Ardvark (2001, 1.6MB, 15 sec.)
Scorpion (2001, 1.1MB, 10 sec.)
Tumbleweeds (2001, 1.2MB, 10 sec.)
Since 1988, Sam Easterton has been using tiny
‘helmet mounted’ cameras to create an archive of videos filmed
from the perspective of plants and animals.
By Mica
The Cut-Ups (clip) (1966, 15.4MB, 1:20 min.)
William Burroughs & co-conspirators made this in 1966.
1966! – could’ve been the day after tomorrow.
Body Magic (2007, 26MB, 2:25 min.)
From the old gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com
Music by Javier.
Penmanship (2010, 75 MB,2:59 min)
Genius.
Is that an actor, or frighteningly, is it appropriated documentary
of some normally little viewed, fringe sort?
The Good Consumer (2008, 18.2MB, 5:27)
In honor of , a satirical video about
being a good consumer. BND falls on Nov. 28 in North
America, but everyone else “celebrates” on Nov. 29.
So this whether this video is right on time for you or
a day early, we’re still pretty sure you will appreciate
the message.
Made by Neil Boorman from Bonfire of the Brands.
Failure is an Option (2010, 53 MB, 2:03 min)
More rum goings-on from the prodigously talented Will Goss.
Is that the Kalevala?
More on Thursday.
Matt McCormick – The Past and Pending (2003, 34MB, 5:17)
Matt McCormick – Australia (2007, 29MB, 3:57)
Matt McCormick is one of those heroes I never knew I had.
He makes insanely tight music videos and local commercials
around the Portland area, in addition to being a friend to hipster
bands and a musician himself.
These are two award-winning videos for the band The Shins,
who I’ve posted from before, though I have no affiliation or
particular love for them.
They just end up extra special on film, especially through
McCormick’s visions of A-Team remakes and leisurely photo drives.
Paisajes del placer y de la culpa #1 (2008, 119MB, 7:49 min)
Paisajes del placer y de la culpa #2 (2008, 74MB, 4:52 min)
José M. Sánchez-Verdú is a Spanish composer who creates richly textured and
sensuous music in an uncompromisingly contemporary idiom.
His richness is no frippery but properly fought for and won.
Here is a short movie, in two parts, made by David Olmos, about whom I can find
no information whatsoever, which blends a fictional narrative with footage of
an orchestral performance of one of Sánchez-Verdú’s works
Paisajes del placer y de la culpa – Landscapes
of Pleasure and Guilt.
The film is undoubtedly skillfully made but I remain slightly agnostic
about its premise or even necessity; however no such doubts about some
of the most extraordinary music of recent years.
I grabbed the film from YouTube and as you can see the image quality isn’t great
although in some ways the graininess appeals and seems apposite to the subject.
Nova Scotia Fires (1969, 5MB, 3:00 min)
I hadn’t, to my shame, heard of the late David Askevold until the Camden Arts Centre
put on a beautifully put together and gripping retrospective last year.
Here’s one of the pieces on show then. It’s not particularly great quality plus
it’s in a tiny window but it does conjure (perhaps an appropriately Askevoldian
choice of word) something of the impact -witty, smart and otherwordly – of his work.
* and there’s a good review of that here.
TyryTyry (2012, 133MB, 2:06 min)
Nice bit of work from Polish film maker and musician Martin Rychlicki, who also
trades as DJ Gacmaster & GacPax,
for a track by DJ Investor.
We’ve featured Rychlicki’s rather winning work here before and no doubt will again.
Slapstick documentation of artist Gabriel Klasmer doing
his processed abstract paintings in 2001.
Gareth Long – Platoon / Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada (2007, 60.6MB, 14:20)
Lovely 2007 piece from Gareth Long,
– an intervention into the English subtitles of Oliver Stone
Quadrat I + II (1981, 4.3MB, 1:04 sec.)
Quad (Play), by Samuel Beckett.
by Doron Golan
Horses (2004, 16.7MB, 4:37 min)
Agnes video by David Shrigley
& Horses by Braden King,
both of them classy bits of work.
There’s a PhD to be had for someone along the lines of
‘The Curatorial Role of the Recording Artist’.
