Picasso – I salute you, I embrace you! (2006, 525 KB, 29 sec)
Prévert goes postcard shopping (2005, 1.3MB, 1:22 min)
Two gems from the excellent website of the French
Institut National de l’Audiovisuel , featuring two figures
associated with surrealism, the poet Jacques Prévert &
(seen here on crackingly deranged form) the artist Salvador Dali
Steamlight (2006, 16.2MB, 2:51)
Watauga (2007, 203.1MB, 26:23)
Two extraordinary pieces from Patrick Power.
Its as if the Qatsi trilogy found a way to use a videoblog as a testing ground.
This is much more than a test, though.
Some of the most important work I have seen in a while.
Beautifully touching randomized archives.
Pushing the limits of contemplative observation.
Taking time to visually visit other places.
There is so much beauty in reflections and the synchronicities of our minds.
Sample these two, then go visit the rest of his collection. Patrick makes the world watchable.
Edit: Sadly, Patrick Power passed away in 2007. This post was created to honor this man’s work, and now sadly, we must honor that work as his legacy.
New Media in the Marketplace (2011, 37 MB, 52 min)
“Over the years, we’ve found that a number of the artists we support in our Emerging Fields category have questions about how they can better market and exhibit their work. They have questions about pricing and editioning; changing formats; what it is that they are actually selling when they offer a work for sale; what their obligations to representatives and collectors are after a sale; and whether or not they should even participate in an art market that is, in their eyes, more sympathetic and better able to represent works in more conventional or established media.
On November 2, Creative Capital hosted a webinar for grantees to explore some of these issues and answer specific questions from artists working in new media. The panelists were Jason Salavon (2000 Visual Arts), Karolina Sobecka (2009 Emerging Fields), Stephen Vitiello (2006 Emerging Fields) and Marina Zurkow (2001 Visual Arts). Sean Elwood, Creative Capital’s Director of Programs & Initiatives, served as the facilitator.”
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST FROM THIS DISCUSSION
Podcast from The Lab.
Irina Birger Thinks Drawing is Important (2010, 93 MB, 3:20 min. excerpt)
“What is the essence of a photograph, or more precisely, of an ID photo, portrait or self- portrait ?
You could almost ask, what is the essence of art. Or, what is the essence of life? That time always passes.
As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus put it in the 5th century BC, Panta Rhei, ‘Everything changes,
nothing remains still’. In the short video film ‘Irina Birger Thinks Drawing is Important’, Irina Birger
provides her answer to such questions.
A waterfall of self-portraits taken from photo albums belonging to her, her family and circle of
acquaintances, creates an ingenious, dizzying autobiography of the artist through the years.
We see the stereotypical development of the artist influenced by the history of art, from classic to
contemporary, and by the places where she has lived in her nomadic existence, from communist
Russia, the former Yugoslavia at the beginning of the civil war there, Israel during the Second Intifada and Germany after its reunification, to her present but certainly not final destination: the Kingdom of The Netherlands.
There’s a pinch to these moving images, where the essences of film and photography converge and clash. In a similar manner Birger’s life collides with the wrenching history of conflict zones and the sometimes difficult existence as an artist. ‘Drawing is Important,’ she posits at the end, her answer in this photo-turns-film project to the question of how she holds her own in life” (Text by Vera Stiphout)
by Irina Birger.
Neste vídeo há uma grande delicadeza, uma fragilidade,
que não deve levar a pensar que essa peça de Regina Pinto
é de alguma forma ocasional ou menos artística.
Em vez disso, esse é o trabalho de um artista maduro,
sem nada a provar, e com a enorme liberdade que isso traz.
Um estudo de todo o corpo de seu trabalho evidencia
amplamente tudo isso e mostra quão profundamente
consistente e coerente ele se apresenta.
Poder-se-ia ainda acrescentar o quanto ele nos emociona,
o quanto é estranho e muito bonito.
There’s a delicacy, a fragility, about this piece
that shouldn’t lead one to think that Regina Célia Pinto’s
work is in any way casual or artless.
Rather, this is the work of a mature artist with
nothing to prove and the enormous freedom that brings.
A study of the whole body of her work
amply bears this out.
It shows just how consistent and deeply considered
it is and, one should add, how affecting, how strange
and how very beautiful.
The Golden Age (2011, 181MB, 5:34 min)
We’ve posted Toby Tatum’s work
before and it’s work with a definite charge to it and ambitious too.
I think this piece is more wholly successful than its predecessor but I’m still not totally convinced.
It’s something to do with the aim of conjuring a very precise & particular
dream-world which strikes me as an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of approach,
in that the tiniest false note disrupts the sought for spell.
Therefore Tatum creates a very high bar indeed for himself and his performers.
If one compares similarly oneiric work by Cocteau, Lynch or Hadžihalilović,
however dense and rich the atmosphere gets, there is variation with humour
or banality preparing us for more poetry to come and somehow too, framing it,
setting it off.
That sounds more critical that I want to be for this is, in every respect, a
very nicely realised and haunting piece.
Next week, or the week after, we’ll post an interview with Tatum about his work.
Sonnet by William Shakespeare (2011, 64 MB, 2:31 min)
“Here is a video I made a few months ago.
It’s a recitation of Shakespeare’s #135th sonnet.
In the background are Dexter Dalwood’s paintings,
which are collaged from other famous paintings.
The piece engages ideas of appropriation and identity.”
A beauty by Will Goss.
travel images unseen (2011, 156MB, 6:01 min)
‘5 video clips taken on a simple video camera, through a window on a coach to the
plane from Istanbul and arriving in London by train. Selected by and stitched, unseen
by the creator who will never watch the video, ever.’
The gentlest conceptualism & quite, quite lovely too.
There’s something about knowing the premise that leaves one
very open – one could say innoculates one – to its formal consequences –
here a looseness which somehow gently stretches time, makes it grainier
but conversely sharpens our attention, perhaps to make up for the
maker’s own vow of abstention.
One more in the series to come.
Jack Goldstein – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (1975, 16.2MB, 2:10)
An endlessly cyclical Hollywood, summed up in two minutes,
over thirty years ago. Still relevant and all too real.
My Miwoo [Tai Chi Weekend Control] (2007, 24.6MB, 50 secs)
Aī-Hz, real name Michael Renassia,
is a French visual performer living and working in Tokyo.
His site contains possibly my favourite biographical nugget ever:
‘He is using compositing software in a diverted way, and real-time mixing
instruments with the aim to create a noisy/pop universe…’
Now, who could possibly object to that?
This piece is rather lovely – the thing that totally makes it for me
is the epiphanic moment at the end when the music/animation stops &
the person appears ..there’s a haunting sense of time suspended..
So, for me, 10/10 for visuals.
I am pretty bored ,though, with the by-the-yard avant-dance music
that accompanies so much work of this kind..it’s not bad
or anything, just pedestrian…