Features works that explore the crisis of media, advertising, consumption and politics in contemporary times with surprising, sublime and humorous results.
Mathieu Borysevicz/Jean-Christian Bourcart
RAPTURE
13:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Born from the decaying refuse of mass media production and propaganda, RAPTURE is the remains of a story that fell by the wayside, discarded after imprinting, only momentarily haunting images upon the amicable consumers. Different characters are transformed into ghosts and haunt collective society. They are the embodiment of denial, compliance, and victimization. The ghosts are both the executioners and the sufferers of incessant and blinding post 9-11 propaganda.
Graciela Fuentes
To protect
5:46 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
To protect overlays images that derive from different mechanisms and discourses of protection in American culture to create a visual flow of public figures, pixilated texture and short movie scenes that merge endlessly into each other composing a “media quilt” meant to embrace the viewer. In its frenetic and speeded up sequencing this video mimics the way televised media attempts to arouse and anesthetize the audience's attention with fragmented information.
Clean up. Clear up.
2:30 min, DV PAL, black and white, stereo, 2002
The starting point for Clean up. Clear up. are text fragments from an advertisement for Dr. Zizmor's chemical peelings, which Nagel found in the New York subway. The video shows the removal of the ugly dark spots from a face of a person and thereby gives a direct translation of the written text into an image.
These are difficult times.
8:00 min, DV PAL, color, stereo, 2005
A humorously critical portrait of a perspective on the pomp and circumstance of the United States in recent years. Nagel developed These are difficult times as sequences to portray action in specific spaces. The scenes or encounters that take place in these spaces deal with the transformations of perception that occur in response to social stagnation. The provocative content of dramatized images, which is expressed not so much in the aggression of the depicted agents as in their defensive attitude. Central to the work is the idea of being trapped within repetitive sequences of action.
Federico Nessi
AMERICA IS…
4:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Nessi considers the binary of the foreign perspective on the United States, oscillating between being viewed as the leader of a corrupt capitalistic empire or as the land of the free, where the streets are paved in gold. Reflecting on his childhood sentiments of security and prosperity, and his current less optimistic views, Nessi created AMERICA IS... to capture both these sentiments during a time when the United States was split in two – the 2004 presidential elections. Through a combination of original video and audio, with appropriated media, Nessi explores the line that rests between these extremities.
Donald O'Finn
Teletubby (Narratives from Appropriated Material)
1:40 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
R. Scott Porter
The Big Fucking Lebowski
3:18 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
This piece is a re-edit of the Joel and Ethan Cohen cult favorite "The
Big Lebowski". Parts are omitted but nothing is repeated.
Krista Leigh Steinke
American Carwash
3:45 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
UnityGain
UnityGain TV 15FEB03 [xrp]
13:40 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
UnityGain TV 15FEB03 [xrp] is a video excerpt featuring politically charged imagery with ambient audio taken from an evening of live video and audio performance created between several members of UnityGain - music by Hahn Rowe, David Last/Charles Cohen; video by Vishwanath Bush/Benton-C Bainbridge with add'l footage by Jason Sinopoli; produced by David Linton/the hausofouch, nyc.
Anabela Zigova
Restitution Opportunity
5:45 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2001
A performance based video documenting Zigova preparing flashy gift bags with a various trash from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and presenting people with them as free gifts around the chic area of Saint Germain-des-Pres. The reactions of the people vary greatly, from hesitation to excitement upon the receipt of the package, from laughter to anger upon opening the bag, revealing the expectations and trust we have as consumers.
Danielle Zimmermann
LONG FOREVER
2:40 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
LONG FOREVER confronts the audience with humorous and playful mirror images showing patterns of social intersections and behavioral structures through three narratives that parody commercials on TV. The "products" featured in the commercials are part of Zimmermann's artwork dealing with our colorful world of consumer products and advertisements, making intersections of fine art and commercial consumption visible to the audience. Serving a dual function, LONG FOREVER critiques the mechanism of advertising while simultaneously serving as an advertisement for Zimmermann's artwork.
David Zuckerman
Foreign Affairs
12:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Contains a variety of works by artists considering the notion of what formulates an identity, such as national identity, gender, cultural nuances, surnames, or family bonds.
Johanna Evans
What Super Power Would You Choose?
4:13 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
In What Super Power Would You Choose? Evans simultaneously uses and subverts clichéd movie language; imitates/imagines impossible acts such as flying or disappearing, and relies on the very real powers of the mind, eye and video camera. Characters perform fake tricks through this low-tech video version of Hollywood special effects.
