progress 2 /Robert Frank

The past week and tomorrow I'm editing the final composition for the second triptych for my projection.
Now I realize how difficult it is to edit together in the same composition three videos with different durations each and looping endlessly and seamlessly.
I spend most of the time with weird calculations.
I'm waiting for a reply from Nathan for a tutorial this week.
I wrote a statement on what I'm doing but for the exhibition I consider having something written from somebody else about my work or a very nice small text about art from Robert Frank.
Frank said at US Camera Annual 1958
"Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others. Perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also, it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph."

I have to discuss for the room in which I'll make my double back-screen projection for my assessment.
I also need to discuss if it is possible to have a projection in the exhibition, since it is vital for my work to be looping
I think I have decided upon a title for the projection and it is 'inertia'
I want to produce something for people to take with them

Tacita Dean

The first thing I saw from Tacita Dean was her book Floh with a collection of found photographs I liked it so mach that I bought it. Since then I follow what she does and I always find her work very moving and true. It's for me a very similar artist to Francis Alys she talks about people through the cities, her work is about the 'found' and she sets herself very specific projects that before seeing them their presentation sound as a documentary.

Yesterday as I was reading the phaidon book on her I found out that she has also done a film with magpies, the bird in my 'snow' video.
I hven't seen her film but now I know the name of this birds and also that there is something about them.

my first public screening

Last Saturday I show my film with the lady in Victoria square on a screening in east end film festival.
www.eastendfilmfestival.com
The opening night of the festival there were people saying that on Saturday there going to be a screening in the foyer and people were welcome to show their short films, I had with me a lot of work since I was in London for an interview for a placement for a masters degree. So I thought I will show my dot animation or the documentary from last year. So I went in on Saturday and I realised I didn't have with me the the documentary in good quality and that I also had a swf file for the animation, so I gave them the video with the lady. At the beginning I thought they would put the films to play alone but I soon realised it was a proper screening people were sitting on chairs it was a microphone and a lady was asking one after the other the directors to introduce their films. I panicked but it was too late. I panicked because I didn't know what to say and also because the audience in this type of film events would not expect to see a film like mine that is made for a gallery space or maybe for a screening for experimental videos but certainly not for a proper film festival in London. And then I heard my name And reached the microphone and I remember saying:
Hello the next piece is a last minute addition to the screening and is not a film, it is more like a moving photograph, originally part of a video installation, so please be patient. Thank you
And then the film started and it was the only film without sound and without story.
But I felt nice watching it on a big screen and knowing that people were watching something that they didn't expect and that it would make them wonder.
At the end people clapped and somebody that I don't know who cheered loudly.
I disn't stay until the end of the event this night because I had to see a movie in another cinema so My feedback was the clappings the one cheer and feedback from my friends that were there with me (I know that the cheer wasn't from them though)

So now I know that is really very easy to include your work in screenings.
Also that as scary as it feels at the end is always better.
And that the only way to start a dialogue and to know what you want from your self and to find your artistic position is to expose your work to the public. And also you can never foresee the reaction of the public, some times there are surprises.

video stills 2

This stills are from videos shot on the 25th of April
a sunny day outside Gosta Green
I pass closely to this trees every day with my bycicle and
I felt that this is an image I want to take with me when leaving this place
someday I will compose a video piece about experiences (my experiences) and I like to collect images from places that I ve been and known
I always wonder in which percentage they way we look at (in which ellements we focus and how we perceive what we see) is formed and influanced by the images we've been exposed at, in our past

momentary momentum

That's the title of the exhibition in parasol unit.
On display there were the works of 20 artists,
I liked most the work of Francis Alys, 'Time is a trick of the mind'

Andiane Searle describes the work : 'A plainly drawn man walks beside some ornamental park railings, dragging a stick over the iron struts. Ker-thrrrrung! It is a satisfying sound. It makes you want to hear it again, and to go and do it yourself somewhere. Time Is a Trick of the Mind is an animation by Francis Alys, based on the artist's spare and - elegantly tentative drawings. The double projection appears low on the gallery wall. Two identical men, two identical sets of railings. But somehow, time is out of joint; Alys's loping walkers, like Felix the Cat in the old cartoon movies, just keep walking, walking, walking, never getting to the end of the railings, and fall slowly out of step with one another. I could watch it all day.'
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2027564,00.html

I like the way it is simple drawn like an architectural graph precise and clear and that at the same time it is an image of a gesture of our childhood, a thoughtless but also meaningful act
for me is like a protest against our serious synchronized and unnatural adult lives

I also liked William Kentridge's animation
you can watch an extract at www.youtube.com/watch?v=c04ptjC21uE

It also worths looking at Zilla Leutenegger
www.zilla.ch/worklist_2006.html
although aesthetically her work doesn't appeal to me, the way she incorporates static drawings on the wall with videos running on top is interestingly daring

That is also what Avish Khebrehzadeh is doing but although her drawings are sensitively drawn I don't find any justification in the outcome for combining drawings below the video projection