BPB/Will Oldham’s CD cover art never disappoints –
the acme of hip good taste ( though not in a bland way, I think)
– & the same is true of his videos.
I particularly love the projection-within-the vid trope of Horses.
Also -what songs!
Short analog video by Portland based artist Erica Schreiner.
Music by by Prussia.
Says Albert Nanning:
‘I’m a writer (poems mostly) and photographer, living and working
in Amsterdam. My age is 41. See also. The last five years I’ve made
so many pictures due to the digital workflow that by accident
I discovered a way to give all those pictures that I don’t use
a kind of meaning by putting them in a clip that I made.
Most pictures are from Amsterdam. I made
the clip with iMovie.’
& nicely it works too…
Floor warp 2 (2008, 3.7MB, 20 sec.)
By Guthrie Lonergan. More vids here.
Kelvin Helmholtz Clouds (2008, 5.6MB, 24 secs)
It’s funny – even when Sondheim does picturesque there’s
something very defiantly personal about his take on it.
Here it’s the way that the sequence of images just occasionally
looks as if it hadn’t been thrown together at random but
most of the time it does.
And this does not matter -in fact it’s an asset -there’s a shamanic
urgency to everything Sondheim does which is wholly engaging.
Woah (2009, 6.1MB, 41 sec loop)
Bush Shoe (2009, 2.8MB, 27 secs)
Protest (2009, 14.1MB, 26 secs)
It’s the James-Bond-Martini scenario – tinder dry & leaving you
both shaken and stirred.
Three reasons to say “Huzzah for Brittany Shoot!“.
PS nobody in the UK actually says Huzzah, whatever you might have been told.
Beanstalk [from Magenta’s Caress #3] (2010, 125 MB, 3:50 min)
This is great. It forcibly calls to mind the early work of the sainted Hal Hartley
and whilst it’s arguable that some of what’s on offer here is like a sort
of condensed supercharged bucket of HH’s stylistic tics I find none of that
irritating in the way I might have expected, rather it’s a definite plus, by some odd
counter-intuitive magic. It’s the very over-the-topness of it all that lends
it its huge charm.
More from Will Goss soon.
Me and Pop (2004, 3.88MB, 1:00min)
Sleeping (2007, 2.34MB, 57 secs)
Maker’s site
Gallo (2007, 5.17MB, 55 secs)
Maker’s site
Dance of Death (2007, 5.53MB, 1:00 min)
Maker’s site
A Week’s Worth (2007, 4.93MB, 1:00 min)
The rules for Lumière videos are as follows:
* 60 seconds max.
* Fixed camera
* No audio
* No zoom
* No edit
* No effects
In the spirit of the Lumière brothers and comparable in some ways to Dogme 95,
the Lumière video project emerged from a documentary perspective,
as Auguste and Louis Lumière blazed the trail in this genre.
In the tradition of the the cinematographe, the first movie camera,
which was arguably used and possibly built by the brothers, all
21st C Lumiere videos should be made only using features available in
camera (ie, no external editing, including bumpers and titles, should
be included).
Lumière videos hope to expand upon the ways that online video allows for
the advancement of personal narratives by capturing the everyday, and sometimes
unexpected, within a specific framework of constraints, less conflicted by sometimes
unnecessary editing.
See all Lumière videos.
The Shock Doctrine (2007, 19.1MB, 6:47 min.)
Internet video version of Naomi Klein’s 2007 book, much more than an advertisement.
Heavy.
Hard to watch, as it should be.
‘America’s free market’ policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. {source}
Produced by Klein and Alfonso Cuarón, directed by Jonas Cuarón.
futurespots – Splinters (2006, 10.1MB, 1:44)
futurespots – Flash (2006, 3.7MB, 1:10)
From the futurespots archives, two older works
from what is now a defunct videoblog.
These days, Christopher Black’s experimental
and interactive media can be found on his personal site.
Climax (2006, 6.2MB, 1:11 min)
We’ve featured Anthony Rousseau’s excellent work here before
this is one of many great pieces you can see on his blog.
I’ve focussed in on this one because I think it’s particularly interesting
in its capacity to be genuinely disturbing in a number of ways over a short spell of time.
