Solo (1997)
1997, 6:52, b&w, sound
http://ubuweb.com/film/forsythe_solo.html
Choreography/Performance: William Forsythe; Music: Thom Willems, in collaboration with Maxime Franke; Director: Thomas Lovell Balogh; Camera: Jess Hall, Courtesy of The Forsythe Company
Shot in black-and-white, Solo features an electric solo performance by choreographer William Forsythe, beginning with a close-up on the balletic movements of his feet, scanning up his frame, and then finally zooming out to capture his frenetic movements across a starkly lit stage. The dance is accompanied by an atonal violin composition by Thom Willems and occasional directions from an off-camera male voice, both of which contribute to the film's gloomy, paranoid atmosphere. Solo premiered at the 1997 Whitney Biennial and is considered a landmark in Forsythe's artistic career.
Saturday 24 August 2013
Marina Abramoviç (1912-1992)
Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramoviç (2007) Directed by Babette Mangolte
http://ubuweb.com/film/abramovic_seven.html
For Seven Easy Pieces Marina Abramovic reenacted five seminal performance works by her peers, dating from the 1960's and 70's, and two of her own, interpreting them as one would a musical score. The project confronted the fact that little documentation exists from this critical early period and one often has to rely upon testimony from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given performance.
The seven works were performed for seven hours each, over the course of seven consecutive days, November 9 Ð15, 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibilities of representing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.
"About the public ... I do not want the public to feel that they are spending time with the performances, I simply want them to forget about time." Marina Abramovic, 2005
http://ubuweb.com/film/abramovic_seven.html
For Seven Easy Pieces Marina Abramovic reenacted five seminal performance works by her peers, dating from the 1960's and 70's, and two of her own, interpreting them as one would a musical score. The project confronted the fact that little documentation exists from this critical early period and one often has to rely upon testimony from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given performance.
The seven works were performed for seven hours each, over the course of seven consecutive days, November 9 Ð15, 2005 at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibilities of representing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.
"About the public ... I do not want the public to feel that they are spending time with the performances, I simply want them to forget about time." Marina Abramovic, 2005
Babette Mangolte
Calico Mingling (1973)
Duration: 10 min. B&W
http://ubuweb.com/film/mangolte_calico.html
Calico Mingling, a 1973 dance by Lucinda Childs that took place outdoors at Robert Moses Plaza in Fordham University, is recorded in a grainy ten-minute black and white film. Seen from a distance, and sometimes from above like chess pieces on a board, four dancers march backward and forward, raising and lowering their arms. In the photos, others performers are sometimes caught frozen in midair, while the slide show is a shifting succession of static photographic objects.
Structurally dissecting their movements, these artists replaced emotional expression with simple actions that people perform every day -- walking, sitting and running in ordinary clothes. Almost 40 years later, some of the performance sites have disappeared, and the people seen dancing are now on the verge of growing old. They strived to make dance quotidian, but time makes everything unique. The past can never be ordinary.
Artist Bio
BBabette Mangolte is an experimental filmmaker living in New York City. She had two complete retrospectives of her films and camerawork in 2000 in Germany (organized by Madeleine Bernstorff and Klaus Volkmer) at the Berlin and Munich Cinematheque and in 2004 at Anthology
Films Archives in New York City with the opening of her 2003 film Les Modèles de Pickpocket. In 2007 her film Seven Easy Piecesby Marina Abramovic (2007) premiered at the Berlinale 2007.
Duration: 10 min. B&W
http://ubuweb.com/film/mangolte_calico.html
Calico Mingling, a 1973 dance by Lucinda Childs that took place outdoors at Robert Moses Plaza in Fordham University, is recorded in a grainy ten-minute black and white film. Seen from a distance, and sometimes from above like chess pieces on a board, four dancers march backward and forward, raising and lowering their arms. In the photos, others performers are sometimes caught frozen in midair, while the slide show is a shifting succession of static photographic objects.
Structurally dissecting their movements, these artists replaced emotional expression with simple actions that people perform every day -- walking, sitting and running in ordinary clothes. Almost 40 years later, some of the performance sites have disappeared, and the people seen dancing are now on the verge of growing old. They strived to make dance quotidian, but time makes everything unique. The past can never be ordinary.
Artist Bio
BBabette Mangolte is an experimental filmmaker living in New York City. She had two complete retrospectives of her films and camerawork in 2000 in Germany (organized by Madeleine Bernstorff and Klaus Volkmer) at the Berlin and Munich Cinematheque and in 2004 at Anthology
Films Archives in New York City with the opening of her 2003 film Les Modèles de Pickpocket. In 2007 her film Seven Easy Piecesby Marina Abramovic (2007) premiered at the Berlinale 2007.