MK Guth
I Want to Hold Your Hand
3:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
I Want to Hold your Hand is a multi frame video revolving around the possible identity of a Superhero. The video's indeterminate narrative reflects a mythical identity in flux and ponders the issues of desire, determination, coincidence and motive.
Sarah Hanssen
Sarah Nye
6 min, 16 mm color, sound, transferred to DV NTSC, 2003
This film is a meditation on the role of marriage and divorce within personal identity. Intimate images of familial love and domestic places describe a young couple. But these happy family moments and kissing couples are undermined by the text that describes each character through their divorces. What begins as a portrait of a bride named Sarah Nye results in her becoming the filmmaker, once again.
Claudia Joskowicz
Perfect
2:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2000
Dealing with dubbing and subtitling, Perfect explores the degeneration of the filmic narrative, as it is perceived by foreign audiences. The dialogue, sampled from the film Harriet Craig (1950), was translated into Spanish using the Alta Vista translation site in the internet. The Spanish translation was subsequently translated back into English using the same translation site. The same actor lip-synchs both parts of the dialogue; as we hear the original film's dialogue in one screen we see the degenerated subtitles projected in the adjacent screen.
Gautam Nikolai Kansara
Dedicated
10:44 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Sujin Lee
she is a girl who speaks for herself
19:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
A two channel video of two characters having a “dialogue”, that questions the subject and object of speech, performing language and the meaning of inserting and imposing one's voice onto another's. One channel presents Speech Girl "speaking" about her speech and herself, and the other channel presents Dubbing Girl dubbing her voice for the other's speech. Silence and pauses within Speech Girl's “dialogue” are replaced by anxiety and the anticipation of Dubbing Girl. Speech Girl is dependent on Dubbing Girl, who is vocal most of the time, her presence is dependent on Dubbing Girl's existence.
Gretchen Skogerson
swf, 29, seeks self
9:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Elisabeth Smolarz
In Between
19:47 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Video interview portraits of 14 Germans who live and work in New York City: They tell us about their life in the city with its everyday cultural differences and the way they are dealing with them.
Molly Stevens
Nanny
5:54 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
The time children spend with surrogate caretakers often exceeds the exposure they have to their biological parents, and it is not uncommon for parental relations – with all that they imply emotionally and psychologically – to develop. This video adieu between a nanny and the now-grown child formerly under her care represents issues of attachment and loss that are inherent in the relationship.
This screening explores two seemingly opposite mediums, painting and video, to discover what they have in common, such as the immediacy of process, mark making and historical motifs.
Lee Arnold
Traffic
4:10 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
In his recent work, Traffic, Arnold has created a dialogue between still and moving images through ink drawings and digital animation. The results of this mixing of analog and digital media represent a convergence of worlds – both real and imagined – that allow representation and abstraction to intermingle. Movement is suggested as one views a static image over time, while a fluid animation slowly breaks up into its discrete parts. Arnold's work brings the fluidity of the imagination to the precision of the digital aesthetic, watching them both change over time.
Sally Grizzell Larson
CERTAIN WOMEN
3:35 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
CERTAIN WOMEN is an unspoken conversation between two distinct histories, one that is defined by its status of openness and the other by its confining properties, represented here by two women who meet clandestinely outside of the comfort of middle-class rationale. As we move physically from an exterior to an interior and more contemplative space, we are asked to consider how narrative becomes documented history: Do we become prisoners of that history, destined forever to be viewed from a singular, intractable perspective?
Valentina Loi
Les Amants
3:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Les Amants 2003 is a work that is based on the painting of Magritte titled "Les Amants" from 1929. It is a game of hide and seek between two lovers, the identity of these two people, and the spectator. It is a kiss that lasts 3 minutes un-cut in real time without audio. The video, based on the historical painting, addresses the issues between the mediums of painting and video. A video was created from the original painting and Loi created a painting from the video - completing a full circle in the concept of painting and video as conflicting mediums.
Stephen B. Nguyen
Vo1 untitled
3:33 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Vo1 untitled work is a stop motion animation of eraser drawings on panel. The stills, or "cells" of which the animation is comprised, are created by erasing through a field of graphite powder down to a white primed panel. The imagery is a nightscape depicted only through pulsing and moving lights. There is little delineation between architecture, cars, signs, and the general darkness of the city leaving the definition of space and form up to the imagination of the audience.
Justin Plakas
me vs me
1:40 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
me vs me is a self - portrait constructed entirely out of stills shot on a digital camera. Ganged together, looped and layered, Plakas makes work under the motto of his grandmother "Keep it short and keep it real".
