Documentary films

And while we're on the subject of films and ethics, here is an interesting article, called The Good, The Bad, and The Documentary, by Dutch cinema scholar and programmer Kees Bakker, about documentary films and their possible - and actual - role in culture. I really like how it includes a whole range...

Old new films

It's amazing how quickly films move away to be "history" and not "film". I have just seen, after a few years, Krzysztof Kieślowski's Short Film About Killing (1988, Polish title: Krótki film o zabijaniu). And I hesitated before writing about it. I mean - how new can a 1988...

3 Pictures from Spain

The below pictures come from the site of the Barcelona-based company Conservas. The first one is a (as yet) unidentified picture from the InnMotion 2005 Festival which is about to begin. The other two pictures come from a show by Conservas called Femina Ex-Machina (2000)....

Who is Joe?

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Post-traumatic art?

Here's the story: an artist is fascinated by falling. He takes pictures of himself falling off different things: ladders, trees, buildings. He fakes it (just as Yves Klein did), using ropes, harnasses and other security measures. Then he retouches the pictures for a strong...

Quote of the day - Heiner Müller

What would you regard as a central issue in your recent texts?How should I know, and if I knew why should I tell you?If you reject this idea of a central issue, could you mention some of the interests you pursue in your writing?See above.This was the part of the interview I was interested in. But what...

Digital manipulation

Learn how to create digitally manipulated pictures the professional way with this Photoshop tutorial.

Technorati: fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Brick of Coke

Brick of Coke is part of the Experience the Experience project by Monochrom (from the site: monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group of basket weaving enthusiasts and theory do-it-yourselfers having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis). It consisted of creating...

Iraq

Invasion is a short film using archive material and giving it a solid twist. It's above all a political statement, but that counts too, doesn't it?

Technorati: movies, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Move around, be the art

Feedtank is a collective of artists using technology to create interactive, playful spectacles. Their inventions have all to do with movement and image, and more precisely, with creating through the interaction with an image.The three works they have been promoting are:...

Kollabor8 on a picture

Kollabor8 is a project/site where artists from all over the world (that means you) can co-create a picture. Each picture is rearranged by the following artist, until - another artist decides to move in. Often, though not always, I get the impression the first one is the...

The Forest, by Agata Lenczewska

Agata Lenczewska, The Forest (2005)

Digital stencil art

Pixel Roller, by Stuart Wood and Florian Ortkrass, is a really nice piece of engineering.A "roll" with ultra-brite LEDs excites surfaces painted with fluorescent paint, leaving a (programmed) trace that fades out with time. The programming part is what's really amazing: you get the stencil feel, with...

Of Art and Politics

Duane Keiser is an American painter who came up with the idea of painting one painting a day and selling it through posting the image on his blog. I find the pictures quite good, and am not alone, as apparently most of them are sold 5 minutes after being posted (each one...

Art, Sex, Revolution. Mind [the] Gap

Have just stumbled upon letters of Robert Filliou to Allan Kaprow (both belonging to the Fluxus group), written in 1967. All these crazy, ridiculous, crazily ridiculous ideas. One wonders how an artistic evolution could come to being on such fundaments. (But it did!)(...)...

Pretentious

Upon answering the Art Survey, I realized that I consider most of the (fine) artists I know to be pretentious. Also, I checked Warhol in nearly every category: innovative, pretentious, distinctive, speaks to me, brilliant, overrated, stimulating, offensive, passé, prestigious, sexy, good investment,...

Filming architecture, the abstract way

The Bridge, by Mogens Jacobsen, is for all you architecture freaks and color freaks out there (you know who you are).The idea is so simple: limit the screen to a band, then copy the top and bottom line of the band until they fill the screen.Another proof that avant-garde...

Plutocratic art chaos

For all the utopians: What happens when each person has the (equal) right to add one pixel per day to an image? Pixelfest (by The Man In Blue).(via)ps: There is also a flash animation showing the "evolution" of the work. Notice how the fact of seeing it change through time makes us want to instinctively...

Human Tetris

Well,
the production and execution part is not exactly perfect, but the originality of the concept of Human Tetris could inspire many a theorist.


(via)

Technorati: performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Art, Politics, History

It took me a few days to think on why I'm so uncomfortable about Gianni Monti's sculpture called Clean Hands, a bar of soap made from Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi's fat. It certainly is not the fact that it sold for €15 000 at the Basel Art Fair, which I find perfectly...

