D’ Banj Oliver Twist Dance Video Competition (2011, 33 MB, 1:57 min)
Monthly Archives: January 2012
Afrobeats Week – #1 // 2Shy – Azonto Girl
2 Shy: Azonto Girl(2011, 82 MB, 3:39 min)
Q: Why?
A: Because we can
ZDEN – emptyspaces
emptyspaces (2000, 31MB, 2:26 min)
Zdeno Hlinka aka ZDEN.
A multimedia artist from Slovakia who’s been a pioneer in
working with real-time and visual mixing.
Gabriel Shalom – Small Room Tango
Small Room Tango (2007, 7.9MB, 3:43 min.)
Anyone who has attempted this kind of video-sampling-whilst-letting-the-
audio-determine-the-structure will now just how extremely bloody
difficult & fiddly it all is.
Hats off bigtime, then, to Gabriel Shalom, who not only makes it look
natural & easy but even squeezes poetry from it.
Comme un Chat Noir au Fond d’un Sac
comme un chat noir au fond d’un sac (2006, 18.4MB, 4:47 min)
A beautiful excerpt from Stephane Elmadjian’s feature film found
on composer Daniel Wohl’s website.
Starting off a bit intense it winds itself down and into some breathtaking stuff.
Dark Continents 1 – Tyler Coburn
Dark Continents 1 (2007, 51 MB, 2:34 min.)
Video artist and animator Tyler Coburn‘s self conscious and rough use
of digital techniques presents a compelling parallel to Hollywood’s continual
and rapid movement toward the fantastically “real”.
Paul Rodriguez – the Mean Reds
Mean Reds (2007, 11.6MB, 1:48 min)
Artist & filmmaker Paul Rodriguez made this rather good
(I particularly like the collage plus the loopy/scratchy business
towards the very end where he collages/edits the sound too)
music video in 2007.
He said:
‘I was planning on shooting my friends for a
documentary. Magically the Mean Reds were also
playing, so I decided to shoot them as well.
Months went by with me sitting on this footage.
Then I found my self printing out frames,
and doing collage on individual frames.’
Two from David Fincher
The Motels – Shame (1985, 18.7MB, 3:59)
Rick Springfield – Celebrate Youth (1985, 25.6MB, 3:58)
Before directing features like Se7en, Zodiac, and Fight Club,
badass David Fincher made some awesomely 80s music videos.
He continues to make solid music videos for more
contemporary acts, favoring the short form to the
Hollywood machine. These lyrically poor videos
serve as proof that you too can film talking billboards,
windy alleys full of teens, use the color-pass effect,
and still go on to direct such hits as Alien 3.
Tony Arnold – Foundation
Foundation(2011, 153MB, 14:01 min)
Here’s a striking and very beautiful piece of work from
Mississippi based artist Tony Arnold.
There is clear evidence of his discovery and love affair
with the greats of the American experimental film tradition but
he’s obviously gifted and visionary and very much his own
person. (I love his choice of music, sounds a bit like Ornette
Coleman but I think it’s not…wonderful, anyway)
Duncan Speakman – Is Life Boring?
Duncan Speakman – Is Life Boring? (2005, 5.3MB, 1:17 min.)
From Duncan Speakman (yes, his real name) and the now abandoned 29fragiledays.
Duncan moved onto the less populated Delicate Museum, but I enjoy his older work much more (maybe because there is simply more of it?).
No contrived voice-overs (at least not at first), I’m also given enough time to meditate on the video.
Sometimes short is too short.
This is one of the best pieces from his previous incarnation.
Anri Sala – Time After Time
Time After Time (2003, 45.5MB, 5:39 min)
I was initially rather mystified by the vogue in UK galleries for
the work of Albanian artist Anri Sala but after a while the penny
dropped.
The courage to embrace the poetry of detail, of stillness,
apparent lack of incident & furthermore to trust
one’s viewers to accompany one to that place…
Elegant, sad, lugubrious & also, I think, much more crafted
than first meets the eye.