Ursula Scherrer
Schilf
6:03 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Estonia/USA
camera and editing by Ursula Scherrer, music by Michael J. Schumacher
Kiwon Song
Feel Homesick
2:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
A meditative video that combines traditional Korean painting and wind instruments, with images of water and the sky. Song created this piece as a reflection on the immense difficulty of living as stranger in a foreign country without family and friends. The images fade in and out, blur and refocus to express “as soon as one is getting used to a strange world one loses his way in it.”
Jason Varone
Double Landscape
3:40 min, DV NTSC, color, 2004
Varone makes video pieces as landscape paintings for the age of telecommunications, a view of the eventscape. In Double Landscape nature is seen through the distorting lens of technology, like an X-ray of the world revealing that our landscape is simultaneously absorbing and reacting to the information traveling through it. Double Landscape is a portrait of a world in a constant state of flux, a long and continuous emergency.
By taking the ordinary and re-framing it, these works reveal news ways of considering the everyday.
Mauricio Alejo
Crack / Hole / Line / Twig / Univers
5 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002 - 2004
"Alejo's videos present seemingly straight forward images that, through a simple action or intervention, are revealed to be illusory. His works mischievously explore the nature of the three-dimensional space in which the are produced, the two-dimensional surface on which they are shown, and the mental and imaginative spaces they evoke.” -Ralph Rugoff
Martin Beauregard
Ghost Time
2:00 min,DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Karla Carballar
5dias
2:50 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
"At the end of the fall last year I spent 5 days crying after getting bad news from home. One night I was crying, I stopped for few seconds and set the camera to record my eye…The camera acted as an “external eye”, almost like a separate consciousness that granted me some space. Then, I was able to see my pain a little bit from outside…In my work I use myself as the starting point of a larger exploration of my surroundings." - Karla Carballar
Priyanka Dasgupta
Intheyamuna
1:54 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Dasgupta's videos isolate moments of tranquility in the urban environment, and celebrate these instances by extending and recreating them as quiet, intimate video works.
Intheyamuna is a revisit to the Yamuna River in India. Commonly labeled the dirtiest river in the country, here it is presented as a playground, a source of joy for children. This dichotomy in perception, of the river and the plight of these children, is emphasized through the treatment of the visuals and the sound.
Rebecca Dolan
Lake
2:23 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2000
Lake is a video where the voice behind the camera seems to animate drops of water on the lake. As the voice grows louder the waves come rolling in.
Rachel Beth Egenhoefer
Lets Learn Binary
2:34 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2001
Egenhoefer is fascinated with binary numbers. Conceptually and physically she has used binary numbers and their coded ordered structure in her works. The base two number systems build the foundation for most computerized machines. The simplistic language of zeros and ones; invisible, intangible, and infinite. These numbers represent the intangible while translating that into visual images and objects. Information cannot be represented any simpler and yet infinitely complicated at the same time.
Mia Enell
Dipped Fingertips
3:40min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
"The slow, meditative movement is steady. I dip my hands into thick, dark, sticky paint. Using reduced means to hint at a variety of high and low matters: painting, sex, getting dirty ( or infected), manicure, guilt, unexpected logic of life... When you go into something dark but magically come out clean. A happy ending. " - Mia Enell
MK Guth
Weekend Get Away
4:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Weekend Get Away is a multi-frame video where Batman and Batgirl continually try to meet on a beach, but can never accomplish this goal as the digital boxes that they each occupy separate them. As the video progresses the footage begins to digitally break down distorting the images and creating digital white noise. The video is a meditation on separation and loneliness in a technological age.
Bosung Kim
Spitting Flower
6:52 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Kim documents the residue of partially consumed flower, as he chews and spits the petals into a frame, creating an abstracted image.
Valentina Loi
We did it all over again
2:34 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Catherine Ross
Perfect Poses (Rockefeller Center)
3:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Perfect Poses (Rockefeller Center) captures the seemingly choreographed actions of tourists as they prepare for a photograph on a "picture spot" platform. Elea Robinson responds to the movements with an original violin improvisation.
Jennifer Schmidt
Scan-Tron
1:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Referencing the recording and reading of responses embedded within a series of fabricated standardized test sheets, the techno pop graphics of Scan-Tron become mentally charged with viable questions and patterns of decision-making. During the months of November, December, and January 2003, Jennifer Schmidt responded to a series of test forms-- filling in answers with a #2 pencil--according to a given set of rules and unknown objectives.
Isa Stein
Concrete Dance
5.30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
This video project shows the artist mixing plaster and water with her legs. The more her movements get stopped, her body splits into two. She “looses” her body and gets static.