Abbas Kiarostami - "Five"

Abbas Kiarostami became famous with the film A Taste of Cherry (1997), then confirmed his class in Ten (2002), a powerful film created with a near-unparalleled technical economy.In Five, Kiarostami seems to go further than ever before. The subtitle says it all: Five long...

Return

I have just came back from a week in the southern Portuguese town of Serpa on Doc's Kingdom, an international seminar on documentary film. More on this soon.

Voyage

Going away.Bruce Busby, Creativity Enhancement Shelter #BMCD702 (2002)Note: circular door with reintroduction portholesNylon fabric, Aluminum poles, thermoplastic10' diameter base, 10' highRECOMMENDED USAGE: Fifteen minutes of splendid isolation inside...

Venice Art Biennale

Here's an interesting, though slightly cynical, comment about the Art Biennale taking place in Venice.

Technorati: art, contemporary art, vvoi

António Damasio and art

Truly great art has the strange effect of making us, the spectators, feel intelligent.- António Damasio, director of the department of neurology at the University of Iowa, during the conference Brain, Body & Emotion. The conference was part of the 40th Festival of Music and Dance in Sintra (Portugal)....

(Off topic) Santo Antonio

Santo António is the patron of Lisbon, and his day is celebrated with a great deal of festivities here. That means 3-4 days of party. I didn't go to the old part of Lisbon last night - there are too many people for my taste, it is simply impossible to move once you're on the street - literally. But...

Note for self

Make important things: ones that import something, from there, to here.

Grassroot genetic art

art and life converge in a system which keeps on expanding,which I can put all my concerns into, where I can use everythingthat I see. when I watch a documentary and I see how someonedrinks a coffee, puts on his coat and goes to work,I begin to like that person.- Urs Fischer...

Book review

I have just posted the review of Perform, by Jens Hofman and Joan Jonas, in the Reading Room.

Technorati: performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Speak out

One Free Minute is a mobile sculpture [by Daniel Joliffe] designed to allow for instances of anonymous free speech. Callers to One Free Minute's cell phone are connected to an amplifier and have their speech projected in public space for exactly one minute. One Free...

Innovative Public Art

The strange thing about public art is that very often it is the for of art the public cares the least about. It is distant, cold, uninviting and very elitist. The huge abstract sculptures and installations, the massive gates to nowhere, the blocks of cement or marble, the...

My show

Thank You, Lunettes Rouges, for remembering thatI had a show. Yes, I'm quite happy with the show, and yes, I'm too drained to give you any sort of reasonable feedback. Today is the second and last showing, so I'm still pretty busy, but I'll try to write about it tomorrow, describe it, give you some...

Become a pregnant electronic musician

Lamaze is the breathing technique for pregnant women we have all seen in films and series (and some of us surely experienced). Lamaze is now also a musical instrument, that one puts on like... well, like a stomach of a pregnant woman, and pushes buttons like on an accordeon....

Performance art in China

Why does this article irritate me? Maybe because the article seems sponsored by all the businesses (and buisiness-like governments) moving into China recently. Try this for instance:In the 25 years since China abandoned rote communism and embraced the idea of encouraging private enterprise...Maybe because,...

The subtle dance of drawing

The Past is Behind. That is the title of this little drawing by L.A.-based artist Mel Kadel. I look at it carefuly. Something about it is quite disturbing. The past. The past is on the right side. You see, in Western culture we read time as we read text: from left to right....

Welcome new readers!

I was really happy to find out this blog was recommended by the hispanic (Colombian) magazine Semana. To those of you streaming in from there: this blog has a fairly primitive structure - it is not ordered by themes or tags. Please forgive the linearity, and try exploring the archives (see sidebar),...

Poster for a show

(part 1)

(part 2)
(this is the poster for the performance I'm directing. It is also the excuse for not having written as much as I would like recently.)

Louise Bourgeois about modern art

Which artists do you like?I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick. And...

Left-handed art: Walter Benjamin

These days one cannot cling to his own specialty. Improvisation is always the high card. The crucial moves will always be made with the left hand.- quoted from memory, my translation of a Portuguese translation of Walter Benjamin.I'm not really sure if it was meant to be a critique or just a statement...

4 Fine Art Pics

(I couldn't find anything about the author of above work. His name is Bob Cromer, and he might be the person listed here or here)









(from the Isitart? page)

Technorati: art installation, installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi