Flow Spot Test #6 (2011, 18MB, 3:34 min)
“Just downloading apps at my Blanc Laptop Cart when all
of a sudden BenJi, an old teammate from XpresSpa shows up.
He happens to be subcontracted now by the American Airlines
subsidiary AffinityAlliance as an evaluator of potential for their
Oneworld Alliance codeshare lounges (of which FlowSpot is the
newest member).”
Flow Spot Test #5 (2011, 57MB, 2:03 min)
“Just having my early afternoon session of Body-Work with
Nnah, my Body-Designer.”
Says ANW, of the FlowSpot Tests:
For a large-scale exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
I created a color coordinated airport/hotel/mall/bank/spa/biennial lounge to
offer a site of relaxation and bodily engagement in an exhibition dominated
by isolated, sellable art objects.
All lounge products were purchased through online transactions (mostly
Target and Walmart), and were returned at the end of the exhibition.
My dystopic science fiction news video Global Countdown played on
a 55” flat panel monitor.
On opening night, visitors to FlowSpot could register for massages from
licensed massage therapists. While participants received massages they
could not see anything and listened to my directors commentary of the
Global Countdown video. The commentary consists of very basic visual
descriptions, with the goal being that the person receiving the massage
can visualize the video in their minds.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, I used the lounge as a science
fiction video set to make “FlowSpot Tests.” In these videos I engaged
with the lounge both conceptually and materially in a color coordinated
outfit.
Contact me if you are interested in opening a FlowSpot in your airport,
hotel, mall, bank, spa, biennial, gallery, cultural center, or any other
space that you own/lease/use.
See also.
Anxiety About Relationships Between Friendship and Business (2011, 11MB, 2:41 min)
I’m so taken with Andrew Norman Wilson’s work I’m going to devote
the whole first week of this DVblog season to it.
He initially sent us a longish piece, Networking with Andrew Norman Wilson
made with Nicholas O’Brien of Bad At Sports.
It’s wonderful but pretty huge so you should definitely go and
look at the Vimeo version there.
On Monday, Weds and Friday of this week we’ll post smaller
pieces extracted from that (but without the commentary or
‘interview’ as it is styled elsewhere [-the text on the BAS page linked above]) ,
On Tuesday and Thursday we’ll post two of Wilson’s FlowSpot Tests
with some accompanying explanation from him.
I find this work in general very exciting because it does a lot
of interesting, nuanced and often rather funny (and I’m in favour of funny –
there are very few great works of art which contain no funny at all)
and intially apparently contradictory things.
Let me give you my take on it.
The Webinars are all composed entirely of footage sourced from Pond5
“the worlds stock media marketplace” . The FlowSpot Tests are performative
pieces involving bizarre consumer items sourced from e-bay and wallmart and
deployed in a 21st Century updating of silent movie Lloyd-Keaton-Chaplin
deadpan involving, too, a certain degree of slapstick
and displaying a deliciously calibrated sense of the ridiculous.
The Webinars (a least when one takes account of their titles and certainly viewed
in the light of the commentary from “networking”) are a kind of consumerist
reductio-ad-absurdam.
The intent is celarly in some sense satirical but the pieces take risks in
that they don’t stop and end in critique – there is an understanding of
how toxically compelling some of this imagery is and to some extent they
toy with celebrating this.
Wilson is clearly a natural movie maker. He doesn’t restrain himself from
visual flourishes and jokes which are by no means integral to any
satirical case but make the pieces more fun to watch.
(The distortion effects applied to objects in the periphery of the
action in FlowSpot Test #5 are a case in point.)
Additionally, and most impressively, there is a muddying of the
waters in Networking… (and by implication the
Webinars and FlowSpot Tests) whereby
cogent and apparently straightforward philosophising is allowed
to cross pollinate/contaminate with the satire and vice versa,
leaving the viewer with -ahem- work to do.
This work is not glib; it takes risks – in order to maintain its
high level potency it risks misunderstanding.
A look at Wilson’s CV shows a spell spent working for a
labour union and I read the impulse behind these pieces
as radically anti-commodification and corporate mind rot.
