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.

The End Is Nigh! Apocalyptic Visions In East London

A recent trip along the Regent's Canal to two of East London's best contemporary art spaces led me into two dark, apocalyptic video installations filled with the terrors of imminent catastrophe: Jennet Thomas's All Suffering SOON TO END! at Matt's Gallery (currently in its final week) and Melanie Gilligan's Popular Unrest at The Chisenhale.

Jennet Thomas All Suffering SOON TO END!
Matt's Gallery
42–44 Copperfield Road, London E3 4RR
April 14th - June 6th 2010
Wednesday - Sunday 12 - 6 pm
Screenings begin on the hour and at 30 minutes past

Jennet Thomas's All Suffering SOON TO END! is a two-part installation based around the end-of-world predictions disseminated in an evangelical Christian pamphlet delivered to the artist. Extrapolating from the Revelations-esque Last Days prophecies, Thomas has created a menacing character in the form of The Purple Preacher - a combination of an imagined embodiment of the writer of the pamphlet and the Marvel Comics villain, The Purple Man, a character who possesses the ability to control enemies through incredible powers of persuasion.

The 30 minute video features The Preacher paying a visit to an elderly couple and detailing the evidence that our increasingly secular world has lead to an enormous increase in the amount of suffering experienced by humankind, that we have angered God by ignoring Him and that he is punishing us for this. But do not worry - for all this suffering is to end very soon, thanks to His salvation. Following this, a car journey and a rather unnerving trip to a model village with a stern Green Nun character, and a few poorly performed musical numbers act as features of The Preacher's evangelical repertoire, before life-sized living dolls of Adam and Eve wreak havoc in the pensioners' home and attempt to recruit school children to the cause.

Strangely (probably unintentionally?) reminiscent of absurdist left-field comedy sketch shows such as Big Train and Chris Morris's Jam, the video is blackly comic and by turns quite unsettling and somewhat endearing. Spliced with flashes of destruction and doom, the video meanders through repeated scenes of the purple figure preaching his message, edited to a soundtrack of pulsing glitches, ambient electronics and reverberating dialogue. Images of a hypnotic TV screen featuring an animated motif reminiscent of both a cross and that biblical root of sin, the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil. The image becomes central to the work's visual language when it recurs in filled-out sound-emitting three-dimensional form as the centre-pieces of the adjoining installation.

The film is compelling and at its heart thoroughly enjoyable, creating a comical parody of these doom and gloom religious ramblings. It manages to do what good satire does best, and subverts what is actually in real life a scary and sinister practice (frightening the elderly and indoctrinating the young) into a ridiculous and bizarre farce.

Melanie Gilligan Popular Unrest

Chisenhale Gallery
64 Chisenhale Road, London, E3 5QZ
7th May - 20th June 2010
Wednesday to Sunday 1 – 6pm
Thursday 3rd June until 9pm

And online at http://www.popularunrest.org/

Melanie Gilligan's Popular Unrest is a 5 part film-installation with a total running time of 75 minutes. Spread across 5 flat-screen monitors divided by office screens, visitors are presented with wireless headphones and may move between the various episodes playing in sync, tuning in to the sound from each as they go.

Taking on the form of an episodic drama the series tells the tale of a not-too-distant future in which a digitised system known as The Spirit monitors and manages human life the world over. As the plot unravels we learn of a mysterious spate of killings being carried out across London by a seemingly super-natural force, and of a bizarre phenomenon arising across the country in which groups of people are mysteriously drawn together by an uncontrollable urge to be with one another. I won't say any more about the plot for fear of spoiling the suspense of the work for you if you see it yourself.

Reference points claimed in the accompanying literature fail to gel with me - claims of allusions to David Cronenberg's Body Horror films don't wash; while the first death we see is remarkably violent and genuinely quite shocking I'm wondering if they blew the budget on it. The remainder of the film's fatalities seem to be made up by repeatedly using one technique (knife stabbed through clothing into dummy/blood bag) to unconvincing effect. Again, the claim of taking cues from American crime dramas such as CSI, Dexter and Bones doesn't really work for me, the final effect, I must say, is more like the BBC's poor cousin of these (think more Spooks than HBO). I can't help wondering, however, if these reference points were Gilligan's own, or were added by the gallery as their reading of the work.

While I understand that realism is not the aim here, and this exhibition was clearly not produced on a Hollywood budget that ran into the millions of pounds, the work requires a certain suspension of disbelief in order to achieve some of the effects it seems to be trying to get to. The wooden acting doesn’t help, and blatant staging of the filming in the gallery (complete with Florian Hecker’s speakers from the last show) doesn’t either, and comes across as poorly done rather than knowingly flat.

I remember an interview with Paul McCarthy which I saw online (maybe this one?) in which he discussed the increasing scale of his installations and the enormous budgets he is able to command for their production. To paraphrase, he argues that if you really want to critique Hollywood and Disney, you need to work at their level. I’m wondering if Gilligan bit off a little more than she could chew with this piece, if the ideas she wanted to get at might have required a bigger budget to execute well. I was left feeling that work failed to establish a strong sense of critical distance from the medium it emulated. A fairly interesting (and compelling) narrative it was, a thought provoking and artistic exercise? I'm not so sure.