Made from appropriated Prelinger footage, Rousseau says it is
Une construction filmique dont la ligne directrice est la
traduction d’angoisses et de peurs infantiles.
‘A filmic construction of which the directorial line is the translation of childhood fears and anguish’
Now, before I read that, I was thinking what Rousseau had done cleverly
& to powerful effect was to deploy many of the tropes of the horror genre
so we fear for, not with, the child.
But then I suppose many of those devices are indeed rooted in
our peurs infantiles & in fact we do both.
Smart. Smart, rich, good.
Eddo Stern – Best…flame war…Ever (2007, 32MB, 12:08)
Even the non-gamers (that includes me – and I think everyone
else here at DVblog) will appreciate this one from Eddo Stern.
Rain Down On Me: 10:00 am (2012, 22MB, 1:27 min)
Rain Down On Me: 3:43pm (2012, 20MB, 1:01 min)
Rain Down On Me: 6:00pm (2012, 110MB, 6:32 min)
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 14 September 2012, 10am – 6pm:
Curt Cloninger repeatedly performs a short excerpt from the
Radiohead song “Paranoid Android” for eight hours blindfolded.
The performance is the fourth in an ongoing series.
Video documentation by Alice Sebrell
Bob Ross is alive (2008, 22MB, 2:50 min.)
The Joy of Painting (2008, 15MB, 5:45 min.)
Bob Ross came to prominence as the creator of ‘The Joy of Painting’,
a program on public television in the US. Here are a couple of great parodies
that poke fun at Bob and his calm and enduring nature.
Top is from Dutch filmmaker Miron Bilski (from the viral video award)
Bottom is from artists Max Kotelchuck and Peter Nowogrodzki.
Talkin’ Singularity Blues (2012, 186MB, 8:13 min)
Robert Loggia [trailer] (2012, 43MB, 1:39 min)
We’ve shown work -very individual and promising work –
from Tony Arnold before and we’re delighted to do so again.
There’s an energy and freshness to his work and a kind
of volcanic flow of creativity which is invigorating.
The first of these pieces is accompanied by music from
Arnold himself, which I like very much. The second is a trailer
for a full length piece which you can view in its entirety here.
Miniatures (2006, 11MB, 2:35 min.)
‘Early experimental work in multi-frame/multi-track asynchrony.’
More works from video artist Steven Hoskins on Video Art Net.
hurricane3 (2008, 1.7MB, 47 sec.)
From Dutch artist Constant Dullaart.
Andersen M Studio – A Map Comes to Life (2006, 11.4MB, 2:20)
Incredible stop-motion animation from London’s
Andersen M Studio. Much of their video work is
in the same style, but why switch it up when
they’re so talented in this specialized way?
Inspiring and fun.
Ad-Vice for a Prophet (2005, 78.6MB, 6:59 min)
I wrote the text below in, I think, 2008.
[In case you didn’t notice we’re intermittently re-posting stuff previously
posted on weekends in line with our 5 day a week current policy
– it also takes a bit of the pressure off which, two old guys,
we feel, we feel].
Since then Rafman has gone on to achieve a measure of well deserved
celebrity, showing at the Saatchi Gallery in London amongst other
prestigious venues, especially with his 9 eyes of google street view
I notice the piece we feature here no longer appears on his CV or website.
A shame – it has many merits – not least of which is an embryonic
version of the sensibility which underpins his more current work
although I entirely understand why artists occasionally attempt
to take a broom to old work.
Great piece by Jon Rafman.
I love the refusal to commit to a tone, the playfulness & humor, the wistfulness &
sometimes the vaguest air of menace too.
There’s a curious feel. An air of detachment, as if nothing can be said
directly but that everything is mediated & distanced by the act of editing
and presenting, serving up, (as with the ads).
The whole thing feels haunted by movie history.
I’m curious to know whether this is all found footage, whether some of it is
original or what.
Anyway, tremendous. Lots of other interesting
work on his site.
An Object At Rest, Must Stay At Rest (2007, 3MB, 30 sec. loop)
Video projection (loop) & ink on paper
by artist Michael Guidetti.
Character 3/3 – Iris (2012, 67MB, 1:20 min)
Last one of three and all a pleasure to post and to view.
