'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.
The inhabited world is a constructed environment: a space that has been defined, created, and scaled for the sustenance and privilege of the human species alone. Humans have created a language that we cannot see beyond, one based on capital that hurdles us towards social and climate collapse. Contours reveals this position while also meditating on what it would mean to move away from this language in order to privilege not only the human but the other than human as well.
A memorial mourns as time passes
By becoming aware of an idea that is new to us, we talk about it all the time. And beyond that, all the subjects that we approach, we approach them through this new prism. We are going as far as proselytism - essentially to convince ourselves. We repeat the same words, slightly reformulated, until we are convinced. It is a way of swallowing our conditioning to this idea, while hinting that we are already sure. In politics or in love. We repeat ourselves. We repeat ourselves. We repeat ourselves.
Nearly devoid of editing resources, the videos feature single shots of anonymous people in daily life, subtly revealed/highlighted through zooming. Instead of uncovering reality, though, the videos end up turning it into pure invention. The “videorhizomes” are not limited to production and screening in regular, traditional circuits. The process includes sending the videos to a person that is randomly chosen from the phone book.
Are you going to push yourself hard to behave according to what the authorities dictate until you become numb as a wilted wood? An experimental film about the pressure of conforming to the society. Accustomed to the standards, people are throwing judgment and prejudice against each other that squeeze them much harder towards the invisible walls. Hypocrisy is celebrated and there’s no room for moving and no space for breathing. Human senses may be the roots of all sins, but these senses are also the foundation of life.
Catatonik is a multi sensory installation project which becomes part of my final study for the course design for social change. It is an attempt at trying to build spatial and sensorial elements which lets the body feel the microcosms of experiencing part of a coal mine and in turn an ingrained empathy as the effect of the experience. A consciously designed installation set to present the physicality of a place purely through an ethnographic reconstruction of sound and image in a different fabric of reality informed through research. The installation was entirely made in the campus of DJAD both the recording of the audio, video and its related textures.
This three-channel video installation by James Benning shows three scenes from David Wark Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). The two-minute-long screen arrangement of imperceptibly moving images alludes to the beginning of racism. The three screens each show a solider in the American Civil War, black slaves picking cotton in the field, and imposing KKK.
In this video work Bruce Nauman explores violence, gender and behaviour. Set around a simple middle class dining table, the scene quickly escalates into a slapstick fight between a man and a woman. Their actions become increasingly more erratic and aggressive yet also ridiculous and cartoon-like as the video progresses. Nauman explores the ways in which anger can be provoked by others and questions the way we can react to them. Much like many of his other artworks, he employs the use of humour and exaggeration to explore serious and even dangerous topics - he produced this work as a result of his frustration with futile acts of violence in ordinary life. He explains, “The viewer is presented with a hypnotic repetition of pointlessly cruel and destructive violence which is both seductive and alienating.”
Best known for his work in video, Richard Fung has made the politics of gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation his central focus. Chinese Characters (1986) examines the ambiguous relationship of gay Asian men with white gay porn.
An experimental film comprised of Stanley Kubrick's THE SHINING played forwards and backwards at the same time on the same screen, creating bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities
White Homeland Commando takes the familiar terrain of network action drama and tilts the playing field. Reminiscent of today's popular reality-based cop shows, White Homeland Commando offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organization. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in a highly textured visual style, the colors are subdued yet somehow garish, and the sound is deliberately just out of sync with the speaker's lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot — the editing is reminiscent of a television viewer flipping channels.
"I Do Not Know What It Is that I Am Like" juxtaposes images of animals, both wild and domestic, and natural environments with human activity as it takes place in an apartment, and during a fire walking ceremony in Fiji. Documentary-style footage is combined with staged events. Despite the piece's lack of a traditional narrative, it bears some relationship to nature works. The segment features material from "Il Corpo Scuro (The dark body)" - animals and natural environments are seen up close and at a distance.
The Karikpo masquerade - a traditional dance of the Ogoni tribe - is transposed onto the remnants of a faded oil industry programme in the Niger delta.
Paysage Nocturne
Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.
This film was made with the help of a diary, video tapes and a roll of film found in the Lahemaa forest. The owner has been reported missing
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.
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
This experimental short film by Iain Delavan serves as an abstract, yet harrowing expression of his struggles with Post-traumatic stress disorder, due to his repeated childhood sexual abuse. Iain was diagnosed with PTSD in March of 2022, and this film boldly represents the continued battles that Iain must face every day, such as severe depression, self-harm, panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, suicidal ideations, and other painful symptoms.