During WWII, the Japanese army developed experimental balloons able to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the West Coast of North America in 3-6 days. Armed with explosives, they were given the code name fu-go, or fusen bakudan (“fire balloons,” or balloon bombs) in an attempt to instill a culture of fear like that caused by the far more deadly American firebombing of Japanese cities. The U.S. responded by enacting a censorship campaign, requesting newspapers avoid reports of fu-go landings or sightings. Living near the remains of a fu-go launch site in Fukushima Prefecture, Takeuchi mimics their flight take-off using a drone camera, and, traveling to North America, follows their arrival across the shoreline and rural landscapes, using a bat’s echolocation as narrative device to place fu-go and Fukushima as echos across history.
Experimental, cinematic symphony of Granada, José Val del Omar's birthplace.
This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.
Experimental film directed by Dmitry Frolov, shot in the midst of perestroika in the USSR. February 1991. Starring the drummer for the MEANTRAITORS Vladislav Lyashchuk - a very peculiar musician played without bass drums and Toms.
In this short film, the French photographer, Valérie Jouve explores the way in which an era constructs countless layers of time and space without feeling any need to establish connections between them. The film is about time or, more precisely, the various times that today make up our everyday life.
The first collaboration between Matthew Barney & Elizabeth Peyton, Blood of Two is a unique, site-specific work that draws its references from Hydra itself – the surrounding environment, animals, humans, and local traditions are all part of the project in equal measure. Blood of Two centers on the former function of the Slaughterhouse and the customs of Hydra to establish connections between paganism and religion, ancient and modern, the ritualistic and familiar. As much as its conflicted terms strive for balance and fusion, it is Blood of Two’s greater resistance to these impulses, its failure to surrender unconditionally to them that ultimately counts, as a network of overlaps and crisscrosses.
Drama, from the Greek, to do, act, or perform. A composition in which a story is related by means of dialogue and action and is represented with accompanying gesture, costume and scenery, as in real life, a play. The simplest story; a cow in a field, a day passes, articulated by a sequence of simple actions. Another day passes and the actions only vary with the chance events that make one day different from any other. Between the days three traditional songs about work, love and death are sung. These are stories too, but of generalisation, metaphor and myth, whereas the cow's drama follows only the surface pattern of events, the specific.
Marcel Duchamp alternates between scrutinizing the camera, and smiling and nodding in response to what seems to be a large crowd of off-screen admirers trying to get his attention. Occasionally he puts his fingers to his lips, indicating that he is not supposed to talk.
This documentary deals with cases of grave recycling, cemetery abandonment, and the development of homes, stores, and businesses over the top of old cemeteries, in many cases leaving the bodies in the ground and paving over them.
An experimental documentary about the street drag racing scene on Chicago’s Near West Side. This is a rambling, textured film about obsession. It is about the mythos of speed for its own sake, and it is about waiting. While waiting, The BLVD exposes community, inner-city landscapes and nomadic experiences of place. The film treats storytelling as a living medium for determining history. And it commands respect for those who transform cars, or anything else, through passion.
Life in a rural industrial town: a teenage boy, his family, friends and failed attempt at love are investigated through stark black-and-white photography and static long takes. Filmed in a fusion of authentic and staged documentation, with robotic performances by actors and non-actors, the piece meditates on the mundane existence of human and animal life.
Super 8mm film.
An enchanted cemetery in Berlin. Next to the Grimm Brothers' grave, stillborn babies and gay people rest in peace. This is the Garden of Stars.
An early student collaboration and shot on 16mm in Sicily, this cycle of kinetic assemblages is accompanied by a soundtrack composed of improvised sounds recorded on location and then in Vancouver.
How does music measure time if time is stretched like a rubber band? Irregular time signatures are ways of describing an uneven beat. The arrhythmic pulse of this film is music lesson, math puzzle, and spot-the-difference game.
The second film to feature a cast of assisted readymade clock sculptures (after Irregular Time Signatures). Starring “Sublimation Clock”, “Litmus Clock”, “Writer’s Block”, “Atomizer”, and “The Crypt.” Prior to shooting Dailies, the film and these clock sculptures were exhibited together in a 2011 exhibition in Malmö.
An unedited film documenting a rooftop sculpture garden cultivated over a summer in Vancouver. The sculptures come alive but the vegetables are apathetic.
A miniature wrecking ball and accompanying mini brick wall to be destroyed; an incomplete puzzle of the Parthenon; homemade fake latex vomit containing plastic novelties, pieces of candy, knick knacks, and detritus from the artist’s studio; pennants made from packets and designer ziplock bags; and a mesh veil adorned with chewing gums. —Western Front
“Background actors” silently inhabit the roles of pedestrians or passersby. Like an exercise in walking meditation, the pedestrians trace a path that is unstable, full of distractions, thoughts, and emotions, crises of identity, anxiety, and restlessness. —Julia Feyrer
Film is made out of gelatin that comes from horses. They’re waiting to be slaughtered, so that pictures can be made. Many years ago we learned the language of our masters. Though we couldn’t help wondering why so few of you bothered to learn ours. Three scenes featuring horses, remembering Jacinto. The first is a daytime forest haunting that winds up at a carousel, the second a rainy street in Portugal, the finale a nighttime vigil of fire and water.