Agit-prop, thankfully, it’s not, but “something rich and strange”
– radical art for interesting times to come.
Nice to see this when so many younger artists seem to be
tempted by a career orientated and somewhat cynical celebration
of that same deadend emptiness.
Joan Brossa, the Catalan poet, artist, performer and polymath,
who died in 1998, deserves to be more widely
known in the rest of the world.
I’ve often thought his work, in particular the visual
poems, prefigured much of the art of the early days
of the net (but mostly better: terser, wittier, riskier –
I think Brossa would have loved the net).
This elegant & delightful performance ( ‘Fi’ is Catalan
for ‘End’, in this context The End) was recorded
in Barcelona eight months before his death.
It requires a little patience; the reward being that
it can be viewed many more than one time, so it
seems like an appropriate thing to leave you with
over the summer.
Remember we’re always delighted to look at new work,
so if you’re making moving image yourself,
or you happen across great stuff don’t hesitate
to send us links.
We’re back on Monday, September the 26th – in
the meantime we wish you all a happy and relaxing summer.
Boxing Rants (2011, 28 MB, 3:11 min)
Documentation of an interactive video performance by
G.H. Hovagimyan that took place at Postmasters Gallery in NY,
from a series of performances titled ‘Being and Event’.
A Walk with Jane Austen (1999, 144MB, 12:20 min)
‘the work is about exploring the veracity of history and of time,
and its constructs (in this case especially the notion of
“bodice-ripping” romance genres).
Playing with text and in-authenticity, the intention was to engage
an audience with notions of historical construction of women;
their facts and fictions, and the possibility of re-visioning histories.
– Delpha Hudson
Engaging hybrid of site specific performance and movie making,
the somewhat improvisatory quality lending it all a pleasantly
languid & unhurried air.
At the very end the sun joins in to striking effect & I love the rogue
arm at our right as the spectators leave.
Hudson is a charismatic & commanding performer –
we’ll have another of her performance pieces here in the Autumn.
Arms Race (2007, 1.85MB, 1:02 min)
Handbag Surveillance (2007, 4.18MB, 2:05 min)
Anyone lucky enough to have already encountered Jess Loseby’s artwork
online or in a gallery will have realised immediately what a thoughtful,
courageous & dextrous artist she is. She hasn’t been so active of late &
her excellent site is offline now due to her continuing ill health
(although it is possible to explore it somewhat using the wayback machine).
This is a real loss: there is a warmth & humanity to her work
– an ability to find beauty in the ordinary, the overlooked
( & in our still sexist society, these categories often overlapping
with the domestic, the feminine) – which one often looks for in vain elsewhere.
Her work doesn’t strut, it enchants, (& then maybe sticks a
big fuck-off hatpin into you).
Video making isn’t central to what she does, but when she does it
she does it with all the qualities noted above.
Enjoy & learn.
Music for Handbag Surveillance by Clive Loseby.
We at DVblog join with many of her friends in wishing Jess well
and look forward to her return to active art making.
Native Dancer (2011, 92MB, 2:08 min)
Genbush (2006, 17MB, 6:03 min)
Two pieces from Alan Sondheim -one we originally posted in 2006
and one very recent. The new piece –Native Dancer –
is a particularly affecting example of recent motion capture/avatar work.
It properly forms part of a triptych but I think it is the outstanding of the
three and I’m going to exercise curatorial perogative & post it singly.
It enchants me -I don’t know exactly why, I think the reasons could be
quite banal -there’s something of the children’s TV sci-fi epic about it perhaps…
Don’t know, just love it.
And here’s what we originally said about the other piece, which I see no reason to change:
Humor is perhaps not a quality that springs immediately
to mind when discussing the work of Alan Sondheim.
Wrong! His work is saturated in it, often a species of
graveyard or gallows wit.
Here, though, he just lets loose, plays.
But the man is incapable of doing anything that doesn’t
resonate with layer upon layer of meaning too!
