The Internet (2006, 5.3MB, 1:03 min.)
2006 report from Valdezatron Industries technology department.
from Aaron Valdez.
Monthly Archives: March 2011
Well Did You Evah!?
Well Did You Evah? (1990, 14.2MB, 3:45 min)
Staying with Monday’s Iggy Pop theme, maybe you’re all
totally familiar with this but I never saw
it before & I think it is great .
Here he duets with Debbie Harry on the
Cole Porter song Well Did You Evah? as part of an
AIDS fundraiser from 1990.
Man Man – Banana Ghost
Banana Ghost (2006, 24MB, 3:15 min.)
Music – Man Man. directed by Jeremy Mayhew.
Bit Max Ernst-ish, eh?
'That's Peanut Butter!'- Iggy & the Stooges, Cincinnati, 1970.
Iggy, Cincinnati, 1970 (1970, 28.7MB, 5:05 min.)
Layer upon layer of skin-tingling wonder & bizarreness
(is that a word?) from Iggy & the Stooges in 1970,
long before he discovered car insurance.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
From the excellent WFMU’s Beware of the Blog.
Jordan McKenzie – Serra Frottage
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.
Puzzleweasel – ‘Cvon’
puzzle (2006, 19.2MB, 3:51 min)
Puzzleweasel is the sonic output of Peter Dahlgren.
Carlos Gavito & Maria Plazaola
Gavito & Plazaola (n/k, 13.5MB, 3:44 min.)
‘The secret of tango is in this moment of improvisation that
happens between step and step. It is to make the impossible thing
possible: to dance silence. This is essential to learn in tangodance,
the real dance, that of the silence, of following the melody.’
– Carlos Gavito
Watch the late Carlos Gavito & his partner Maria Plazaola
play havoc with the space time continuum in this extraordinary
piece in which time slows down, speeds up & actually comes to a
halt at least once.
Mesmerizing.
[ Found on this very strange tango site with lots more videos]
Ladislas Starewitch – Le Lion Devenu Vieux
Le Lion Devenu Vieux (1932, 3.5MB, 1:04 sec.)
Ladislas Starewitch is often credited with inventing stop motion animation
as we know it, though so are several other people. It depends on what fits
into your definition of stop motion.
Certainly he was probably the first to actually make little figures and move
them frame by frame in an attempt to duplicate lifelike movement of actual
living things. it was because he was filming beetles and found that the hot
lights made them lethargic, so he made his own little beetles asrealistically
as possible and animated them instead.
This gave birth to further projects with very lifelike but sometimes partially
anthropomorphic (human-like) animals.
from – Darkstrider.
By Mica. (thanks Adam)
Studio Banana TV: Interview with video artist Annika Larsson
Interview with Annika Larsson (2011, 134 MB, 3:47 min)
An interview with the Swedish video artist Annika Larsson.
In this interview Larsson talks about her approach towards a
post-produced composition of reality, about the psychological
hidden dynamics hidden in the characters of her video pieces
and about the evolution of her work, amongst other things.
from Studio Banana TV.
Michael Barnes-Wynters – Control #1
Control #1 [Seeking Kind in Human] (2009, 114MB, 4:52 min)
Michael got in touch via a mutual friend to tell me about what
seems to be an incredibly thriving live art scene in Manchester, UK.
To my shame, this is the first time I’ve come across it, so I’m going to
make up for this a little by posting three vids from Doodlebug, the
creative arts platform he founded.
This first is a performance by Michael himself with Sophie Yesilyurt.
It’s very powerful. What strikes me is how these performative things achieve
a huge effect, often with very simple means. I think those of us working
primarily in moving image have a good deal to learn from them.
More soon.
PIRATE – Annika Larsson
PIRATE (2006, 45 MB, 8:25 min)
By Annika Larsson.
Music by Tobias Bernstrup & Annika Larsson.
Crystal Stilts/Kate Thomas – Departure
Departure (2009, 34 MB, 4:24 min)
I love this video for two, apparently almost entirely independent
(but maybe, in some strange, deep way, connected) reasons.
First – the music is great. I listen very little popular music these
days (which is why I’m 2 years late with this) as most of it, even
(especially!) the so called indie stuff gives the impression of
having been focus-grouped into bland submission before being let
limply loose not to offend anyone.
This, contrariwise, oozes life & not-giving-a-fuck from every note
(especially the splendidly slightly out of tune vocals; but it’s all a joy).
Secondly, director of the video, Kate Thomas, about whom I know
nothing and could find out no more, had the totally brilliant idea
of simply stringing together some footage of French students
and workers standing up for themselves against the riot cops in 68.
If this all doesn’t make you weep with barely suppressed joy please
check your pulse.
Land of the Free
untitled (2005, 1.5MB, 1:50 min.)
Nice bit of guerilla art/action/video by Judith Supine and friend.
Took some bottle, I think.
Joy Garnett’s Unmonumental Videos
Found Art (Nolita) Unmonumental 484 (2011, 36 MB, 26 secs)
Found Art (Chelsea) Unmonumental 507 (2011, 32 MB, 23 secs)
Joy Garnett is not only a fascinating and accomplished painter but
she takes a neat photo too.
