John Russell, Vermillion Vortex

John Russell Vermillion Vortex
2010
23 minutes

Former Bank member, John Russell's new video work, commissioned by Art Review for their November 2010 issue.

High quality version here.

Stan Douglas, Broadcast Works

Stan Douglas Broadcast Works: Television Spots and Monodramas
1987 - 1991
7 minutes 51 seconds

"I hope to be surprised by the meanings that these works can generate, so that by putting the right materials together, they can do more or result differently from what I expected. This process is opposed to metaphorical constructions, where artists expect to control the meaning of a work by defining how it is to be read symbolically. I want to work with what an image means in a public world. So when people bring their understanding of how images work, and how things are in the world, they can do something completely different from what I anticipated when I put them together."

Taken from the UbuWeb archive, artist Stan Douglas' Broadcast Works were originally created to be inserted unannounced amongst the regular programming schedule and in advert breaks on a Canadian TV station. Seconds-long and intentionally ambiguous and open ended, viewers ended up responding to the videos by calling the station to find out what they were.

The Television Spots (1987/88) are Becket-like constructions depicting banal and incidental non-events in which our expectations of a focal point or conclusion are conflated when the piece comes to an abrupt end. More developed, and slightly longer at between 10 and 30 seconds each, the Monodramas (1991) appear like ads without branding or inconclusive snippets from a larger narrative.

Fullscreen here.
More Stan Douglas videos here.

Quote from Stan Douglas in Conversation with Diana Thater, from Stan Douglas, Phaidon 1998.

Cory Arcangel, Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11 I, II and III, 2009

Cory Arcangel Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11 I, II and III 2009

In Cory Arcangel's Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11, the artist has remade experimental atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg's piece of the same name (translation: Three Piano Pieces) 100 years after the piece was written out of videos of cats 'playing' pianos that he found on YouTube.

Discussing the piece on his website, he says that the piece was inspired by the increasing similarity of YouTube content to his favourite art videos - stating that the videos there increasingly surpassed those of his favourite artists. He also said that it was "Probably [his] proudest "net" moment ever as it wz featured on Cute Overload."

Be sure to read his page on the piece. He lists the videos used, tells you exactly how he made the piece (even offering the code he wrote for you to use to try something similar) and allows you chance to listen to a specially made comparison piece which plays the cats in the left speaker and the recital by Glenn Gould that he based the piece on in the right.

If you want more on his work, watch this lecture, and be sure to check out his website and YouTube channel.

Oliver Laric, 787 Clip Arts

787 Clip Arts Oliver Laric
2006
1 minute 5 seconds looped

http://oliverlaric.com/

Kid Koala

A truly mesmerizing bit of turntablism from Kid Koala.

Mark Leckey, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

Mark Leckey Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore 1999

Fullscreen version here.

Continuing on a bit of a rave theme, here's another gem from the UbuWeb film archive.

Taking Elio Fiorucci's iconic Italian fashion label as a point of reference, Leckey's Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore is a video exploring myriad forms of youth culture and fashion emerging and evolving in Britain in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Created through a process of appropriating, manipulating and editing home-video footage, we are treated to a reveler's-eye-view of a progressing procession of discos, dances, raves and their attendees.

Jeremy Deller, Acid Brass

Jeremy Deller Bless This Acid House

2005

Jeremy Deller's Acid Brass is a project in which the artist initiated the composition, recording and performance of a host of early rave anthems. Arranged by Rodney Newton and performed by The William Fairey Brass Band, the resulting pieces are uncanny, entertaining and undeniably phat.

Posted here are the band's version of The KLF's What Time Is Love? and a diagrammatic illustration detailing the social, historical and cultural links between the 2 seemingly disparate forms of music; tying together elements such as 'Melancholy,' 'The North,' 'Ibiza,' 'Advanced Capitalism' and 'Civil Unrest,' he shows that they are not quite so different as you might at first assume.

Jeremy Deller A History Of The World 1997

Want to know and hear more? Click here.