I Want To See How You See (2003, 55.2MB, 4:48 min)
Hallucinatory, luscious, with a hint of darkness: approaching the
formulaic but, if so, certainly a winning formula for Rist & as
always undoubtedly beautifully & imaginatively wrought,
a video portrait of the writer & curator Cornelia Providoli,
found on the consistently excellent Lumen Eclipse site.
Band-Aid (2007, 54.4MB, 21:53 min)
Temple To Aeolos (2003, 1.52MB, 43 sec)
Well executed & not a little disturbing work from Charlie Roberts,
a man whose CV features the interesting combination of
performance video & ..er.. inflatable sculpture.
Bit of both here, both a compelling watch…
Buffies – First Season (2002, 5.4MB, 1 min.)
Winsome bit of conceptual candyfloss from Chuck Jones in 2002.
One of his isolation studies, this piece comprises
‘Every utterance of the word ‘Buffy’ made during
the first season of ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’,
totaling nearly one minute.’
Big Moth (2011, 9MB, 3:05 min)
“Experimental film and sound collage with a spoken poem
about embodying a moth”
As you do, as you do…
Another piece of strange & haunting loveliness from Simon Mclennan*.
*I completely screwed up posting this last week – I prepared the post &
went on vacation for a few days forgetting to actually upload the only
copy of the movie we had, on my home machine, to the server. Arrgh!
Big apologies to Simon & here it is all working properly now.
Mr. & Mrs. Blue Skies (2006, 30MB, 5:30 min.)
‘September 7th marks three exciting years since meeting my wife.
In that time, my life has changed dramatically for the best.
It seems like I finally have a life!
This video should certainly remind you of being forced to sit through the
family vacation videos by your parents.
If it doesn’t then you should watch it a couple of times.’
Music: Mr. Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra
From Ajit @ squigglebooth
Monument (2006, 3MB, 1:53 min)
Monument, a computer program continuously scans the headlines
of 4,500 English-language news sources around the world, looking
for people who have been reported killed. Each time it finds an article,
an algorithm determines the number of deaths, and instructs a ceiling-mounted
mechanism built from Legos to drop one yellow BB per person.
by Caleb Larsen.
Baldessari Sings LeWitt (excerpt) (1972, 30.5MB, 3:38 min)
In which John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt’s
sentences on conceptual art.
From the indispensible Ubuweb.
Beautiful slow moving images accompanied by complex
layered sound collages from the videoblog fast moving animals in 2005.
A Tough Dance (1902, 7.1MB, 47 sec.)
Bicycle Trick Riding (1899, 5.5MB, 37 sec.)
Three Acrobats (1899, 5.4MB, 36 sec.)
Three exhilarating chunks of early movie making from the
Library of Congress online collection of variety stage motion pictures.
I particularly love the deeply strange A ‘Tough’ Dance.
There’s also a great early animation collection on the LOC site.
Park House (2011, 10MB, 1:55 min)
Poetry, visual and aural, from Simon Mclennan.
(And what a compelling speaking voice he has.
How nice to have such a fine instrument)
Quite, quite lovely.
More soon.
glosoli (2005, 45.3MB, 6:14 min)
hoppipolla (2006, 34.7MB, 4:38 min)
Iceland’s own, Stefan Arni and Siggi Kinski, have provided
“pure aesthetic beauty” to back these two wonderful Sigur Ros tracks.
Found on their site.
Martin Archer Live at The Grapes, Sheffield (2006, 85.8MB, 9:52 min)
Great vid made by Jonny Drury of Martin Archer, a unique
& towering figure in British (here I was going to interpolate experimental but that
doesn’t really do justice to the intensely personal soundworld Archer has
forged over the years – a combination of fierce poetry, a huge
intellectual range & hunger & a love affair with sound & how it
can be ordered & dis-ordered & where one now feels he knows
exactly where he’s going, so experimental feels in a way
like an impertinence) music of the past 25 years,
performing at The Grapes pub in his home town of Sheffield, UK.
If you like this do check out his site, where you can buy a
staggering diversity of recordings from over the years.
03.07.06 (2006, 5.3MB, 1:54 min.)
03.12.06 (2006, 3.7MB, 1:08 min.)