Here’s to lots more work from Morrisa.
self.detach (2008, 13MB, 2:24 min.)
‘self.detach is a dynamic Object, which adopts a critical position
towards the celebration of the ego on the internet by dissolving
self-portraying pictures into coloured particles.’
A project by Tim Horntrich and Jens Wunderling.
I’m Dreaming of a White President (2012, 15MB, 3:16 min)
Great bit of film-making to match a genius song.
But…but…
Of course you want Obama to win just
to wrongfoot the racists et. al. but you
can’t help wishing he’d actually done something
to merit the mad hostility of the rich, the bigots
and the terminally gullible.
Character 2/3 – Inverted Rose (2012, 43MB, 55 secs)
2nd in the series of 3, the first of which we posted last week.
I think these are lovely and haunting and I’m impressed by Morrisa
Maltz’s diligence and imagination.
(I love what she does with sound, too)
Is it just me or do these slightly conjure Isadora Duncan for anyone else?
Last one on Friday.
Puddle Extension (2007, 5MB, 6:42 min.)
Masonite, masking tape, and plastic sheeting device
designed to extend a rain puddle’s reach by 16 inches.
By Richard Haley.
In the realm of ‘A Series of Practical Performances In The Wilderness’
by Cary Peppermint and Christine Nadir. (1) (2)
Character 1/3 [Infinite Loop] (2012, 130MB, 1:07 min)
I love Morrisa Maltz’s work. I particularly relish the way
she doesn’t rest on her laurels but pushes herself ever on to new
and (over-used word in the arts but, I think, apposite here)
fearless ways of thinking about and making things.
This is the first of three pieces best described, literally,
as moving pictures.
Tremendous!
Imitations of Life (excerpt) (2003, 35MB, 4 min.)
Imitations of Life is a ten-part video that strains childhood through a history
of reproduction, culling pictures from the Lumières to
the present day in order to find the future in our past.
by experimental filmmaker Mike Hoolboom.
Adam Mufti – Garden Cities of the Future (2008, 53MB, 7:19)
Remarkable, hypnotic work from the incredibly talented Adam Mufti.
Part meditation on modern life, part perhaps futuristic foreboding,
this piece sort of leaves me speechless, though I fear a lack of
editorializing might portray lukewarm feelings.
It’s really just that I’d rather a viewer experience this on his/her own.
I thought I’d watched a 3 minute piece – only when posting this did
I discover the actual runtime is more than double what it seems.
In this case, that’s exceptional.
The video also features the voice of London actress Juliet Rylance.
The whole thing, the composition, the editing, all of it: truly stunning,
took my breath away. Find a quiet spot and enjoy.
Sunday Afternoon Narcissism (2012, 190MB, 2:46 min)
Hypnotic and disorientating chunk of enchantment from London artist
Lucy Mills.
Only one cavil and that’s the title – the self-deprecation involved might
serve to camouflage the actual richness of this piece, at least from the
casual viewer*.
Let’s be optimistic and assume careful viewing, which work of
this quality certainly merits.
* Although, on reflection, the ‘Sunday Afternoon’ also suggests a certain
dreamy languor quite in keeping with just how gently ravishing it all is.
Disappearing Body (2012, 44MB, 1:02min loop)
Time marches on but some things don’t change and one of these is
our unbounded admiration here for the work of Alan Sondheim.
This is a perhaps a lollipop in comparison to some of his work but
it is, as always, rich and beautiful and lodges both in the conscious
mind and in our dreams.
Says Sondheim:
Mark Esper’s Two-Tone Enlightenment work forms the basis
of this short video. The screen presents shadows as positive,
not negative; infrared light forms the projection source
which is read and interpreted by revolving LEDs.
The body disappears. In the video, I imitated the effect
using video echo in an attempt to erase the body almost
entirely. Mark’s piece is brilliant, and the video is a
byproduct; I take advantage of the illumination to create
a somewhat clumsy series of movements.
Thus the mechanical is made virtual, and the virtual made
mechanical; such reversals form the core of theory povera.
The One That Got Away (2005, 19MB, 9:02 min.)
