BJORN MELHUS (The Magic Glass)
DIRGES AND STURGEONS
Curated by Astria Suparak
for Anthology Film Archives, NYC.
YACHT: Young Artists Challenge High Technology (for a Total eclipse of the heart). These (mostly) new videos from America and Europe have tying threads of: the use of high (?) technology or the idea of "future" in a lo fi way, dopplegang/replication, instant nostalgia as the residue of planned obsolescence, states of limbo. High and low (fidelity and culture). Astria Suparak in person.
For more info & tour dates visit www.astriasuparak.com
Stick Around for Refreshments and Sounds
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MIRANDA JULY (Getting Stronger Every Day, 2001)
ANIMAL CHARM (Sunshine Kitty and/or Lightfoot Fever, Slow Gin Soul Stallion)
JACQUELINE GOSS (The 100th Undone, 2001)
BJORN MELHUS (The Magic Glass)
PIERRE YVES CLOUIN (The Little Big)
SETH PRICE (Industrial Synth, 2002)
LAWRENCE ELBERT (Whitney: Mama's Little Baby, 2000)
Animal Charm
SUNSHINE KITTY or SLOW GIN SOUL STALLION and LIGHTFOOT FEVER. Video, 4 minutes.
Kittens in crisis as chopped up by media cannibals Animal Charm (in their early
days known as "The Pros").
Lawrence Elbert
WHITNEY: MAMA'S LITTLE BABY. Video, 8:30 minutes.
The diva as a paranoid crackhead venting tender(izing) love on her backseat
baby.
Pierre Yves Clouin
THE LITTLE BIG. Video, 3:38 minutes.
"Every crease and surface of the human body has erotic potential in the work
of Pierre Yves Clouin. With only details of unidentifiable flesh to ponder,
sexual tension vibrates between the screen and the audience's collective imagination.
The answer to the question 'Is that his...or his...?' is kept out of reach,
drawing the viewer into a mind-body-camera menage-à-trois with no climax...
" -- Cinematexas International Short Film + Video Festival
Jacqueline Goss
THE 100TH UNDONE. 2001, video, silent, 9 minutes
"A love letter to the individual in the age of biotechnical reproduction - i.e.,
transcription of the Human Genome - with a personalized pre-history for future
human clones." -New York Video Festival
Miranda July
GETTING STRONGER EVERY DAY. 2001, video, 6:30 minutes.
"There are two movies I saw on TV about boys who were taken from their families
and then returned to them years later. One boy was on a fun spaceship for years
and the other boy was kidnapped and molested. These boys were never the same
again and they just couldn't re-integrate into the family. I saw these movies
when I was little. I've often described them to people, always paired together.
They are sort of the comedy and tragedy version of the same story and it is
a mundanely spiritual story. GETTING STRONGER EVERY DAY includes these boys'
tales, but they are like mystical objects placed on the living reality of the
man storyteller. In other parts of the movie actual mystical objects hover in
peoples lives without a myth or story attached. I like to think about how these
dimensions interact simply and can be enacted: real life / story / worldly /
spirit / video / flat drawing." --MJ
Bjorn Melhus
DAS ZAUBERGLAS (The Magic Glass). Video, 6 minutes.
A short meeting of a shaving man and his female reflection in the magic glass/the
TV monitor. A tale about coming and going and the desire of an incomprehensible
virtual image. Based on the German version of the 1950's Western romance, "Broken
Arrow".
Seth Price
INDUSTRIAL SYNTH. 2001, video, 15 minutes.
"Modernity, the period roughly spanning the mid 19th century to the present,
has produced a vast body of linked and interrelated 'mass' or 'popular' culture,
which is, in effect, an archive. This phenomenon is closely tied to the rise
of time-based media, from film and the gramophone, through the LP and CD, TV
and radio, HiFi, animation, video, and the World Wide Web.
"Most recent of these, the web represents a different order of information technology. Its interactivity distinguishes it from traditional media's 'total flow,' which may run 24 hours a day, but can only be switched on or off. Moreover, the web is composed of disparate media previously available only in controlled broadcasts, or locked into discrete consumer objects such as videotapes and records. At least theoretically, then, the historical archive of pop culture becomes accessible, and, just as importantly, mutable: this is an opportunity not simply for preservation, but for recirculation and recombination along new lines.
"An archive like this allows for an experience of history that is quite personal. Artifacts such as pop songs, typeface designs, logos, and advertisements, are, like illuminated manuscripts or Victorian corsets, headstones marking a bygone era; the difference is that an item of the 'just-past' may have originated in the lived experience of the viewer, and produces the shock of the uncanny: it remains the same as it was, and yet completely different. This shock is a recognition that the change has occurred in the viewing subject. These items are the detritus of a society predicated on perpetual turnover and obsolescence, and a personal experience of history is an intimation of one's own mortality." --SP
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for info : www.astriasuparak.com
