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.
In “The Girl,” art historical traditions of the panorama, landscape painting, and German-Romantic notions of melancholy and the sublime converge with the technological advances of cinema to create a powerful work that both unsettles and inspires.
A memorial mourns as time passes
'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.
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.
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.
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.
A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).
After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.
Experimental short film by Barbara Sykes
A woman strolls through nature, embraces trees, and enjoys stunning views. She dances around a large tree, then suddenly falls into darkness, wakes up in a completely different setting, and wonders if she was dreaming or if this is her dream.
A painter in his studio: his pencils, brushes, tubes, table, easel and drawings set themselves in motion in an explosion of colors and flashes of light.
An Experiment video by Ravin kamaran
In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).
The death of the minotavr talks about the concept of the heroine's journey. Suffering, horror and exhaustion lead the protagonist to a process of transformation, abyss and expiation, because only murdering to minotaur and everything he represents is possible to return to life. From the female gaze, it shows the depth of the emotional wounds caused by domestic violence; the same one that the surrealist Dora Maar lived and that ask why, as a society, instead of killing the minotaur, we blindly continue to send him women only to be devoured and ask them why they simply did not fight, why they did not try get out of the labyrinth.
Minotavr II
SHIFTING VISIONS is a video essay that revolves around the transition between the different stages of human consciousness. From the most intense state of full attention to the most abstract and dreamlike state, passing through all its nuances. We know that the mind remains a mystery to science, but, through combining neuroscientific theory and personal perceptions, we represent these mental dynamics transferred to images, sounds and metaphors. We thoroughly analyse each of these stages to translate concepts and create audiovisual imaginaries through symbolic mental limbos. A piece that drags the viewer on an inner journey to their own lucidity.
Abstract video art by John Sanborn and Dean Winkler. Dedicated to Ed Emshwiller.
Although Gainsbourg and Birkin had appeared in a string of films since their magnetic collision in Pierre Grimblat’s Slogan, Melody was a bit of diversion from their collaborations since it’s a series of interwoven videos inspired by the Gainsbourgalbum. For '71 it’s a novel concept to bring visual life to an LP, but even more surprising are the short film’s amazing visuals that director Averty crafted using a wealth of video filters, overlays, camera movements and chroma key effects. Averty applies these in tandem with the increasing tone of Gainsbourg’s songs, which more or less chronicle an older man's affair with a young girl. Each song is comprised of steady, sometimes brooding poetic delivery, with refrains timed to the phrase repeats of each song, while Alan Parker’s buzzing guitar accompanies and wiggles around Gainsbourg’s resonant voice. The bass is fat and groovy, the drums easy but steady, and the periodic use of strings or rich vibrato makes this short a sultry little gem.
The video opens with a barrage of explosive imagery along with an audio track of a siren taken from the 1970s TV show Wonder Woman. The following scenes are fast paced repeated shots from Wonder Woman, with several scenes following of actress Lynda Carter as the main character Diana Prince, performing her transformative spin from secretarial role into superhero role. […] The representation of repeated transformations expose the illusion of fixed female identities in media and attempts to show the emergence of a new woman through use of technology. […] The video ends with a scene of repeating explosions that precedes a blue background with white text that scrolls upwards, delivering a transcription of lyrics to the song ‘Wonder Woman Disco'.