Webchat with Andy (2007, 31MB, 13:46 min.)
A conversation with Andy Warhol, contacted through a psychic with
mediumistic abilities via webchat. Sunday, September 2, 2007
Interview commissioned by Blend Magazine/Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
by Oliver Laric.
House of Dreams (2009, 14MB, 2:57 min.)
A remix of Michael Szpakowski’s remix of Radiohead’s “House of Cards”.
Using images from Second Life and The Endless Forest, with some lyrics
which Edward Picot added in a whisper.
Breathing in B Flat (2007, 41MB, 5:31 min.)
Breathing in B Flat – a documentation of a live performance by Curt Cloninger.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Compilation (1993-2007, 172MB, 26 min.)
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is known for creating large-scale interactive
installations in public spaces. His
Wikipedia Remix (2009, 34.7MB, 6:19 min)
Another Wikipedia Art remix, this time a splendidly accurate riff
on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf from Sean Fletcher and Isabel Reichert
RBG6 – Yasuragi (2008, 5MB, 0:20)
RBG6 – Colour (Sony) (2008, 38.6MB, 2:34)
Two short ad pieces from Swedish studio RBG6
figure rocks square (2009, 16MB, 2:52 min)
figure and birdcage (2009, 45MB, 8:14 min)
Studies for Figure (Isabel Rosenthal) (2009, 5MB, 1:00 min)
figure and birdcage (2009, 5MB, 52 secs)
Some recent work from Doron Golan, of this manor.
And it’s quite extraordinary.
In general Doron’s work has been marked by, not so much
a refusal to pander to passing fashion, but a complete
lack of interest in it or acknowledgement that it’s even there.
He goes his own way, he explores what interests, excites
and moves him.( And so, moves us)
When a seam is exhausted he moves on without looking back.
There is no attempt to create an artificial, marketable, surface unity
(which is not of course to say that a real, deeper, unity is not there)
I believe Doron is constitutionally incapable of acting otherwise and
he’s made a body of work of great beauty, and one entirely lacking in cynicism.
In the last months he’s been working on these, at first sight very odd,
study type pieces, with, as I understand it, a group of actors in Tel Aviv.
His methodology is a first sight unpromising -there is the obsessive restaging
of rather obscure -sometimes personal, sometimes, I think, Biblical- scenes and images.
These are then subjected to what appear to me to be out of the box transformation-of-the-plane
type distortion.
Unpromising because if, say, you were teaching a student you would probably
attempt to restrain this tendency, in the same way as one would with over-use
of Photoshop filters.
The thing is though – he pulls it off.
This is not an easy, passive view though -you have to approach the pieces prepared
to open yourself to them, to engage, to think, to do some work.
The work is not cosy; it will not flatter you.
but there is a beautiful & harsh poetry at it’s heart.
An obvious point of comparison is Bacon
but actually I think Soutine is nearer the mark.
(As a key, a way in, I’m not even beginning to suggest an influence. Although it would
be nonsense to suggest Doron is somehow without influences they are wide ranging and
very assimilated; Samuel Beckett is actually the one nearest to the surface.)
I urge you to explore not only all these pieces but all the work of the last ten years or so.
If you have a heart and mind and are prepared to use them you won’t be disappointed.
Wikipedia Heart (2009, 36MB, 3:12 min)
Wikipedia Art (2009, 15.3MB, 1:32 min)
Being two songs by David Kent Watson inspired by the Scott Kildall/Nathaniel Stern
Wikipedia Art project, which has engendered some huffing & puffing amongst the humourless & imaginatively challenged.
The songs are neat – skillfully made, performed and recorded, & beneath the surface whimsy
there’s some depth ( in particular “Heart” seems to found a whole new hybrid discipline of
epistemological meditation through popular song).
This is in keeping with the whole WA project which unlike so many art projects which claim
to investigate something ( & usually my heart sinks when I see the word) actually does
and very effectively too.
Not only that (and I would expect this from anything involving Stern, whose work in whatever medium
or genre, is always touched with poetry) there’s a wonderfully twisted lyricism* to the WA project, which is very difficult to sum up in the usually one line required for much second rate conceptualism -the Duchamp epigone crew- which is possibly why it seems to have mostly drawn responses ranging from surly to mystified and back to grumpy in discussion in places like Art Fag City and Rhizome.
Now, generously & mischievously, Kildall & Stern have thrown the whole thing open for remixing, which is where these songs appear**.
The remixes in turn form an ongoing contribution to the padiglione internet of the current Venice Biennale -here’s the open call for contributions so what are you waiting for?!
And of course, coming back full circle to David Kent Watson, clearly one to watch. Bravo.
* & I use the term precisely & advisedly, not simply as a term of general approbation.
What I mean is this: it’s the very not-rightness, surface clumsiness
of the WA project that makes it resonate so much. This is what those who want their
art laid out like the ABC or like wonder pills, miss. It’s the failure, or refusal, of glibness,
the stimulus to real thought, that spawns the poetry of it.
Even the language the Wikipedia serf-bureaucrats use as they flounder blindly, hilariously and painfully
seems to have been dusted with a kind of magic satire brush.
** D.o.I – I have a couple of things in there also.
Pussy Weevil (2003, 4.5MB, 1 min.)
Pussy Weevil is a screen-based 2D animated
character, that responds to the viewer
Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive (1977, 11.4MB, 3:51)
I’m pretty sure I have a nonsexual crush on Barry Gibb.
Doesn’t he have amazing hair?
Meanwhile, is anyone else bothered that this video
was made on a soundstage? It looks so real. And it
was over thirty years ago. Did they really have to get
so advanced so early on? You’re too good to walk on
some legit, actual piers, guys? Tragic, but still fabulous.