Great.
Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett –Festival of Money
Festival of Money (2012, 111MB, 8:06 min)
Amusing & depressing both, because it is so spot on, a lovely bit of
satire from Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow of Furtherfield fame.
Most artists, of course, are from the 99%…this is a timely reminder of
where our interests lie and don’t lie…
Dan Canyon
Quilts Never Sleep (short version) (2007, 20.9MB, 3:07 min)
Two very different but attractive & telling pieces from Dan Canyon.
The first was part of a show of – you guessed it – quilts in London in 2006,
about which read more here.
The second could’ve been made for dvblog, well, at least for me, as I’m a fool
for all things turntablist, & features the splendidly monickered Mickey Morphingaz.
Glimpse of the Garden
Marie Menken – Glimpse of the Garden (1957, 40MB, 5:04)
Marie Menken, avant-garde filmmaker of the 1940s, 50s,
and 60s – in addition to being the inspiration for
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and a Warhol
superstar – made inspirational work from a time we seem
to overlook too much today. The garden here belongs
to one of her husband’s former male lovers, and while
Menken was often criticized for being quaint in her displays,
her style is an obviously feminine one that hides much
deeper meaning in ordinary but stunning visuals.
Cory Arcangel – Urbandale
Urbandale (2000, 43MB, 7:30 min.)
“Urbandale”, an ASCII/ANSI movie by Cory Arcangel.
“Filmed at Urbandale Plaza in the eastern suburbs of Buffalo N.Y.,
“urbandale” is a study of America’s suburban sprawl stripped to its barest
essentials and void of unnecessary contemporary cultural influence. This
film captures the sly, bland smile strip plazas cast at modern culture.
The film, rendered in text, focuses on the repetitive motion of food
stuffs being cooked in the lobby of a discount department store.”
“Urbandale” was a 2000 commission of New_Radio_and_Performing_Arts for it’s Turbulence project.
PS
This is a mp4 version of the original urbandalePNG video. (quality of the video has been degraded)
Recreation, Re-Creation, or, We Like OLD Stuff – Bitsy Knox
Recreation, Re-Creation (2006, 9.6 MB, 4:27 min.)
“This video juxtaposes original 16 mm footage acquired from my Grandfather with interview footage taken of my Mother and Grandparents. All but the
past-tenses of their speaking are left intact, while the film footage has been aggressively manipulated. The project seeks to question the language of constructing one’s identity through negotiation with familial history, where the past has been constructed and reconstructed in order to corroborate certain facades of culture which are wished to be left intact.”
From Bitsy Knox
Sondheim, Foofwa – <em>Blanking</em>
Blanking (2011, 30MB, 1:07 min)
for Carol Novack
‘I was working on this, shot with Foofwa d’Imobilite at Eyebeam,
when I heard the news that Carol Novack had died. for many of us,
this was unexpected and awful, as if the year couldn’t end
without just one more tragedy.
Foofwa and I had talked about our
work together, earlier, about issues of pain, wounding, death;
I think this piece, made at the time, is all I could do, I speak
through image and sound, these words already lost, resting in
peace
thank you Foofwa and Jamie and Jackson at Eyebeam’
Alan Sondheim
Morrisa Maltz – an interesting intersection of art & commerce
Saved By The Bell/Mofones (2011, 33MB, 54 secs)
The title of this post being words that seldom pass my lips but which in this case
are entirely to the point.
The splendidly creative video artist Morrisa Maltz whose work we’ve been delighted
to feature here several times made these..um..arty-i-phone holders, which are, it has
to be said, rather good and to cut a long story short their commercial potential was
spotted and now she is a C….E….O & Urban Outfitters are selling her stuff.
I hope she spends all of any money she makes on giving herself time to make more of the
very smart and fetching art videos she’s so good at.
Anyway this is a promotional vid for the moFones, lovingly carved from “Saved by the Bell”.
She even does marketing classily.