In the Fall of 2004,Marisa Olson gained worldwide attention
while training to audition for American Idol
Eat up, Little Pearl – trailer (2012, 42MB, 3:26min)
Absolutely wonderful promotional/performance video from US performance/dance
outfit Mad King Thomas (whom I know little about but would love to see),
the vid directed, apparently, by Kevin Obsatz who was behind the
video haikus we posted in July.
Video…&..er…troupe…all great, great.
Transhuman Dance Recital #1 (2008, 56MB, 6:30 min.)
“If Jeff Koons had fallen for the Microsoft Help Paperclip rather than
vacuum cleaners or La Cicciolina, presumably the result would have
looked a lot like: ”The Jeremy Bailey Show”.
Says Jeremy Bailey: “From now on I dedicate myself to finding better
ways for humans to dance”
Emily Richardson -‘Over the Horizon’ (extract) (2012, 75MB, 1:10min)
We’ll start this season with an suggestion for something you
can physically attend and absolutely should, too, if you’re
anywhere near London this Thursday evening (Sept 27th).
As part of the London Underground Film Sessions
The Horse Hospital are premiering Volume 6 of Kerry Baldry‘s
exemplary ‘One Minutes’ compilations of …er… one-minute-in-length
artist moving image work.
Transparency dictates I reveal I have a piece in it, but any claims
for mine aside, I can confidently predict a wonderfully varied, well
curated, roller coaster of work.
This piece is an extract from a longer work by Emily Richardson
(and, of course, splendid though it is, showing a single piece
immediately traduces one of the principal attractions of the project
which is the heady variety and contrast of it all. Here and here
is some stuff from previous volumes)
Hope to see you there!
History of the Demonstrations (2012, 211MB, 15:53 min)
A Statement by Luaty Beirão (2012, 34MB, 7:05 min)
Three connected movies, which connect in a very direct way with the world about us.
For the last couple of years, simultaneously with the ‘Arab spring’ there have been
a number of similar movements around the world where ordinary folk have stood up for
the right to free speech and the right to a decent life, mostly both.
This happened on a small scale in the Southern African country of Angola where the inheritors
of the magnificent struggle against imperialism in the 70s seem to have forgotten their roots,
perhaps lulled by power and the good life it can bring to a few. A small but dogged and effective
campaign for democracy and against corruption, poverty and police state begaviour sprang up amongst
young people there.
The first video is a documentary relating the beginning, growth of this movement and subsequent
attempted government repression.
( You can find some more info , from Human Rights Watch, here)
Our second video is a track by the Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão, better known as Ikonoklasta
which is a tremendously entertaining bit of agit-prop against the regime.
It clearly struck home because the Angolan security forces have attempted to frame Beirão by
secreting a substantial amount of cocaine in a bicycle wheel in his possession on a flight
from Angola to Portugal.
The third video is Luaty Beirão’s statement upon and account of these events.
Watch the videos and draw you own conclusions – I do not for a moment believe Beirão is guilty
of anything except bravery and standing up to oppression.
We’ll leave you with these videos for the summer a reminder there’s art and there’s life and there’s
not a lot of space between.
We’re going to take a break until mid September-ish when we’ll be back with mostly
art videos but anything else that amuses, inspires or outrages us.
If you have stuff you think we’d like, send us links – we look at everything we’re sent.
It remains only to wish you all a nice and relaxing summer if you can manage it.
The Visitors (2012, 42MB, 3:51min)
Exquisite work from Simon Mclennan, whom we’ve celebrated here before
and will again.
Rehabilitates that near-cliché “poetic” as applied to moving image…
mailman, moron, superman (2008, 76.3MB, 3:27 min)
Spinning (2008, 47.2 MB, 2:00 min)
Two pieces from Donna Kuhn in 2008.
I wrote then:
We’ve shown a number of pieces by Donna Kuhn here previously.
I wondered to myself a couple of times, I must admit, whether the fact of
having developed such an intensely freighted and personal syntax and vocabulary might
not at some point become a block to further development, whether there was a limit to
the elaboration (and not of course simply the formal elaboration but of how much
in the way of new approaches to her subject matter this process could be made to yield) of this
admittedly extraordinarily beautiful and singular set of moves.