03.17.06 (2006, 3.8MB, 1:13 min.)
Back in 2006, when video blogging just started, Andrew Schneider
was the funniest person on the internet.
From Astoria, Queens, it’s the whether|man.
Super Dog (2011, 20MB, 1:58 min)
You might remember that Pink Tall Bike brought
to you here previously by Mike Stoddart.
Now that gentle and slightly skewed sensibility*
brings you Super Dog.
*Not weird enough to qualify for surreal exactly,
but there is something about the way he makes them
that is, enough to notice (or to feel in one’s bones),
delightfully loopy & off kilter…
Inside.v04 (2001, 6.7MB, 1:51 min)
Newbody.v01e (2004, 14.5MB, 3:32 min)
Two short animations from the series ‘Meat’ by Jose Carlos Casado.
Ideas of potential new forms, clones, and artificially
produced offspring are touched upon in ‘Inside.v04’
‘Newbody.v01e’ is kind of Hieronymus Bosch does the Olympics,
the stuff of nightmares & transcendent beauty too . The score, by
Sophocles Papavasilopoulos, is also a small masterpiece:
complex, yet self-effacingly serving the totality.
ed rec vol. 2 (2007, 9.7MB, 1:05 min)
Little animation for Ed Banger Records Ed Rec Vol. 2.
Music is by Mr Oizo.
“Hey Ya!” was a 2003 number-one single recorded by André 3000 of the
hip-hop duo OutKast.
The song’s music video, directed by Bryan Barber, features a performance,
styled in the manner of TV’s black and white era (although it’s in color).
It won the MTV Video Music Awards in 2004 for Video of the Year.
Seasons (2006, 60.4MB, 15:25 min)
Work of heart-stopping delicacy & beauty from
Takashi Kawashima.
November (2006, 80.1MB, 9:41 min)
Last week we heard the shocking & terrible news
of the untimely death of Patrick Simons, half, with
Kate Southworth, of the artistic (and life) partnership,
Glorious Ninth.
He was a smart, imaginative, funny and warm person.
As a memorial we’re re-posting here a performance piece
they made a few years back with Ruth Catlow and
Marc Garrett of Furtherfield.
Appropriately you can read a tribute to Patrick from Ruth
and Marc here.
We’d like to express our deepest condolences to Kate, Bella and Aphra.
Here’s the copy from the original post in June 2007:
An enchanting piece of networked performance from
Kate Southworth & Patrick Simons a.k.a Glorious Ninth
with Ruth Catlow & Marc Garrett from the indispensable
Furtherfield.org
I’ve admired Kate & Patrick’s work for a long time,
partly for its sheer visceral beauty, but there’s
an integrity, too, to what they do, a doggedness &
a willingness, recently in particular, to take risks -to
follow their instincts.
I think it pays off richly here.
Here’s a technical, blow by blow description.
Read it then forget it & just go with the strange &
compelling rhythms of the piece:
NOVEMBER
is a performance that utilises peer-to-peer instant messaging
technology, and the participants were able to see and hear each other on their
computers throughout. Working with their own pre-chosen texts, each
participant alternated between reading aloud and listening, amending and
improvising their performances in response to each other. At times a
cacophony of competing voices, the performance was a spontaneous and
unrehearsed encounter, exposing moments of vulnerability, intimacy, connection
and rhythm.
Celebrating Halloween and the changing of the season, four
participants met online to exchange collected data whilst eating prepared
garlic.
NOVEMBER is a networked performative encounter, recorded simultaneously
from Cornwall and London, UK.
Experiment (2006, 3.3MB, 1:20 min.)
2006: Michael Verdi takes a stand and stakes out
some videoblogging territory.
Do Me Right (2011, 62MB, 2:25 min)
Gosh! this is lovely and Gosh! Eddie Whelan is talented & capable.
We’ve admired his data-moshing skills on a number of occasions
but the man clearly has range and whats the word? – yes –
application. This vid for Ruby Kendrick looks so light and easy
and yet one jusy knows what it cost in time and effort
(and inspiration).
Oh -but worth it, so worth it.