John Cage, Water Walk

John Cage
Water Walk
1960

John Cage performs Water Walk on popular American TV Show I've Got A Secret. Exhibiting an unusually light-hearted approach, Cage introduces and plays a composition on a water pitcher, an iron pipe, a goose call, a bottle of wine, an electric mixer, a whistle, a sprinkling can, ice cubes, 2 cymbals, a mechanical fish, a quall call, a rubber duck, a tape recorder, a vase of roses, a seltzer siphon, 5 radios, a bath tube and a grand piano.

Slavoj Žižek on Children Of Men

Slavoj Žižek gives an enthusiastic review and reading of Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film Children Of Men.

Francis Alÿs

Railings Francis Alÿs
2005
7 minutes

I'm already getting excited about the Francis Alÿs exhibition at Tate Modern this summer. Here are 3 video works by him.

Sitting somewhere being poetic, allegorical and occasionally absurd, Alÿs' ephemeral actions often have the feeling of an old tale recounted - 'The man who pushed an ice block through the streets of Mexico City', 'the man who moved a sand dune' (both below) - and often grow out of stories recalled by the artist or incidental happenings in his day-to-day life. With a strong participatory element, the works have a socially-engaged, politicised quality, while avoiding any explicit political message. Though largely comprising of actions and their documentation, his practice also includes drawing, animation and painting.

When Faith Moves Mountains Francis Alÿs
2002
7 minutes
Fullscreen version from UbuWeb

Algunas Veces El Hacer Algo No Lleva A Nada
(Sometimes Making Something Leads To Nothing)
Francis Alÿs
1997
5 minutes

Slavoj Žižek, Maybe We Just Need a Different Chicken

Slavoj Žižek Maybe We Just Need a Different Chicken

2008

My second Žižek post is a talk that was meant to be about his book, Violence, delivered in Portland, Oregon in 2008. Instead Žižek talks, in his usual wandering style, about politeness and censorship and their function in ideology today. In his inimitable style, he extrapolates metaphors from a joke about a psychiatric patient who believes he is a piece of grain, terrified of being eaten by the chicken of the title. Žižek discusses how ideology manifests itself in the media and politics today, while covering cinematic references that span from Batman to Hitchcock's Vertigo to Kung Fu Panda.

Christian Marclay

A mini documentary, a video work and some links to performance documents by Christian Marclay.

Marclay emerged from 1980s New York's experimental music and performance scene. Developing turntablism in parallel with, but entirely separate from, Hiphop artists such as Grandmaster Flash, Marclay's approach is abstract and more inspired by experimental and avant-garde music than soul and funk breaks. Preoccupied with the cracks, pops and skips as much as the recordings on his records, he puts his records and turntables through some unbelievable abuse. Perhaps none quite so severe as in this piece though.

Here's another relic from the UbuWeb archive,

This video features a 15 minute performance on 3 turntables and a range of samplers, and interview in which Marclay discusses a number of his most famous pieces including Record Without A Cover and Guitar Drag (below). The presenter is a little bizarre, but Marclay explains his thoughts on his work and methods eloquently.

Guitar Drag 2000
14 minutes

This video, an audio and visual document in which Marclay ties an amplified guitar to the back of a truck before driving around the town of San Antonio, Texas, is rich with cultural references; Fluxus performance, incidental music, rock'n'roll stage-trashing and road movies are all apparent. More specifically it addresses the racially-aggravated murder of James Byrd Jr. who was dragged to his death behind a pickup-truck in 1998.

If you're left wanting more, there's another performance from 1989 here.

Bas Jan Ader

Bas Jan Ader
Fall 1 (Los Angeles 1970), Fall II (Amsterdam 1970), I'm Too Sad To Tell You (1971), Broken Fall (Geometric) [West Kapelle - Holland], Broken Fall (Organic) [Amsterdamse Bos - Holland], Nightfall
1970 - 71
B & W 11 minutes

Fullscreen version available here.

My second post from the UbuWeb archive is a selection of works by the Dutch/Californian conceptualist Bas Jan Ader. Quoting from his website, UbuWeb recounts this fascinating biography:

"Dutch/Californian artist Bas Jan Ader was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. He left behind a small oeuvre, often using gravity as a medium, which more than 30 years after his disappearance at sea is more influential than ever before.