While the similarities between the two exhibitions are really fairly few - both are video installations, both deal with a prevailing sense of impending catastrophe present within contemporary society, and both seem to be more inspired by televisual language and devices than those of the cinema or video art - it is interesting that two galleries located in such close proximity should have concurrent shows exploring this terrain in this medium. If art is indeed a mirror to the world, then looking at these pieces you might think we are living in bleak and frighten(ing? ed?) times. Let's take the cue from Jennet Thomas and laugh at how ridiculously over the top all the doom, gloom and worry really can be.

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.

David Blandy, Choose Your Character, The ICA, London

David Blandy Choose Your Character
The ICA
The Mall, London, SW1
May 6th 2010
12 midday - 1 am

David Blandy kicks off David Gryn's Live Weekend at The ICA with Choose Your Character. Extrapolating from some of the recurring themes found in his work, Blandy will celebrate a variety of different fan-behaviours and sub-cultural obsessions that reflect his own passions.

The day will include a Street Fighter IV tournament hosted by fighting game tournament organisers Neo Empire, music from Big Dada/Ninja Tune's Infinite Livez and King Cannibal, turntablists Ben Phaze, DJ Shorty, DJ CutWild, g-man and Priority Deluxe, with record stalls from Ninja Tune, Rough Trade, Soul & Dance Exchange and Flashback, and cosplay.

During the day in the ICA Theatre Artprojx will present films and videos including:

Ashish Avikunthak – Kalighat Fetish
Shoja Azari – Windows
David Blandy - My Philosophy
Brian Catling & Tony Grisoni – Vanished – A Video Séance & The Cutting
Mark Leckey – Cinema-in-the-Round & Shades of Destructors
Lynne Marsh - Plänterwald,
Jo Mitchell – Concerto for Voice & Machinery II
Damon Packard - The Untitled Star Wars Mocumentary
Francesco Stocchi - The only system is a sound system
Matt Stokes – Long After Tonight

Entry is free.

For details of the full series of Live Weekends at The ICA this month click here.

View trailer.

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.

Amanda Beech, Sanity Assassin, Spike Island, Bristol

Amanda Beech Sanity Assassin, 2009, installation views.
Photos: Stuart Bunce, courtesy of Spike Island.

Amanda Beech Sanity Assassin
Spike Island
133 Cumberland Road, Bristol, BS1 6UX
23.01.10 - 11.04.10
Tuesday - Sunday, Screenings every 20 minutes, 11 am - 5 pm

Sanity Assassin is an installation in 2 parts with an accompanying publication, produced by British artist Amanda Beech during Spike Island's 2009 main production residency. Beech's practice often grows out of research visits to sites in which exercises of power and law are manifested in architecture and manipulations of social space; Sites such as Los Angeles - the source for this piece - and Harlow New Town, which features in Statecraft, one of a number of earlier works on show alongside the new project.

The audience are encouraged to enter the first room at 20 minute intervals in order to take in a dazzling sculptural installation, followed by a intense and enthralling 3-screen video installation.

The sculptural element (photographed above) is an immaculately presented set of bright yellow chain-saws, at first glance all identical, yet on closer inspection all subtly different models. Arranged atop a mirrored plinth and lit from above with floodlights, the piece is a spectacular piece of 'pure display' 1. It is an explicit comment on commodity fetishism, with a substrate of suppressed violence and a nod towards horror movie cliches. Apparently based on the corporate lobby of a real Los Angeles showroom, it sets an ominous tone for the coming video work.

After a few minutes in this space the lights drop and we are compelled by sound emanating from the adjoining room to move on to the second part - a multi-channel video installation projected across 3 large screens positioned at differing heights and awkward angles. Beginning with a CGI rainstorm reminiscent of a classic film noir device of mood-setting, the installation is permeated with an atmosphere of imminent violence.

The new video work is an abrasively composed edit of scenes of LA, pithy statements and digitally manipulated photographic elements, cut to a throbbing soundtrack of electronic noise; the buzz-saw pulses reminiscent of the installation we have just left behind. The vision of LA - portrayed through shots of a mixture of public and private spaces, by day and night, which bounce and repeat through an array of filters, effects and physical rotations across the screens - is a nightmarish, Lynchean one. Spliced in in a style that brings to mind both MTV and political sloganeering, are texts collaged together from a mixture of appropriated and original narratives - sources range from an interview with LA photographer Julius Shulman, a reworking of émigré German philosopher Theodor Adorno's Dream Notes, pulp literature, FBI files and song lyrics. For some reason I can't help but think of Brett Easton Ellis' dystopian visions of America throughout.

Sanity Assassin is divided into two distinct halves, each exploring the philosophy of a character of Beech's creation - Arnold Rottweiler and Artemis Star. Rottweiler's dialogue explores culture's alienation of nature and ideas of self-enforced seclusion, Starr's echoes with New World Order paranoia. In both we see beliefs that descended into psychosis, leading to suicidal despair and physical violence. The experience is submersive, dizzying and terrifying.

The accompanying screening and reading area serves as an introduction to Beech's highly idiosyncratic, polemical style, and penchant for aggressively electronic sound-tracking. Sparking myriad associations that coalesce around questions of the relationships between culture, politics and public space, and the rhetoric employed to espouse them, the works are exciting in tone and reinforced with deeply thought-provoking subject mater.

1. Spike Island exhibition guide.