Proximities

Experimental video art shot in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle

Experimental video art compiled from video taken on an LG Env3 flip phone circa 2009-2010

“Persistencies of Sadness & Still Days”, is a four hour feature film by Maximilian Le Cain and Rouzbeh Rashidi. Structured in two sections or ‘takes’ of two hours each, this dream-like, experimental project offers two complementary explorations of cinematic form that skirt around possible narratives, ducking through a series of fluctuating audio-visual categories and intensities.

Experimental short film by Barbara Sykes

Furio’s Furious Fragments & Friends - Furio Jesi (1941 Turin -1980 Genoa), enfant prodige moving between a plethora of disciplines – egyptology, history of religions, German philology, literary criticism - passed away prematurely, not without leaving bright fragments which throw light on mechanisms beneath many socio-cultural practices, for instance regarding cultural belonging, the functions of myth in modern society. He saw kind of “mythological machines” at work underneath our cultural production of meanings, historically determined, departing from a void, something that is still in culture but as residue, a missing link to an alleged authentic experience nowadays compromised up to the point to became just rhetoric, a byword, which is in no way neutral, but a tool, a macchina, for maintaining the status quo and serving the power apparatus. As in the case of holidays, celebrations and festivals.

TAMAN HUTAN Chapter Four: The Wound Response focuses on the rubber craze of the 20th century through both archival documentation of wages and an interview with Cek Anuan on his grandfather Rasimin who worked with English naturalist Henry Nicholas Ridley. Focusing on the Singapore Botanic Gardens as the site of interaction between colonists and labourers, the film reveals the wounds of those erased from colonial records but who remain inscribed within nature itself.

Anger discusses his Aleister Crowley-inspired theories of art: How he views his camera like a wand and how he casts his films, preferring to consider his actors, not human beings but as elemental spirits. In fact, he reveals that he goes so far as to use astrology when making these choices. This is as direct an explanation of Anger’s cinemagical modus operandi as I have ever heard him articulate anywhere. It’s a must see for anyone interested in his work and showcases the Magus of cinema at the very height of his artistic powers. Fascinating. (Dangerous Minds)

Holding Space explores the lived experiences of Burmese immigrants in Singapore under the gaze of neighbours in public flats. With a focus on spatial arrangements and housing exteriors, the experimental film challenges the ways architects visualise and instrumentalise their ways of seeing, seeking to hold space for subjective experiences and the subtle yet persistent influences on our domestic interiors.

The innovative and influential British filmmaker Derek Jarman was invited to direct the Pet Shop Boys' 1989 tour. This film is a series of iconoclastic images he created for the background projections. Stunning, specially shot sequences (featuring actors, the Pet Shop Boys, and friends of Jarman) contrast with documentary montages of nature, all skillfully edited to music tracks.

This live show features the energetic analysis of television network news by Brian Winston. Winston looks at the news as a unique institution, governed by its own conventions and constraints.

How does the "cultured" gorilla, i.e. Koko, come to represent universal man? Author and cultural critic Donna Haraway untangles the web of meanings, tracing what gets to count as nature, for whom and when, and how much it costs to produce nature at a particular moment in history for a particular group of people.

In his contribution to the On Art and Artists interview series, Nathaniel Dorsky (b.1943) begins by discussing his childhood love of the John Ford film Stagecoach and its influence upon his decision to make films while attending Antioch College. Describing the affinity he developed for work operating at the intersection of film materiality and personal language, Dorsky explains how he developed his philosophy of the “devotional film” and the “microcosmic viewer.” Dorsky likens his practice to Buddhist sculpture, referring to himself as a “Japanese poet continuing aspects of the ethos of the Marxist revolution.” In the interview, the artist describes his use of the screen as an “altarpiece for the image” and emphasizes his use of editing to create works which “harmoniously coalesce.” Interview conducted by Jeffrey Skoller in May 2000, edited in 2014.

Guy Ben-Ner, one of Israel's foremost video artists, gained international recognition with a series of low-tech films, starring his family in absurdist settings carved out of their intimate spaces and their everyday surroundings. Many of his videos are inspired by screenplays for films, folktales and novels. Analyzing these literary and cinematographic passages allows him to exploit the conventions of film narrative: how to tell a story, captivate an audience through a tale, sustain a degree of tension and entertainment, and so on. At the same time, he corrupts the magic of fiction by openly showing us the entrails of everything he records, without worrying about revealing the tricks of the trade. A large part of his filmic oeuvre features a conglomeration of cinematic and literary references which the artist quotes, adapts or interprets. Ben-Ner self-referentially links the great themes and their literary, cinematic and artistic realization.

In Untitled (Pink Dot), Murata transforms footage from the Sylvester Stallone film First Blood (1982) into a morass of seething electronic abstraction. Subjected to Murata's meticulous digital reprocessing, the action scenes decompose and are subsumed into an almost palpable, cascading digital sludge, presided over by a hypnotically pulsating pink dot.

Lasting over thirteen hours, Claerbout's film shows two men engaged in a discussion against the back-drop of a neoclassical house in southern France. An act of violence is repeated and re-enacted more than seventy times over the course of the film. Dissolving the boundaries between photography and film, Claerbout’s work puts into question the reassuring stillness of photography and the inevitable narrative progress of the cinematic image.

The goddess Diana and her two attendants traverse the rugged terrain of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains in pursuit of the elusive wolf. An Engraver (Matthew Barney) furtively documents their actions in copper engravings and provokes a series of confrontations. The characters communicate through dance, letting movement replace language as they pursue each other and their prey.

NAO_VA_EMBORA.mp4

Brief history of the video artist and the history of the video

Stan Brakhage is a film maker whose work is shown mainly at film festivals. His work has been likened to poetry. Brakhage explains his techniques and his motivation.

Light is the first bodily form pays homage to the philosopher of light, Robert Grosseteste. The title is intended to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek since this video was made entirely in the dark, using only a circuit bent Webcam. No additional computer effects were added to the video. The music is the song “Rain Serenade” by Natural Snow Buildings.