Under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike license; thanks to Cary Peppermint for being so SUPERCOOL. I know I could not have done this without you. I’m on the path, I know it, I can feel it, cuz I don’t care:
nathaniel is SUPERCOOL video link, 424kb, 7 seconds
still from Kingfisher 0.9MB 10 sec loop
Michael Szpakowski, the brilliant artist, writer and personality behind alot of the JoyWar backing a couple of years ago (and a big supporter of Steve Kurtz) – as well as one of the core producers of DVblog – has started Scenes of Provincial Life, a new vlog of his own provocative QuickTime shorts:
A couple of years ago, I started making tiny QuickTime movies, as a kind of moving image dream diary. They quickly became a major focus of my work & I have made two or three at least every month since…
One of the things that excite me about the digital is that it makes possible a new sort of collaboration with both other artists and with non-professionals. Digitization makes the simple juxtaposition of different kinds of work straightforward, or enables a kind of framing process that, done sympathetically, enriches the work of both parties.
(Read more from the artist.) The videos, so far, range from Kentridge-like, sorrowful beauty, to quirky and experimental fluxus framing. Szpakowski’s mastery of re-mixing pop and historical culture/imagery feels like techno-poietic counsel for an ever-opening future-present, a sad co-celebration of the banal, and the possible. I want to collect them all…. Visit Scenes of Provincial Life.
The Sunday Times just covered Kaganof’s new project – a film shot entirely with cell phones:
‘Action!’ says the director for at least the 20th time in as many minutes, prompting the two female leads to start doing their thing at the pool table. As the girls hit the balls, chat and flirt, their movements are recorded by the cameras embedded in two of Sony Ericsson’s slick new W900i cellphones. That’s right: once this film, SMS Sugar Man, is completed, it will be the first feature film in the world to be shot entirely on cellphone cameras.
Ah, how I love mutual respect and fondness.
at interval featured on DVblog
michael szpakowski makes me sound cooler than I actually am by saying:
More remarkable work from Nathaniel Stern as he reworks, in the most curious of ways, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.
Interesting that although the working method here seems almost diametrically opposed to the hands on, performative approach found in the odys series (dvblog 01/05/06) here too is that same sense of the fragility & vulnerability of human beings and their bodies & psyches & of the unreliability of the language we use to try & make what we want to happen & to relate or lie about what did .
Thanks, michael! See the feature and/or download the video from this DVblog link.
Spent most of the weekend working on a new video piece for the t-minus 2006 festival, an exhibition and DVD produced by Joshua Goldberg and Chris Jordan, New York City. It’s likely to be the first in a small series of "lapses," which play with time and language by compressing popular films into a different space of relation:
video still from at interval
For at interval, I captured the entirety of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, then removed all spoken dialogue from the film. Time is slowed down, through emphasis on breathing, silence, mistakes, facial expressions and music between the text, and paradoxically sped up, through an immense shortening of the film – from one hour and thirty minutes, to just over thirteen. at interval compresses the movie by removing Allen’s characters’ lapses in judgment, and instead plays with time to accent similar impossibilities within language.
play movie
quicktime and javascript required, from browser not feed; 11.7MB pop-up window, 13:22
Instead of going to the (closed) galleries in Johannesburg, and in a very successful procrastination of the chapter I’m meant to be working on for a book by Rodopi press, here are some of the art submissions I’ve been thinking on (you know it’s procrastination when you are are just thinking about submitting):
Deadlines range from 20 Jan to 3 April, but I’m not giving any clues – click the ones you like, and see where they lead you….