ART OFFICE for Film + Video

Stanya Kahn | A Cave Walks Into A BarFebruary 18 - March...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:20:00 -0500

Stanya Kahn | A Cave Walks Into A Bar
February 18 - March 30
Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects

Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Stanya Kahn in galleries 3 and 4.

With four new videos and a suite of black and white drawings, Stanya Kahn’s second solo show at the gallery leaves the world of the living for a subterranean world of objects and elements. Hey Ho, Nobody’s Home, (9 min, 30 sec) takes place almost entirely underground and in small constructed sets with artificial lighting, original sound scores and mini weather systems. In Arms Are Overrated, (13 min, 40 sec) Kahn places two paper puppets in various found locations and gives them scripts and improvised dialogue in which they linger between an anthropomorphized sitcom state and an otherworldly Far Side. They’ve got big dreams, they’re inordinately vulnerable, they’re paper and nearly obsolete. Artist Jedediah Caesar contributes additional dialogue and voice. In Lookin’ Good, Feelin’ Good, (5 min, 5 sec), Kahn wears a giant foam penis out into the world. Happy Song for You, (5 min, 7 sec) was made with painter Llyn Foulkes, originally for the exhibition “Two Schools of Cool” at the Orange County Museum of Art. It was the first piece completed in this body of work and inspired new modes of making. Set to Foulkes original composition with Kahn’s sound design, the images in the piece developed organically over the course of a few months and reflect what was a uniquely reciprocal collaboration. Five one-minute line drawing animations suggest a digital bridge between the video works and the drawings, all of which are connected by a pathos-and-humor coupling that the artist has honed to perfection since her last exhibition at the gallery. Throughout the videos, Kahn’s intricate editing and sound design remain key to the reshaping and recasting the inanimate, and the story itself.

In the artist’s own words: “How can you hug if you don’t have arms? It’s every clam’s conundrum. Or maybe it’s not a problem at all. Maybe wanting is so spent, we’re past yearning. So says the sea anemone, stuck eternally to a rock and sighing with relief: “Well, at least I don’t have to worry about putting my foot in my mouth.”

Pairing the impossible with the intrepid, this new body of work would like to offer that maybe we’re beyond the question: “How’s it going?” That things have become so absurdly difficult that “uplifted” and “downtrodden” exchange places rapidly and what results is a steady, electric, dialectic stream of answers. If, in rhetorical terms, to answer is to act, then this is not a cynical show at all. Even if those answers are often wrong, snarky, or sad. In moments sentimental even. And that could be embarrassing except that it’s sincere, piano with reverb and all.”

Compressing action, image, and experience, Kahn continues to explore a joke’s poetic compaction. Her new work is driven by an economy of meaning: exhausted perhaps by the elusive means by which language might carve out new possibilities, she appropriates the bumper sticker ethos of saying a lot with a little, forging her ongoing relationship to humor, distress, and the elliptical power of the joke.

Stanya Kahn’s work was recently featured in “Two Schools of Cool” as well as in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach; at Future Gallery, Berlin with Keren Cytter and Shana Moulton; and in a solo show at Galleria Perdida/Recess, NY. In 2010 her video “It’s Cool, I’m Good” won the jury prize for short fiction at the Migrating Forms Festival in NY. In June 2012 she will have her first solo show in the UK at Cornerhouse, Manchester. Her work in collaboration with Harry Dodge was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial; in “Code Share: 5 continents, 10 biennales, 20 artists”, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania; in the “Videonale 12”, Kunstalle Bonn, Bonn, Germany; in “Slightly Unbalanced” at the Harnnett Museum, Richmond, Virginia; in “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video” at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art; in “Unusual Behavior,” Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, in “California Video,” Getty Museum, Los Angeles; in “Laughing in a Foreign Language,” The Hayward, London; in “Between Two Deaths”, ZKM/Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; in “Eden’s Edge”, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; in “Shared Women”, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA; in “Defamation of Character”, PS 1, Contemporary Art Center; at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, NY and in “Marking Time”, at the Getty Museum and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, among others.

For the LOVE of MIKE!!! 24 hours of Mike Kelley Videos 9pm...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:30:39 -0500

For the LOVE of MIKE!!!

24 hours of Mike Kelley Videos
9pm Saturday, February 25th to 9pm Sunday, February 26th

Farley Building
1669 Colorado Blvd,
LA, CA 90041

Machine Project Hammer Museum Public Engagement Artist in...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:43:55 -0500

Machine Project Hammer Museum Public Engagement Artist in Residence Report

-SH

Flat Band Opening Night Performance. So, so, so good. Corey...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:19:00 -0500

Flat Band Opening Night Performance. So, so, so good.