Tamara Yadao
The Puppet Cocoon
4:58 min, DV NTSC, black and white, stereo, 2004
The Puppet Cocoon is a video performance describing the Lacanian mirror stage, which is organized around a fundamental experience of identification. Scene-oriented situations examine the conflict between an artist's struggle in mastering her own body image, while trying to cope with her machine-like dependencies.
Artists investigate the human condition and landscape of the brimming megalopolis, revealing our disorientation with regards to cultural authenticity, social borders, and the trappings of modern day culture.
Nyda Collazo-Llorens
SUBTERRANEO
2:23 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2001
Subterráneo is a filmic collage depicting a journey, a mindscape where memory, language and issues of displacement play a central role. It shifts back and forth between the narrator and the viewer, between what is seen and what is heard, between the conscious and the subconscious, and between the body and the mind.
Donna Conlon
Single Solitary
5:46 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
The artist walks through different neighborhoods in Baltimore, wearing each of over 200 found single shoes. The collection of shoes took place over 5 years time. The shoe as well as the background changes in each take, the second foot remains bare, and the rhythm of walking gives continuity to the montage.
Jill Epstein
Havana Drive
4:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
A drive through the neighborhoods of the two social classes of Cuba: lower class and government.
Sarah Hanssen
Two by Twelve
1:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Two by Twelve was created for the CityZooms exhibition in Bremen, Germany upon the invitation of a curator. Artists were selected from seven port cities around the world to create a one-minute video about their city. Hanssen chose to show the entirety of Manhattan in that one minute. The real time movement of the water links with the rhythmic presence of the piano music, while the buildings speed by and the radio clips in and out. The themes of staccato motion coupled with a quick rhythm embody my experience of New York City. The title, Two by Twelve, refers to the dimensions of Manhattan Island.
Shawn Mackinnon
Expiration Market
4:40 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
"Expiration Market initially began as a simple study of supermarket biometrics. The video charts the prime eye-level real estate of the shopping space to document current product placement strategies at a local A&P in New Jersey. Due to privacy and proprietary law in this country however, the project quickly transformed into a race against detection and obstruction by store security. Miraculously the tape survived well into the dairy section."
Maria Mayer/Tom Ainslie
Berlin/Detroit
18:51 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
This piece is an experimental documentary about the urban environments of Berlin and Detroit. Each of the cities has undergone dramatic changes over the course of the last 100 years, and in each case that history has been repressed to some degree. Detroit was left abandoned as residents fled the city for suburban comfort, while Berlin rebuilt itself following the fall of the Wall. Berlin/Detroit is an attempt to blend two cities together to the point where neither is distinguishable from the other. This approach serves to create a cyclical system in which the one serves as the forgotten memory of the other.
Sharon Paz
Wandering Home
4:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Wandering Home strives to re-define the notion of ‘home.' It explores the ways in which we experience the ‘home'; how we perceive it, not only with regard to its contents, namely the objects within it, but also with respect to the exterior, to everything that it is not.
Catherine Ross
Waiting Work
5:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Waiting Work surveils the everyday performances that occur in people whose job it is to wait for something to happen.
Caspar Stracke
NO DAMAGE
13:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
NO DAMAGE is a composition made out of fragments from over 80 different feature and documentary films that show the architecture of New York City. The work investigates a number of cinematic clichés of architectural presence captured on film. The failure of the camera eye to grasp these high risen structures in its entireness produces distorted views, such as steep camera angles, fish eye distortion and fast zooms and pans.
Jason Varone
Videodrawing in Brooklyn
2:50 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Works that investigate, subvert and celebrate images of stereotypes, idealism and optimism in unexpected ways....or that are just strange.
Cliff Baldwin
New World Coming
3:09 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2001
"NWC arrives at a moment when "the world has changed". Perhaps our collective consciousness has shifted - each in his or her own way. Indeed the message has not changed in thirty years. The words still ring true, even if the horn break does not. An outlook that is optimistic provides the most options for us all, so I embrace this optimism wholeheartedly. And so it is with tambourine in hand, that I revive a piece of twentieth century popular music. The world that is coming may or may not be what we are expecting, but that's just fine with me." - Cliff Baldwin
Martin Beauregard
Game over, Last Time Cowboy, Lotus
4:40 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Rob Carter
Three Extracts From Stills
4:45 min, color, stereo, 2003 - 2004
Three Extracts From Stills is a selection of video vignettes that re-examine three found images. These images are manipulated using stop-motion animation in an attempt to re-invent them, and alter or enhance their original meaning, whilst emphasizing the three-dimensionality of the paper they are printed on. Each scene is re-contextualized by literally cutting the image and adding sound to alter the way the viewer perceives the significance and illusion of the still image. The theme that links each is our understanding of renewal – changing environments, and ultimately the temporality and fragility of the image itself.
