Nathaniel Stern & Jessica Meuninck-Ganger – Passing Between/Distill Life

The Works
The Works (2010, 15MB, 4:27 min)

Documentary
Interview/Documentary (2010, 23MB, 6:38 min)

We showed some earlier footage of the work featured here last May
and waxed lyrical about it.

Now Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger have a show at Gallery A.O.P
in Johannesburg, South Africa, opening tomorrow, and we’re delighted
to feature two videos, one of the works themselves and one of a documentary
about their making and the impulse behind them, including interviews with
Nathaniel and Jessica.
These videos are also on a DVD* which comes with the show catalogue.

Usually I fight shy of reproducing artists’ own publicity but I’m going to
break from the rule here because what they themselves say sums the pieces
up rather nicely.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern approach both old and
new media as form.
In their “Distill Life” works, the artists permanently mount translucent
prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving
images on paper. They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from
traditional printmaking – including woodblock, silk screen, etching,
lithography, photogravure etc – with the technologies and aesthetics
of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images
as multidimensional.
Meuninck-Ganger and Stern hack and tweak, shoot and print,
appropriate and remix, edit and draw. Their juxtaposition of anachronistic
and disparate methods, materials and content -print and video, paper
and electronics, real and virtual – enables novel approaches to
understanding each. The artists engage with subject matter ranging
from historical portraiture to current events, from hyperreal landscapes
to socially awkward moments.
The works are surprising, wistful, enchanting, and seriously playful.

“The works are surprising, wistful, enchanting, and seriously playful.”
– absolutely!

I don’t know whether we have any readers in Johannesburg – if yes I strongly
urge you to go along to what promises to be a real treat.

* and in the interests of transparency I should say that I wrote the accompanying
music for the video documentation…

Picot et al – Dr Hairy & the London Hospital

London Hospital
London Hospital ( 2010, 49MB, 9:59)

Writer & artist Edward Picot doubles as an administrator
in the UK health service & lets his hair down with this
deeply odd but amusing bit of lo-fi puppetry made in
collaboration with Julian Le Saux & Dr David Hindmarsh.

Just in case there are any knuckleheads out there
(and of course this is unlikely as you have the good taste
to read DVblog) who imagine this is an attack of any sort on
socialised medicine, the authors have kindly provided the
following statement:

“The creators of this piece would like to point out that they all work in
the National Health Service and are completely devoted to it.”

Vito Acconci #1

Borders
Claim Excerpts (clip, 1971, 1MB, 29 secs)

Borders
Face Off (clip, 1972, 1MB, 28 secs)

Borders
Open Book (clip, 1974, 1MB, 31 secs)

Borders
Two Track (clip, 1971, 1MB, 31 secs)

Four tiny (in every respect) but nonetheless great clips
from the fearless, troubling & wonderful Vito Acconci in his writer &
video artist phase.
The clips are from the Video Data Bank site where you’ll
be pleased to know you can with seminal
(perhaps not the best choice of word) pieces by
Acconci and others for a mere $3600…
Or you could go and check out more of his work on UBUWEB..
Some stuff about the later Acconci coming shortly.

Liz Sterry – Borders

Borders
Borders (2010, 201 MB, 3:59 min, silent)

Worth every second of the download for this extraordinary
piece from young UK artist Liz Sterry, a digital arts student at the design school
in Writtle, Essex, UK*.
It’s an astonishingly assured bit of conceptual gorgeousness.
I’m particularly taken with..what’s the word.. the ..um..rightness of judgement
with which it was shot and assembled – on the surface thrown together
but everything combining so easily & elegantly to create something of
logic, power and great beauty.

*Transparency – where I currently teach.

Paul Rodriguez – Flowers

Flowers
Flowers (2010, 52 MB, 3:16 min)

I really hated this piece, a music video for Former Ghosts,
the first time I saw it, although I’d previously enjoyed work
by Paul Rodriguez and posted some here.
My first impressions were confirmed by a trawl through
the publicity material surrounding it:
“A naked dude gets peed on in this disturbing clip from the electro-goth
project led by Freddy Ruppert. Director: Paul Rodriguez….”

which seemed a tad..er..calculating
I was so bemused by how much I took against the piece
that I watched it several times over to try and analyse my reactions
and the more I looked at it the more the sheer deftness,
care and feel for the medium with which it is made began to
prevail over my dislike of the content.
Rodriguez confirms himself a filmmaker of real talent, with a great eye
and superb attention to detail.
I’m not sure someone possessed of his gifts needs to work so hard to
make us look his way but I remain very interested to see where he goes next.