There’s a huge set of images on her Flickr pages entitled
Unmonumental – a recording and honouring of the melancholy beauty
of the neglected, ephemeral, the broken and the passing.
Recently she’s added videos to the collection and here’re two
of them.
They are utterly beguiling and we’re going to show the whole
lot over the next weeks and months.
Klaus Lang –Zwillingsgipfel
Zwillingsgipfel (2007, 122 MB, 8:02 min)
The music of the Austrian composer Klaus Lang ( not to be confused
with fellow Lang composers Bernhard or even David) is both very strange
and very beautiful. It’s a world where the tiniest gesture, the smallest
variation or nuance has great weight and presence. It’s no intellectual game
or posture though, but something, certainly for me, deeply affecting.
See what you think.
Bizarrely, I believe (and I’m open to correction) that “Zwillingsgipfel”
translates as “Twin Peaks”.
Ran Slavin – Organic Urbanic
Organic Urbanic (2002, 14 MB, clip, 1:17 min)
“Organic Urbanic is a reality-fiction video based on an ambient
micro/macro cosmos of the urban-organic tapestry of the city.
The local and familiar transgresses into a dense textured
urban scape. The city is featured and filtered as a distorted
blue print image of itself.
The streets cars and buildings reveal an organic living machine-symbiotica.
Organic Urbanic amplifies what is already there. Among others, a complex
inner connectivity of city factors amplified and relocated.”
By Ran Slavin
Full duration: 9:00 min.
Trisha Brown Interviewed
Interview with Trisha Brown (2007, 11 MB, 3:06)
Anyone in or near London should absolutely get to see the
“Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown & Gordon Matta-Clark –
Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s” show,
currently at the Barbican. It’s fantastic!
I was particularly lucky to be there when a performance of the
Trisha Brown ‘walking on walls’ piece happened (worth
ringing in advance to see what performances are on and when)
I knew it would be interesting but, somewhat to my surprise,
I was immediately & intensely emotionally engaged by it too, finding
it lump-in-the-throat-&-tear-in-the-eye moving…
Although we’re concentrating here on Trisha Brown with an interview
conducted in 2007 at the Documenta 12 event (and after you’ve
watched that, the Guardian has a nice audio slideshow about the
walking on walls piece), all three artists shine in this show.
It’s all great but particularly interesting are the rooms of drawings
related to their various performance practices.
Eleanor Suess – Map 2b
We’ve got hold of a few movies spanning nearly 15 years from
Eleanor Suess who has staked out a very interesting position on the
borders of architecture and fine art (and specifically film/video art).
We’ll start with an early, and rather ravishing, handmade piece:
“Using a 16mm handmade film technique a DOLA/OS map of Perth
is transformed into a spatial surface. The territory of the drawing
is explored and navigated, the gridlines dominating the optical
soundtrack, marking the speed of the film as it passes in front
of the viewer
Joseph Beuys – Transformer
Joseph Beuys – Transformer (1979, 10 MB, 3 min)
Excerpt from a 60-minute documentary featuring avant-garde
German artist Joseph Beuys during a 1979 exhibit at the
Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
RUBBER – Quentin Dupieux
RUBBER (2011, 35 MB, 2:21 min)
Trailer for RUBBER, the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been
abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life.
RUBBER is a ‘smart, funny and wholly original tribute to the cinematic
concept of “no reason” ‘.
Director: Quentin Dupieux
Ran Slavin – omni1.9
omni1.9 (2002-97, 18 MB, 1:28 min, excerpt)
“The idea behind this loop is to show the 360 degrees of choice. The mad culmination of wanting
to go to all directions at once. Inspired by the ceiling of the Geneva airport while in transit.
Shown also as a video installation of varying loop durations on a transparent two way screen.
Like a small vignette of digital nature, the small figures are continuously looping in a busy circular
motion with the urge to span in all directions at once.This stasis, a static dance, the body like a
scanner unable to decide, caught between indecision. A seemingly digital nature. The bodies
which are silhouettes of the artist, become small digital scanner probes.”
Video and audio: Ran Slavin
Original: 6:33min/variable/2002-97
George Spencer films Robert Roth
Robert Roth Reads from ‘Health Proxy’ (2011, 76 MB, 6:30min)
I can’t be objective aboutRobert Roth – he’s a dear friend and his
tremendous & utterly singular book Health Proxy ( Buy it here)
would most definitely be my choice for that desert island.
In this little movie, odd and charming both, by fellow writer
George Spencer, he reads an extract from it, twice.
Ran Slavin – Everything Is Urgent
Everything Is Urgent (2008, 4 MB, 42 sec (Excerpt)
Ran Slavin
confronts the human figure in conjunction with the annoying barking of a dog. 4 figures, 2 young men and women, stand in front of an unknown audience, in front of a void and bark ferociously.
Driven away from systematic and social norms, the human barking figures attack us from within the digital domain, outward.
They present an uncompromising hybrid human, a cross between man and animal. Do they try to warn us, scare us like an omen or blame us? We see a human but hear an animal. Like a shout of desperation of a person who can no longer use his voice.
2008, 4:12 min. Single or 4 channel installation