Under the impetus of the 75th anniversary of the bamboo top-handle bags, the House presents a contemporary retelling of an ancient Japanese story entitled ‘Taketori Monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter).’ Makoto Nagahisa stages the plot of finding oneself, along with true love, in a Tokyo betwixt and between reality and a dream. Dressed in looks from the Gucci Love Parade collection, Hikari Mitsushima, Aoi Yamada, and Eita Nagayama star in the story shedding a new light on the Gucci Bamboo 1947 and Gucci Diana Beloved lines.
Filmed in Berlin, July 1990. Images of workers taking down the wall and street peddlers selling pieces of it to make a living.
An intimate and introspective experimental film in which the author's anxious manias and worries are presented visually, without the need for sound. The movement of her fingers and mouth, both tearing the skin, accompanied by the images of her eyes show that even though it is sometimes involuntary, the author is aware of her manias and because they are present at every moment of her life, they are evident to those around her. Even when conscious, her manias are almost impossible to control, as the body is already programmed to surrender to the internal need to self-mutilate in order to relieve some of the anxiety.
Avant-garde composer John Cage is famous for his experimental pieces and "chance music" but temporarily branched into video in 1992 with this art film about meaningless activity. The work is composed of two segments that are supposed to be played simultaneously: "One 11" contains the artistic statement, and "103" is a 17-part orchestral piece. Also included is a revealing documentary about Cage and director Henning Lohner.
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
Fifteen images of a camera running in a park and in obscurity searching the space of light through distorsion and the sensory of rapid motion.
"Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity" says the bible. The word flows from the tongue naming the pleasure of earthly life and judging it as beautiful, but shallow and useless; vanity is a deadly sin. A female sin. The man painted the woman, put a mirror in his hands and called it vanity. The woman in representation admires herself, but the one who really admires her body is the artist. Whose vanity? In VANITAS, we re-divide the woman in our bodies, showing the depth of what is palpable. If the Father's temple hides after death, clean and perfect, we reject them. We welcome Mother Nature in us, life-death in a perpetual sacred cycle, also honoring her dark face. You may wish to reach heaven, but it is on earth that your knees fall.
A man is trapped in a loop somewhere between life and death. Based on Bardo, a Buddhist term for an intermediate state between death and rebirth. This film combines elements of art house, avant-garde, surrealism, and experimental horror.
A drifter spends the night in an abandoned house and encounters a Window of Consciousness. This award-winning film combines elements of art house, avant-garde, surrealism, and experimental horror.
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.
"Thornton's magnum opus, this ongoing and open-ended serial follows its two improvisatory protagonists, children “raised by technology,” through a surreal landscape where pop culture and history, science and science fiction blur." - BAM
Twenty images of a camera running next to a chemical platform and capturing abstract light throught improvised gestures and asymmetrical motion
For Barbara Figueroa
An exploration of the Cultural Revolution that depicts both its chaotic later years – through the story of a squad of Red Army guards running amok in the countryside – and its continuing legacy in today’s China.
This video contains six life size boxes, made to measure. They are working models exploring how the architecture of the boxes (i.e. planes, axis and volume) can be used to see the human figure as an object in three dimensional space.
Performance art. Two men are stuck in an enclosed space.
In 1919 an art school opened in Germany that would change the world forever. It was called the Bauhaus. A century later, its radical thinking still shapes our lives today. Bauhaus 100 is the story of Walter Gropius, architect and founder of the Bauhaus, and the teachers and students he gathered to form this influential school. Traumatised by his experiences during the Great War, and determined that technology should never again be used for destruction, Gropius decided to reinvent the way art and design were taught. At the Bauhaus, all the disciplines would come together to create the buildings of the future, and define a new way of living in the modern world.
"In medical terminology, absence of genitalia in females is referred to as "gynatresia". In other words, an extreme defect that goes beyond a mere illness" Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive
The video revolution of the 1970s offered unprecedented access to the moving image for artists and performers. This Is Not a Dream explores the legacies of this revolution and its continued impact on contemporary art and performance. Charting a path across four decades of avant-garde experiment and radical escapism, This Is Not a Dream traces the influences of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Jack Smith to the perverted frontiers of YouTube and Chatroulette, taking in subverted talk shows and soap operas, streetwalker fashions and glittery magic penises along the way.
Welcome to the temple of fear and eroticism, as a monstrous madman slowly mutilates poor young girls! See the sensual act of voodoo performed on an innocent bar patron! View the lustful bite of a vampire!