispensable Robert Croma,
which was made for the 24 hours 24 artists webcast earlier this year.
It’s Croma’s obsessive – lapidary – attention to detail
(as well as, of course, bucket loads of talent and flair) on quite small
canvasses that makes him unique so it’s interesting to see how
effectively he pulls this one off.
For comparison here’s a recent, haunting, miniature:
Nira Pereg – G Spotting
G Spotting (2003, excerpt, 4MB, 1 min.)
“G Spotting is a search for the pleasure zone of the look. In keeping
with commands, which are read out aloud, the camera moves horizontally
and vertically over an architectural landscape towards what seems like
pleasure zones. Although the search is visual, the image remains unplanned,
following the sound and carrying out each command. While using the urban
landscape as a chart of the female body, the work touches on the themes of
surveillance, modern weaponry and pornography.”
by Israeli video artist Nira Pereg.
Walking Off A Cliff Again
Weberg – Mamo
“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.
Ash Sechler – 2 movies
Transformation (2009, 15.5MB, 1:18 min)
Representation of Memory (2006, 75.4MB, 2:22 min)
Clearly there is something in the water in Athens, Georgia giving us,
as it has, John Michael Boling & Javier Morales, John Crowe,
Dan Osborne, Brantley Jones and now Ash Sechler.
Hmm – The School of Athens, Georgia.
There’s no common style but there is a certain sensibility which,
curiously, pervades the quiet meditative stuff as well as the more
out-there and bizarre – it’s a species of wryness combined with an
eye for the casually arresting, odd and beautiful.
It’s exemplified here in both these rather good pieces, though I particularly
like Representation of Memory.
Liars – Plaster Casts of Everything
Liars – Plaster Casts of Everything (2007, 21.7MB, 4:00)
Another excellent video from The Liars
From The Directors Bureau
Winds Across the Inner Sea – John F. Simon
threshold (2007, 4.4MB, 2:56 min.)
This body of work by John F. Simon was shown in September 2007
in a solo show at the Gering & Lopez Gallery in New York City.
Playing between instinct and idea, this series of large-scale compositions
combine laser cut Formica and LCD screens with endlessly changing software.
Each composition merges the physicality of the material world with the fluid
inner world of code. The LCD screen functions simultaneously as a visual element
of the surface and a window into the system’s evolution.
Sam Renseiw – Blind Voodles
Blind Voodle #1 (2009, 57.4MB, 6:25 min)
Blind Voodle #2 (2009, 31.6MB, 3:35 min)
Oneiric gorgeousness from the magnificent Sam Renseiw.