Corey Fogel and Ezra Buchla

Machine Project, Camp Cleveland at SPACES 2011

-SH

Make animation magic with Kelly Sears at Machine Project

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:48:44 -0500

Make animation magic with Kelly Sears at Machine Project:

-SH

Watching Ann Lislegaard’s animated sci-fi films this week....

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:28:50 -0500

Watching Ann Lislegaard’s animated sci-fi films this week. Crystal World
(After JG Ballard), 2006, is my favorite so far.

[image: lislegaard.jpg]

February 14 2012, 08:00pm Hammer Presents Dirty Looks: Long...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:05 -0500

February 14 2012, 08:00pm Hammer Presents

Dirty Looks: Long Distance Love Affairs

Dirty Looks is a New York-based roaming screening series, a salon of influences, and an open platform for inquiry, discussion, and debate. This program is a love letter passionately proposing the curious coupling of East Coast and L.A. queer experimental filmmakers of yesterday and today. Expect obsession, permuted notions of sex, and violent whimsy. Curated by Bradford Nordeen and Darin Klein, and featuring work by Cecilia Dougherty, Deanna Erdmann, Rhys Ernst, Glen Fogel, Mariah Garnett, Jonesy, Dani Leventhal, Charles Ludlam, Narcissister, Luther Price, and Michael Robinson. Deanna Erdmann, Rhys Ernst, Mariah Garnett, Jonesy and Narcissister will participate in a post-screening discussion and take questions from the audience. Cash bar at 7pm, screening at 8pm.

-JO

I was excited to see that Romain Gavras directed the new M.I.A....

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:02:48 -0500

I was excited to see that Romain Gavras directed the new M.I.A. Bad Girls video. Since it’s badass it’s all over the place, so I will share the teaser for his 2010 feature Notre Jour Viendra. Have you seen it?

-SH

Cloud Seeding: I’ve been thinking a lot about college...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:21:18 -0500

Cloud Seeding: I’ve been thinking a lot about college today.

-SH

Joan Jonas - Vertical Roll (1972) -JO

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:41:44 -0500

Joan Jonas - Vertical Roll (1972)

-JO

Jane Campion - Passionless Moments (1983) -JO

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:34:29 -0500

Jane Campion - Passionless Moments (1983)

-JO

Maya Deren - Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) -JO

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:32:20 -0500

Maya Deren - Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

-JO

RIP Mike Kelley Mike Kelley, contemporary artist based in L.A.,...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:22:39 -0500

RIP Mike Kelley

Mike Kelley, contemporary artist based in L.A., is found dead

-JO

Rebecca Horn in 100 Years show @ Boston University

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:38:47 -0500

Rebecca Horn in 100 Years show @ Boston University

Tuesday, January 31, 7:00pm Light Industry, 155 Freeman Street,...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:11:23 -0500

Tuesday, January 31, 7:00pm
Light Industry, 155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn, NY

Kristina Talking Pictures
Yvonne Rainer, 1976, 16mm, 90 mins

Kristina Talking Pictures is a narrative film inasmuch as it contains
a series of events that can be synthesized into a story if one is
disposed to do so. (A European woman lion-tamer comes to America and
takes… up choreography.) The film can also be characterized by its
discursions from a strict narrative line via reflections on art, love,
and catastrophe sustained by the voices of Kristina, the
heroine-narrator, and Raoul, her lover.

Within its form of shifting correlations between word and image,
persona and performer, enactment and illustration, explanation and
ambiguity, KTP circles in a narrowing spiral toward its primary
concerns: the uncertain relation of public act to personal fate, the
ever-present possibility for disparity between public-directed
conscience and private will.

Having just put your check to Amnesty International in the mailbox,
you are mugged….or discover you have cancer….or perhaps you betray
an old friend. Nothing can ensure that we remain honorable, nor save
us from betrayal and death.

In the next-to-last shot a love letter is recited. So you see, things
aren’t all that bad.
- Yvonne Rainer

Tickets - $7, available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office
opens at 6:30

YOUNG PROJECTS Opening Thurs Jan 26, 6:00-8:30 Runs...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

YOUNG PROJECTS
Opening Thurs Jan 26, 6:00-8:30 Runs through March 2, 2012. B210 & B230 Pacific Design Center, West Hollywood, CA 90069. 11-5 Tues-Friday. Free admission. 323-377-1102

Main Gallery:  An Inducement, A Deliquescence, A Pungency Enveloped in a Caress: Recent Video Work by Matthew Weinstein

Project Space:  Suspension: A Two Person Exhibition with Reynold Reynolds and Kevin Cooley

“An Inducement, A Deliquescence, A Pungency Enveloped in a Caress: Recent Video Work by Matthew Weinstein

YoungProjects is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Matthew Weinstein in Los Angeles. The New York-born artist has shown at the Denver Museum, the Mint Museum (NC), The Wexner Center (Ohio), Portugal Arte 10 (Lisbon), Musee Matisse (Paris) Kunsthalle Vienna, Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich) and many others. His work is also included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection, as well as other key collections.