Bas Jan Ader was born to idealistic ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church on April 19, 1942. His father was executed by the Nazis for harboring Jewish refugees when Ader was only two years old. A rebellious student, he failed art school at the Rietveld Academy, where friend Ger van Elk recalls that he would use a single piece of paper for the entire semester, erasing his drawings as soon as they were finished. At the age of 19 he hitchhiked to Morocco, where he signed on as a deckhand on a yacht heading for America.

The yacht shipwrecked off the coast of California, and Ader stayed in Los Angeles where he enrolled at Otis Art Institute. There he met Mary Sue Andersen, the daughter of the director of the school. They married in Las Vegas, where he used a set of crutches to symbolically prop himself up during the ceremony. Ader then taught art and studied philosophy at Claremont Graduate School. In 1970 he entered the most productive period of his career, beginning with his first fall film, which showed him seated on a chair, tumbling from the roof of his two-story house in the Inland Empire.

In 1975 Ader embarked on what he called "a very long sailing trip." The voyage was to be the middle part of a triptych called "In Search of the Miraculous," a daring attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 12 foot sailboat. He claimed it would take him 60 days to make the trip, or 90 if he chose not to use the sail. Six months after his departure, his boat was found, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland, but Bas Jan had vanished."

Dan Graham, Performer/Audience/Mirror

Dan Graham Performer/Audience/Mirror

1975
B & W, 23 minutes

From UbuWeb.
For full screen version click here.

UbuWeb is a vast non-commercial online resource of avant-garde material. They have one of the largest archives of sound and video works on the web, all available to view without charge or registration. I will be posting personal favourites from the archive over the coming weeks and months.

This first posting is an unfortunately incomplete video document of a Dan Graham performance from 1975.

Text from UbuWeb:

"This work is a phenomenological inquiry into the audience/performer relationship and the notion of subjectivity/objectivity. Graham stands in front of a mirrored wall facing a seated audience; he describes the audience's movements and what they signify. He then turns and describes himself and the audience in the mirror. Graham writes: "Through the use of the mirror the audience is able to instantaneously perceive itself as a public mass (as a unity), offsetting its definition by the performer ('s discourse). The audience sees itself reflected by the mirror instantly while the performer's comments are slightly delayed. First, a person in the audience sees himself 'objectively' ('subjectively') perceived by himself, next he hears himself described 'objectively' ('subjectively') in terms of the performer's perception.""

Rachel Reupke, 10 Seconds or Greater, Picture This, Bristol

Rachel Reupke, 10 Seconds or Greater
Picture This
Corner of Sydney Row & Mardyke Ferry Rd, Spike Island, Bristol BS1 6UU
23.01.10 – 06.03.10
Thursday to Saturday 12 - 5.30pm

10 Seconds Or Greater, is a new video work by British artist Rachel Reupke. Her multidisciplinary practice employs video, text and sculpture to examine ideas of taste, status and social position as defined and expressed in the mainstream media.

Produced as part of Picture This' residency program, the video is made using a group of actors to construct scenes reproduced from royalty-free stock footage; Formally a composite of unrelated scenes, that are here tied together by the uniformity created through the film's limited cast and small set, it is a fascinating and novel take on the process of creative appropriation. The title suggests the arbitrary kind of search term one might use when browsing through the bank of sources utilised in the creation of these shots.

Set to a score that alternates between long draughts of silence and a specially written R&B soundtrack, the video presents a group of attractive young adults carrying out scenes of domesticity and sociability, channeled through interaction with a range of products. The tracts of silence create a situation in which our voyeuristic position gives us the sense having of an objective eye into this situation. The real effect is in fact far from objective. Inevitably when faced with a world that we do not take part in (nor want to take part in), we adopt a critical stance and begin passing judgement and examining opinion.

Reupke is an artist who 'engages in the artisanal production of the generic.' 1 The look and feel of the setting of this film - the kind of pristine interior we can imagine existing in a suburban new-build, punctuated with functional objects displayed with a designer's precision - is an exercise in blandness that appears like an advertisement stripped of its logos and slogans. Intentionally reminiscent of the language of the corporate promo, everything is utterly devoid of human touch and believable personality, everything contrived and paired down to portrayal of a kind of self-satisfied success that induces a cringing distrust bordering on disgust.

