Maya Deren and the Skin Between Us : Saint Lucy
A wonderful meditation on Maya Deren by Mark Alice Durant and the intimacy one can feel when researching someone’s life and work.
Saint Lucy is an online publication by Mark Alice Durant devoted to writing about photography and contemporary art.
Nam June Paik is considered by many to be the inventor of video art.
Electric Superhighway, 1995
Nam June Paik links in honor of his exhibition at the Asia Society until Jan 4, 2015
Comprehensive list of works and full bio
VIDEO LINKS
Great short video discussing how Nam June Paik predicted the Internet Age
Good Morning Mr. Orwell
(Initially broadcast on New Year’s Day, 1984)
Nam June Paik’s rebuttal to Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984, is the first international satellite installation by Video Art pioneer Nam June Paik. Paik’s transcultural satellite extravaganzas links different countries (France, Germany, US), spaces, and times in often chaotic but entertaining collages of art and pop culture, the avant-garde and television. Paik saw Good Morning Mr. Orwell as a rebuttal to Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984.
>> More Info on project from Asia Society
MORE RESOURCES
Nam June Paik website has a good overview essay on Paik’s work, The Worlds of Nam June Paik by John Hanhardt, former film and video curator at the Whitney and Guggenheim and is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s video-art curator.
Nam June Paik and Modern Technology Timeline
TV Buddha, Buddha and video with live feed
Watchdog, TV robot
Many posts on the great David Bowie and his impact on popular culture and the arts. He was fearless and one of my personal heroes “for [more than] one day.” His retrospective David Bowie is that I saw in Berlin was one of the most memorable exhibitions I have seen in recent years. He was fearless is his art, seemingly not afraid to fail by trying something new — an inspiration.
IS THERE LIFE ON MARS? GOODBYE TO BOWIE BY JACK HALBERSTAM | Bully Bloggers
(One of best pieces I have read)
“…For me, as for so many, David Bowie represented a glittering, odd, unearthly reminder that life is about change, risk, madness and mayhem, and that while our domestic structures work hard to keep the madness at bay, we must be ready at all times to “turn and face the strange.”… “
And Bully Bloggers is a great blog to follow: “The Bully Bloggers are a queer word art group. We write about everything queer, so, pretty much everything. Politics, culture, etiquette, vampires, cartoons, the news, philosophy, utopia and revolution. This blog is our Bully Pulpit; we preach to the converted, the unconverted and the indifferent. We are very serious, but in a silly sort of way. ”
and here is a great slideshow of the many David Bowies.
And his goodbye..
Can an Artist Take on the Government (and Win)? A Q&A With Trevor Paglen
Artspace
The artist and “Citizenfour” collaborator’s new show at Chelsea’s Metro Pictures is both an homage to Edward Snowden and an example of what he calls “institutional improvement.”
Trevor Paglen has tracked secret spy satellites, photographed so-called “black sites” like Area 51, cataloged hundreds of classified codes for military operations and their associated (and often bizarre) patches, and blasted images into space for the benefit of future civilizations or a visiting alien species. … Paglen approaches art with a steadfastly interdisciplinary and collaborative mindset, combining his academic training with an eye for aesthetics and a healthy dose of post-9/11 paranoia. [read interview]
Another posting of the video at Critical Commons
Today I came across this link to 20 banned or otherwise unavailable movies you can only watch online. Many good movies (like The Karen Carpenter Story with Barbies) but most excited to find link to Bruces Conner’s A Movie. I can still remember seeing his films when I was grad student in Chicago and Bruce was a visiting artist. Pivotal moment for me seeing these film.
more info on Bruce Conner> J. Hoberman in VIllage Voice, Slant Magazine : The Art of Montage, Obituary in the Guardian
For all of us Chris Marker fans – great article in the Guardian
Chris Marker was a phantom, an escape artist, a shapeshifter. He told friends he came from Ulan Bator, Mongolia. Born in 1921 in a pleasant Parisian suburb, Christian-François Bouche-Villeneuve racked up many pseudonyms and monikers: Sandor Krasna, Jacopo Berenzi, Fritz Markassin. Early on, as if in anticipation of the new vocabularies and identities that would proliferate in the digital era, he signed himself Chris.Marker.
… Across many fields – in graphic design, multimedia, but most of all in film – he made the activity of thinking about images, whether photographic or moving, seem both profound and playful… [read more]
——
more at chrismarker.org
I just saw Ryan Trecartin’s exhibition at Elizabeth Dee Gallery (until April 26, 2014) which inspired this post.
From UbuWeb: Ryan Trecartin’s video narratives unfold like futuristic fever dreams. Collaborating with an ensemble cast of family and friends, he merges sophisticated digital manipulations with footage from the Internet and pop culture, animations, and wildly stylized sets and performances. While the astonishing A Family Finds Entertainment (2005) has drawn comparisons to Jack Smith, early John Waters, and Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Trecartin crafts startling visions that are thoroughly unique.
Watch more of his videos on his Vimeo page
Bill Viola’s Moving Void > good read
Insightful article on video artist Bill Viola’s exhibition in Paris on Hyperallergic. [Good introduction to his work if you don’t know it.] There are several embedded links to view videos online, but the power of Bill Viola’s work is to see it in installation form. See this if you are in Paris before end of July. If we are lucky, the exhibition will travel.
50 Great Works of Video Art That You Can Watch Online
via Flavorwire, always a good source for lists–this is their best one ever. A great resource. You won’t like them all, but that is what make it’s interesting.
Hot Internet TVs on Frozen Winter Days
by Alicia Eler on Hyperallergic
Media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said that television is cool and radio is hot. This isn’t a temperature thing, but rather a classification of media based on the participation it involves from viewers — TV watchers can be more detached, whereas radio listeners are completely engaged. In the installations of artists Nam June Paik and Gretchen Bender, though, TV becomes the central, interactive medium. As the temperatures this week hovered in the negatives, I channeled heat by sipping tea and watching TV as video art from my global perch on the internet.
read more