Cristine Rebet's work was nice but I didn't understand what she wanted to say with this nice animation

David Shrigley's was clever but too cruel, pessimistic and depressive for my taste

Robert Breer's was a very nice political animation made by collage
but the only thing that I found by him, in the web,is the following:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1230378631720637153&q=robert+breer&hl=en

bill viola text

An interesting text about the questions on life and art, and the way art is '...the articulation and expression of the "why" side of life...'. Addressing 1) the 'primary issues of art: What is this fleeting image called life? Why are we sharing the living moment, a moment that is past yet present? And why are the essential elements of life change, movement and transformation, but not stability, immobility and constancy?' and 2) a need for moral and practical works of art.

timezones/alys

www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/timezones


It's been quiet some time since I saw this exhibition. Back then I was a pure photographer and I originally visited Tate to see the exhibition of Robert Frank that was on during the same period.
My knowledge on video art was very limited and what I had seen was mostly experimental movies from artists like Jonas Mekas www.jonasmekas.com/ or Gregory Markopoulos www.ubu.com/film/markopoulos.html
And from what i had seen from this artists and other similar experimental video and film work was that the main concern was the form. Films were poetic, most of the times lyrical more like a beautiful impressionist's' canvas.
Although I appreciate experimental films as I do with impressionistic paintings, I don't favor them.
In timezones I was really impressed mainly by the work of Francis Alys: a central square in Mexico, the movement of the sun , the moving shadow of a tall flag in the middle of the square and the crowds moving with the shadow trying to find protection from the sun.
This long video and the photos taken during the day was one of the most moving things I 've ever seen before. Abstract, simple, about reallity, using reality to say everything about being human and living a life, illustrating the passing of time but also the endless repetition, the way everything is changing through time and at the same time nothing is changing, the way people walk away and other people come.
I remembered again this work some months ago while reflecting to what I'm doing now. I consider my work as recording found performances and I think that this work and many others that I've seen by Alys (the 'modern clown' in Modern Tate's permanent collection) (the work in parasol unit exhibition www.parasol-unit.org/current.htm) are exactly this, records of found performances.

news

where have I been?
-1 week holiday
-editing
-writing towards a statement
-reading about: Viola, Warhol, Time zones exhibition www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/timezones
-London:
-interview for MA
-participating on the "out of the box" event of eastend film festival www.eastendfilmfestival.com - screening of my short video from victoria square
-visiting Tate modern: Gilbert and George and on the permanent collection focusing on Francis Alys and Francesca's Woodman newly discovered videos
-visiting MOMENTARY MOMENTUM: ANIMATED DRAWINGS www.parasol-unit.org/current.htm

my thoughts on the above experiences will be my next post

video stills

stills from videos I think of including

mekas

www.jonasmekas.com
if you don't know about him-you should know about him

about Warhol

From what I've seen by Andy Warhol I'm most interested about his work on film, I did some research on writings about his films and I found a very nice sentence from Wayne Koestenbaum:
'The eye, not having a narrative to lead it, and not having camera movements and quick editing to manipulate what it sees, may tour the film frame as if it were unmoving, and may enjoy or puzzle over stray pieces of what the frame contains, without fear that the camera will shift angle and deprive the eye of its present feast.'

Warhol said that the point of his film Empire was "to see time go by"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwwfpjVFsw
this extract is from the film Eat made in 1964
www.warholstars.org/filmch/Eat.html

readings Bresson

Since my project is floating between photography and moving image
my readings and research are also in between the two
At the moment I read "the mind's eye" a book by Henri Cartier Bresson.
One of the things that I found there is:
'To take photographs means to recognize-simultaneously...-both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning.'
so as he says and I agree : the fact doesn't carry the meaning but the meaning is revealed through the arrangement of the forms

In explaining what he tried to do with photography he said: '...to preserve life in the act of living'

He also says:
'We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory'
I agree that photography and video can capture things while they vanish. But I also believe that you can create the same meaning with different facts, So it is not the fact that is the subject the subject is always the creator.

progress

I edited the snow videos in a composition and made a trial projection in room 138 and everything went fine.
Although my project is very clear in my head I want to start putting my thoughts in paper as a way also to start writing my statement. So please have in mind that this is work in progress- something like thinking aloud.

So my project is about
time
and the moving image
it is about the elements that create in our eyes-or minds the sense of time
We understand-perceive time only through change and visually change is movement.
and also about human beings and the way our lives can be illustrated as a graph with two variables one for time and one for space

I' m thinking on having 2 facing projections (back projections)
on the one to have the snow videos not all 4 but 3 of them:
in all three the camera is still and there is the movement of the falling of snow
1) in the video with the statue the only element that makes the image moving (opposing to still image-photograph) is the snow
2) in the one with the branch there is also the movement that the air coses to the branch
3) in the one with the birds it is also the physical movement of the birds

the second projection will be of videos with human movements -a metaphor about human condition- as movement for me reveals attitude