Through the formal act of gathering these unconnected scenes into a lingering gaze, Reupke creates an opportunity for us to reflect upon the kind of the world promoted in the ideology of consumer capitalism. Scenes of social interaction, the hand-shakes re-shot again and again, endless introductions and unheard conversations, are played out repeatedly by a succession of recombinations of the 5 or 6 characters. Lingering product shots, the occasional, unnerving, long look or smile into the camera, and the underlying banality of stylised acts such as food preparation and the use of communications technology, point us towards the language of aspirational lifestyle marketing. The scenes take on a hyper-reality that sits at an awkward intersection of the idealised and the vacuous - a misplaced or misguided ideal of aspiration and self-actualisation.

1 Marina Vishmidt, Reverting To Type (accompanying essay)

A clip from the new video can be seen here.

Žižek! 2005, Directed By Astra Taylor

Žižek! 2005
Directed by Astra Taylor
1 hr 09 mins

This film, the first of a number of Žižek videos I intend to post over the coming weeks, is a documentary in which filmmaker Astra Taylor joins the Slovenian writer, philosopher, sociologist and theorist on various packed (literally to the rafters) speaking engagements around Europe, the USA and South America, and at his home in Ljubljana. Set to a specially written score by A Hawk And A Hacksaw's Jeremy Barnes, it serves as an excellent introduction to his all-encompassing thought, rigorous approach to analysis and enthralling manner of speaking.

A charsimatic and compelling individual, Slazoj Žižek examines society through discussing the complexities of phenomena including ideology, politics, and Hollywood cinema through the lens of Lacanian analysis. In this film he shares views on amoungst other things, 'the post-ideological era', Utopia, catastrophe, his audience, and vegetarians ('degenerates, they will turn into monkeys').

Oliver Laric, Versions, Seventeen Gallery, London

Oliver Laric Versions
Seventeen Gallery
17 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8AA
13.01.10 – 13.02.10
Wednesday to Saturday 11am - 6pm

Seventeen Gallery presents a solo show and curated exhibition by artist and vvork.com contributor, Oliver Laric, featuring a 4 screen video installation of four versions of his film, Versions, and a series of individually made, moulded polyurethane sculptures, also entitled Versions.

The show explores the circulation, manipulation, and interpretation of images and their ideological functions, historically and in the contemporary digital-information age. Laric describes his practice in the version of Versions featuring his voice-over, as being a process of ‘cropping,’ and talks about his delight in embracing the abundance and endless variation that can be accessed via digital media.

Laric’s curated show Real Talk sits alongside this exhibition in Seventeen’s basement space; A show of 4 video-based works by Seth Price, Aleksandra Domanovic, Marjolijn Dijkman and Samuel Beckett. Bringing together a mixture of influences, peers and artists who explore similar territory to that traversed in Laric’s work, the show offers a satisfying extension to both the processes and the themes found in the work upstairs.

If you can’t make it to the gallery 3 of the versions of Versions on show can be seen here.

Harun Farocki, Against What? Against Whom?, Raven Row, London

Harun Farocki Against What? Against Whom?
Raven Row
56 Artillery Lane, London, E1
19.11.09 - 07.02.10
Wednesday to Sunday 11am - 6pm

Set in the beautiful rooms of 56 Artillery Row in East London, Raven Row is one of London’s newest exhibtion spaces. In this, their 3rd exhibition, curator Alex Sainsbury, has put together an exhibition of multi-screen video works by the highly respected German filmmaker, Harun Farocki.

Eliminating the traditional linearity of the documentary format by taking it out of the cinema screening context, and spreading the works over multiple screens in an environment where we can enter and leave at any point allows Farocki to make use of the juxtaposition and repetition we find in his older work to create dexterously edited montages. Rather than constructing a narrative with a dogmatic message, arguments are proposed and form through the associations allowed to occur by the engineering of a situation in which images are able to align, clash, conflict and inform one-another.

Through a mixture of found, filmed and appropriated imagery the artist’s themes of the eye, the nature of seeing, the functions of imagery, warfare, surveillance, power, the history of cinema and the virtual are able to weave, cross over, merge, slip away and resurface across the exhibition. The exhibition is excellently structured, Farocki’s use of the video installation medium is masterful.