Plasforms

Video art by Vibeke Sorensen made at Calarts in 1989

This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.

In a city inhabited by drawn beings, an indigenous boy witnesses a holographic appearance. It is the arrival of an entity of unknown materiality. With a mysterious presence and exotic allegories, it starts to enchant the residents, awakening their most insane senses.

A whirlwind of improvisation combines the images of animator Pierre Hébert with the avant-garde sound of techno whiz Bob Ostertag in this singular multimedia experience, a hybrid of live animation and performance art.

Abstract video art created in 1981. Music by Vibeke Sorensen and Walter Michael. Abstract video art created in 1981 at EUE Video in NYC.

Shot on 16mm film in New York and composed in Berlin, the work explores polarizing themes of the metropolis. Audibly and visually, the viewer is put in a flicker between serenity and intensity; harrowing ambience cut with sharp beeps, vulnerable steps mashed in high velocity.

A nomadic homunculus ranger lives in the derelict wastelands of Neo Kansas City 2, where they barely survive and make friends, despite the constant chaos.

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

"In an effort to explore the flexibility of Telidon, Canada's videotex system, Pierre Moretti, animation artist from the National Film Board, used, in the graphic mode, the geometric figures which form the basis for Telidon's picture description instructions. Thus he created this short animated film."

Chamyto Tapes V1

A feminine machine, stuffed with modern nano-technology and useless operations is depicted in this mixed-media 2D animation short, highlighting the consequences of consumerism and the downfall of civilized society. The machine reminiscent of a two-dimensional video game, leads to a destructive chain reaction after a strange malfunction, with people turning into clones and robots.

A compilation of avant-garde artwork and talent of the mid to late 20th century hosted by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Part one of the two part abstract video art-piece, with music composed by Philip Glass and performed by the Kronos String Quartet.

Experimental video art set to the track "Place I Know/Kid Like You" by Arthur Russell.

The term hysteresis soberly describes a processual behaviour where the previous history affects the result as much as new changes. Robert Seidel enters analogue drawings, performance footage of the queer dancer Tsuki and pluck sounds and drones by Oval into a feedback system that reorganises time and movement in a multicoloured and sensual organic tableau.

Real time development of a video feedback, processed and controlled through a video keyer. Sound results from video signals, interfaced with audio synthesizer.

“The faster you break it the faster we make it,” says the wooden column at one point, going on to acknowledge the bounteous economic logic of this reality with the observation that “production is sealed in gold.”Early on we see the black-and-white striped house Adolf Loos designed for Josephine Baker. It’s a cardboard model, of course; the plans were never realized. The house is an idea, an image, a virtual presence, a possibility, a provocation. Later in the film it reappears, reconfigured in different materials with a different range of qualities and surface finishes. “Why do so many things look the same, and only one of them is good?” asks a female voice. This is not the column’s voice but that of someone who sounds much like Marten herself. It is, in fact, her sister, one Marten speaking another Marten’s words. After all, in order to manufacture glamour, a little plagiarism is essential. And this process—call it borrowing, copying, paying homage, whatever—is both violent and comic.

For Ed Atkins, Marten’s "Evian Disease" embodies ‘flatness’ in all its weightlessness, emotional deficit and hollowness of representation. The fact that it’s completely unapologetic about it is what makes it a dangerous piece to his mind.

Orchids,… centers on an animated video in which Marten sets forth a sanitised and alluring world of free-floating and fragmentary objects. Excised from normal context and imbued with an impossible cosmetic sheen, these crystalline forms are conjured in colours that range from the surreally heightened to the deliberately banal. A line of toy-like objects – a train, a giraffe on wheels, a boat – trundles along on an impossibly turquoise plane. Parasitically followed by a swirling black fly, the unfolding narrative is one of production, consumption and saturation. Elsewhere, the naked human backside of the title (cropped and anonymous) is shown with a luridly-glowing orchid tucked between its buttocks. At points, the imagery takes on the semblance of a painting or diagram, both formulaic ‘analogues’ of reality, like the video itself, implying the knotty weight of a Cézanne still life.

A young, wannabe streetwear influencer dying to make an impact on the world gets a lot more than he bargained for when a shy but obsessive fan decides to help him become a star for his own gain at the expense of everyone else involved. Macabre Metrics is an almost feature-length, visually experimental exploration into the world of image culture set in Seoul. Shot entirely on iPhone with animated sequences.