Weinstein is known for creating sophisticated 3D animation work that uses the kind of visual language generally associated with major animation studios such as Pixar and DreamWorks (i.e. advanced software, motion-capture, and professional actors and musicians including Tony award winners Natasha Richardson, Hope Davis, Dennis O’Hare, Blair Brown and the Balkan Beat Box). However, the artist’s esthetic draws mostly from his painting and sculptural practice, which draws equally from antiquity as it does Pop art, Ikigama and classic cinema. Here porcelain pigs and candy-colored koi perform perverse musical numbers and soliloquies alike, often addressing the viewer directly. The result is an otherworldly, often hallucinogenic experience that remains utterly unique within the realm of contemporary art.

An Inducement, A Deliquescence, A Pungency Enveloped in a Caress, a line taken from Joris-Karl Huysmans’ famous celebration of artifice, Against Nature, (1884) will present most of Weinstein’s most recent animations, including the West Coast premier of his latest, The Childhood of Bertold Brecht, which the artist calls a “non-narrative musical tale of disillusionment and greed.” (Brecht’s theories of theater have long been an influence on the artist). Chariots of the Gods, 2009, (ft Natasha Richardson, 17 mins); Siam, 2008, (14 mins); Three Love Songs From the Bottom of the Ocean (14 mins) and more will be presented.”

Suspension: A Two-Person Exhibition with Reynold Reynolds and Kevin Cooley

“YoungProjects is pleased to present Suspension, a two-person show exploring the relationship between time and image through the work of the Berlin-based experimental film artist, Reynold Reynolds and the New York-based Kevin Cooley.

The exhibition was designed as a response to our epoch’s troubled relationship to time, which the author Mary Ann Doane attributes to “the prevalence of, and the adaptation to, Cinematic Time,” by culture at large. The show will include Cooley’s large-scale ceiling projection, Skyward (2012), which presents a series of disparate time-based moments that have been seamlessly woven together into a unified whole. Beginning in downtown Los Angeles and ending high above Pacific Palisades the piece literally stitches together LA’s disparate ecologies while creating an impossibly long tracking shot through LA’s famously horizontal environs. Yet as a kind of rebuttal to Gursky and Crewdson’s “godlike” camera, the viewer’s POV remains earthbound, which in turn creates a seductive meditation on expansiveness.

Reynolds, who originally studied physics before being tutored by the filmmaker Stan Brakhage, uses a combination of stop motion techniques and rigorously staged mise-en-scene to create extraordinary cinematic works that zero in on the tension between the frozen, recorded moment and celluloid movement. Three dual channel works, Secret Life (2008), Secret Machine (2009) and Six Easy Pieces (2010) will be included, as well as a 4-channel work, Seven Days Till Sunday, which was co-directed by the Irish artist, Patrick Jolly. (The piece is In Memoriam, after Jolly’s passing earlier this month)

Reynolds has received numerous awards for his experimental films and installations, including the festival award at the European Media Arts Festival Osnabrueek; First Prize at the Black Maria Film Festival, and First Prize at the SxSW Film Festival. He has also presented his work at the Tate Modern, the New Museum of Contemporary, PS1, the Berlin Biennale, the Moscow Biennial, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Roma.

Cooley has shown his photographs and videos at the Swiss Institute NY, White Columns, Massimo Audiello, Site UK and is included in a number of important private and public collections including the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.

Cooley’s work at YoungProjects is in conjunction with the Paul Kopeikin Gallery, which will be showing Cooley’s photographs concurrently. Skyward was partially funded by the Experimental Television Fund.”

-JO

Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore by Ann Carlson and‬ ‪Mary...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:06 -0500

Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore by Ann Carlson and‬ ‪Mary Ellen Strom 2007‬

“Four New York City attorneys perform a seminal work by choreographer Ann Carlson. Blending gesture, rhythm, voice, and text, this humorous and compelling performance plays with urban masculinity through the lens of a lawyer’s day. The performance inspired Carlson/Strom’s 2007 video Sloss, Kerr, Rosenberg & Moore, which will be on view in the Krupp Gallery (Gallery 264) when the Linde Family Wing opens. “

I saw this video in November at the MFA in Boston. I just loved it and found it today on youtube.