Lin de Mol
Lessons in Lightness
8:30 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
The short films in this triptych form a story with an associative structure. The atmosphere is playful and magic, as in a dream, where anything is possible. Does the shadow of a shrieking seagull steer the girl to a boy or to her freedom? Is a grass-stalk longer than a stone's throw, or the flight of an aero plane? How far then, is someone who is in your thoughts? Is a caper pain, ecstasy, a climax or a vanishing? Each story ends in an inexplicable, surreal event, in which characters and surroundings are united for one single moment.
Lydia Grey
Fish Slap
2:50 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Two fish are slapped against each other, slowly, deliberately, compulsively, repeatedly – the action goes on infinitely.
Penny Lane
We Are The Littletons: A True Story
10:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
We Are The Littletons presents a tangled web of found objects, intercepted correspondences, reenactments and total fabrications centered around Eve Portia Littleton Rodriguez, an artist with “movie star good looks” who was mysteriously banished from her postcard-perfect American family. A true story with forged signatures, We Are The Littletons is about what's outside the margins of the American Dream, the people and memories that get removed from the family photos and erased from the records. It is also about their persistent struggle to come home, welcome or not.
Eileen Maxson
Untitled (Three Revised Fairytales)
3:35 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Aurora picks more than berries, Lady gets a new reputation and Cinderella meets 90210.
Cindy Rehm
Shimmer
3:14 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Shimmer features a subverted image of the mythic blonde archetype in an act of seduction. The images explore notions of glamour and eroticism through the tense relationship between attraction and repulsion.
A screening of sound based video works including electronic, pop, experimental, improvisation and field recordings joined with a wide range of visuals from animation and effects processing to live action.
Benton-C Bainbridge/Evidence (Stephan Moore + Scott Smallwood)
Bridge
6:06 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Bridge is the first audiovisual
performance artifact from Benton-C Bainbridge and Evidence's new project,
"Landscaping." Bainbridge, Moore and Smallwood visit sites to
simultaneously capture sounds and moving pictures, using these 'found'
recordings as the raw material for live electronic performances. Using
laptops, the trio 'performs locations,' reworking painting's landscape
tradition as a dynamic temporal interchange between improvisers and audience.
Bridge was performed live to tape on 29 February
2004 from media sampled at sunset on the Brooklyn Bridge. http://www.benton-c.com
http://www.ecnedive.com
D. Edward Davis/Mary Russell/Gerard Wozek
When Verdi Sings
11:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Antony Flackett
Toy Noise Remix / FACE LIFT / FACE OFF
4:10 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004- 2005
These three short videos are a continuation of Antony Flackett's Sound Bites series (1994-1996) that explored the notion of "video music" through the rhythmic editing of synced sound and image as captured live for the camera. In these newer pieces Antony uses digital editing and funky beats to transform everyday sounds, motions and expressions into dynamic hip-hop compositions.
Tamar Susi Halpern
Tarzana, California - Thursday Morning
10:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
Deborah Johnson (CandyStations) / The Aluminum Group
Mr. Butterfly
4:15 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
"Mr. Butterfly" Performed by The Aluminum Group
Lovers leave a mark. In this piece, a reverie of lovers past plays out upon the pillow like a trace of perfume left after your best and saddest tryst.
Direction: Deborah Johnson / Animation: Deborah Johnson and Andre Walker / Drawings: Carlos Cabeza
Siew-wai Kok
Duet
8:34 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2003
Duet is a sound meditation of the human voice and the sound of water pipes running through the building. Duet explores the relationships of self/other, self/space and living forms/non-living forms, and how they are all connected with one another. Duet contemplates on subjects such as integration, meditation and solitude.
skfl (a.k.a. jason steven murphy)
MUSTC
7:20 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2002
Birgit Rathsmann and Bruce Alcock / Solex
Solex All Licketysplit
2:26 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 1999
Solex is in love with the 18th Street train lift bridge in Chicago. She dances for it and it dances for her.
Ursula Scherrer / Michael J. Schumacher
London Heathrow
13:00 min, DV NTSC, color, stereo, 2004
This painterly video combines images shot at Heathrow airport with subtle sonic elements. The frenetic public space of the airport is transformed into a serene, constantly shifting abstract portrait of site-specific color and light.