Well no sign of it yet – instead there is this remarkable process of intensification,
of continual, ever finer and more nuanced scrutiny, distillation and development.
It’s like watching an never ending succession of rabbits being pulled out of
hats and it’s quite, quite beautiful and moving.
All of it something of a masterclass, but the use of sound especially colors me
green with envy – wonderful!
MyStyle (2008, 73MB, 3:40 min.)
Michael C. Place promotes “MyStyle” for Pritt in France in 2008.
Michael is founder of BUILD.
iKast 2012 (2012, 70MB, 3:23min)
iKast voodoodoodles (2012, 89MB, 2:35min)
voodoo 1 (2012, 362MB, 9:58min)
Here’s some more gripping work from Michael Barnes-Wynters a.k.a Barney Doodlebug
who previously opened my eyes to a thriving live arts scene in Manchester, UK.
Featured here are two videos of a new piece by Michael which figured in i-Kast,
“a live intervention transmission for www.artplayer.tv with artists roney fraser-munroe,
naomi kashiwagi and michael barnes-wynters” in May of this year.
The first video is an excellent short documentary overview of the event
with interviews with key figures.
Michael is going to be running an event for 15-25 year olds as part of the season
in the new Tate Modern space “The Tanks” on Thursday 23 August.
Video Haiku – Four Frame Dance Project: Megan Mayer (2008, 22.4MB, 3:38)
Second in a series of four frame dance videos from
Video Haiku in 2008.
Lovely, inspiring, and fun.
Next week, some more recent work by Kevin Obsatz, the person behind this.
Netbehaviour Mailing List Fractal [Excerpt] (2012, 5MB, 59 secs)
From Claude Heiland-Allen:
Seven years of archives for this mailing list filtered down
to the most often occurring 1000 words of 4 letters or more,
in an infinite fractal zoom – each word is made up of the
words that most likely follow it.
We love the Netbehaviour list & this, splendid & bonkers both, does just
what it says on the tin with that excellent institution – we’ve posted
the minute long version here but if that whets your appetite for more
there’s an hour long version at archive.org.
Gun has no Trigger (2012, 31MB, 3:26 min)
I need to get out more, or at least talk to more people because the
Dirty Projectors completely passed me by until a couple of weeks ago
when I happened upon this video for a track from their new (and, I
have to say, quite, quite, wonderful and – and I use the word advisedly
because it is so overused in a popular music context – strikingly original)
album.
I’ve no idea know who directed the vid but it’s smart and spare and beautiful
and fits the music like a glove (but a glove that brings more than simply being
a glove to the table – maybe it has striking patterns, or raised areas or a
couple of extra fingers, or it glows in the dark or something.)
Driving (2006, 6MB, 4:39 min.)
Loop (2006, 11.8MB, 7:49 min.)
Two 2006 movies from Christian Marc Schmidt’s adaptive landscapes
sequence of work.
Check out the link above for Schmidt’s background notes on the pieces.
I’ll just observe that they are not alone in recent work featured here
in belonging to a category of work that could be called gorgeous formalism.
Magnotta SpeedShow (2012, 20.4, 3:07 min)
Magnotta SpeedShow – A vanity surf performance.
“One week after Magnotta got caught we present a vanity surf performance at the exact same Internetcafe in Berlin where Magnotta was arrested while vanity surfing! Be invited to join and vanity surf yourself!”
“Killing is bad, mailing bodyparts is worse, vanity surfing (while getting caught) is cool!”
“Internet cafes are not just vaguely unglamorous places for ethnic minorities and communications challenged, they do have a genuinely bad reputation.” [Olia Lialina – ‘Still There’] Where else a social network killer can be caught? Of course in the Internet cafe!”
[shot and edited(!) on a smart phone ]
Internetcafe Helin, Karl-Marx-Straße 156, Berlin
Tuesday 12th of June, 2012, 8-10 pm
by Constant Dullaart, CuratingYoutube, Olia Lialina & Aram Bartholl
Still Life (2006, 16.9MB, 3:36 min)
Spout (2006, 8.26MB, 2:14 min)
Two short movies from Canadian artist Adamo Macri in 2007.