-JO

A weekend of Pacific Standard Time Performances Preparation F,...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:21:09 -0500

A weekend of Pacific Standard Time Performances

Preparation F, a 1971 performance by John White

A Butterfly for Pomona, a new pyrotechnic performance by Judy Chicago

Burning Bridges, a recreation of James Turrell’s 1971 flare performance

Spine of the Earth 2012, by Lita Albuquerque

-JO

Portland has a new experimental film and video festival!

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:00:05 -0500

When I moved to Portland ten years ago, one of the first video-related shows I attended was the PDX Film Fest. Matt McCormick, building on his popular Peripheral Produce screening series, spearheaded the PDXFF and helped maintain its playful spirit for many years. In the midst of an always impressive roster of screenings and workshops, PDXFF hosted the tongue-in-cheek “World Championship of Experimental Cinema” where audiences played bingo for door prizes while format changes occurred in the projection booth. Art Office’s own Julie Orser was crowned champion in 2006! When the PDXFF shuttered its doors after the 2009 iteration, a hole was left in the local scene.

Fast forward to the present— there’s a new kid in town. The folks over at Grand Detour, following a similar trajectory as McCormick, have established Experimental Film Festival Portland.

“EFFPortland was sparked by the desire to fill the current need for a Portland-based experimental media festival. A major impetus of the festival is to showcase the works of local media artists through a program of screenings, installations, artist talks, and hands-on workshops open to the general public. The festival will also feature work by national and international experimental media artists. The intention is to provide Portland audiences with a window into the diversity of work being created around the globe and connect local, national and international artists.”

The submission deadline is fast approaching (February) and the festival will take place in May. They are encouraging submissions of the wildest variety. How about we help them out?

-SSlappe

PNCA Announces New BFA Program in Video and Sound

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:13:45 -0500

Launching Fall 2012

PORTLAND, OR – January 6, 2012 – In recognition of the fact that moving images and sound have become central modes of communication and self-expression in the 21st century, Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) announces its tenth BFA program, Video and Sound, launching Fall 2012.

The BFA in Video and Sound at PNCA investigates video and sound as disciplines both distinct and allied. Students in this program acquire practice-based media literacy, a multi-modal approach toward video and sound arts, and the critical, aesthetic, and technical skills vital to contemporary cultural production. The principles of video and sound are taught in hands-on learning environments, where students focus on gaining technical skills as a means to express ideas through structure, pace, rhythm, and the interplay between image and sound. Emphasis is placed on the making and presenting of single and multi-channel works in a variety of screening and listening environments. To this end, students will engage in in-depth research and draw on the rich histories and interconnections between video art, sound art, experimental film and music, installation, performance, and network culture.

“PNCA’s Video and Sound program was designed with the acute awareness of this unique moment in media art history,” says Video and Sound Chair Stephen Slappe. “Robust, easy-to-use software and relatively affordable equipment have made the means of production readily available to young creators. The Video and Sound program at PNCA offers students a solid conceptual background to deepen the quality of their engagement with these media while facilitating inventive forms of expression and communication. In addition to teaching the technical skills needed to work with video and sound, we encourage students to explore the potential of mobile spectatorship, gaming interfaces, performance strategies, network culture, and a long list of other contemporary ideas.”

“That PNCA is launching a program in video and sound makes great sense,” says Provost, Greg Ware. “Because the College is located in Portland, Oregon, a city with a wealth of artists and practitioners, businesses, and cultural enterprises engaged in these media, opportunities abound for students in this program. Additionally, with PNCA’s emphasis on cross-departmental exchange and learning, I can readily imagine extraordinary collaborations occurring between students enrolled in this new program and students in for example, Illustration, Animated Arts, Intermedia, and Communication Design.”

Slappe recently returned from a European tour that included research, the screening of a program he curated, Out of the Great Northwest, at The Horse Hospital (London), and participation in a closed seminar at Chelsea College on the subject of Moving Image Art and the Global Media Spectacle. In years past, Slappe has exhibited and screened internationally in venues such as Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, The Sarai Media Lab (New Delhi), Consolidated Works (Seattle), Centre for Contemporary Art (Glasgow), and Artists’ Television Access (San Francisco). His projects have been funded by multiple grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. Slappe is currently Assistant Professor in Intermedia at Pacific Northwest College of Art where he teaches Video, Sound, and Theory and Practice courses. He is an active curator and organizer of video and film exhibitions including most recently, New Mutants at Worksound Gallery (Portland). Slappe is an amateur film archivist and has presented three programs of archival 16mm films entitled Rolling Deep: Skateboarding Films 1965-1980, Static Age: The Culture of Early Television, and Drugs, Disease, and Disaster. Slappe holds an MFA from the University of South Carolina.