Her films and photo work were included in "The American Century" show in 1999 at the Whitney Museum in New York and "Century City" at the Tate Britain in London in 2001.
Mangolte is also known for her photography of dance, theater and performances. Her work was included with several performance photographs and two film installations in a show titled "Art, Lies and Videotapes: Exposing Performance" organized by Adrian George at TATE Liverpool (United Kingdom) in 2003.
Among her more recent shows, “Live Art on Camera” at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK, Curator Alice Maude-Roxby, “ Un teatre sense teatre” at Museu d’Art Contemporari de Barcelona, Curator Bernard Blistene (tour to Museu Berardo, Lisboa, Portugal) and Mangolte’s first solo show in the US at BROADWAY 1602, New York, curated by Anke Kempkes, all in 2007 and in 2008 a two films installation titled Presence a t the Berlin Biennale 2008 and a second solo show at Broadway 1602 titled “Collision”. A new photo installation TOUCHING was included in a show at Akademie der Künste “re.act.feminism – performancekunst der 1960er & 70er jahre heute” curated by Bettina Knaup und Beatrice E. Stammer, till February 8, 2009.
She did a one month residency at OCA in Oslo, Norway in May 2009.
In 2010 she was included in numerous shows, in particular in the Whitney Biennial 2010 with “How to look ….”, and in a show at Migros Museum in Zurich, “While Bodies get mirrored… “, Mangolte also had two solo shows, one at Broadway 1602, New York in summer 2010 titled “Movement and Stills” and another solo show at Scorcha Dallas in Glasgow, UK titled “Yvonne Rainer: Testimony to Improvisation 1972-5”. In addition she was included in “Mixed Use: Manhattan” at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, curated by Lynne Cook and Douglas Crimp.
In 2010 she was included in numerous shows, in particular in the Whitney Biennial 2010 with “How to look ….”, and in a show at Migros Museum in Zurich, “While Bodies get mirrored… “, Mangolte also had two solo shows, one at Broadway 1602, New York in summer 2010 titled “Movement and Stills” and another solo show at Scorcha Dallas in Glasgow, UK titled “Yvonne Rainer: Testimony to Improvisation 1972-5”. In addition she was included in “Mixed Use: Manhattan” at Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain, curated by Lynne Cook and Douglas Crimp.
Sunday 18 August 2013
Notes from Interview with Sriwhana Spong
Spong likes the idea of an artist making a costume "I'm going to completely take over the body."
The director of the Ballet Russes didn't like film as a medium, mass-culture.
There aren't record of thses ballets, the choreography has been lost. Dance gets carried on from one dancer to another, traditional form of passing on information. Just like language, things can slip and move in very natural ways as one dancer re-interprets the choreography.
Costume for a Mourner - sculpture and flat image, the dancer Benny was asked by Sriwhana to do an exploration of the costume. He said the music wasn't working for him, narrative, hence the decision to film it in silence. There is a piece in the ballet that is beautiful and evocative, and the music comes in for a short amount of time, something coming to life, like a shard of hope. The sound is quite easy to remember, when the film goes silent again, you can still hear the music reverberating even though it's not there anymore. The song of the nightingale, like a memory.
The director of the Ballet Russes didn't like film as a medium, mass-culture.
There aren't record of thses ballets, the choreography has been lost. Dance gets carried on from one dancer to another, traditional form of passing on information. Just like language, things can slip and move in very natural ways as one dancer re-interprets the choreography.
Costume for a Mourner - sculpture and flat image, the dancer Benny was asked by Sriwhana to do an exploration of the costume. He said the music wasn't working for him, narrative, hence the decision to film it in silence. There is a piece in the ballet that is beautiful and evocative, and the music comes in for a short amount of time, something coming to life, like a shard of hope. The sound is quite easy to remember, when the film goes silent again, you can still hear the music reverberating even though it's not there anymore. The song of the nightingale, like a memory.
Sunday 11 August 2013
Aerial Film Experiment #1
http://circuit.org.nz/film/aerial-film-experiment-1
ARTIST
YEAR
2008
LENGTH
1 MIN 45 SEC
COUNTRY
NZ
FORMAT
16MM / SOUND
The Parasitic Fantasy Band
Expanded cinema and ecstatic 16mm/8mm film and sound performances by Eve Gordon and Sam Hamilton.
“...modified multi-screen 16mm works, structuralist light refractions, phasing optical illusions, ecstatic colour tapestries, pseudo-anthropologic mystic fictional direct film story telling, kinetic alchemical rhythms, hypnotic flicker dreams, trapeze interventions with narratives blueprinted from the life cycles of migrating sea birds...”
The Parasitic Fantasy Band use multiple projections, sound and acrobatics to create “an ecstatic engagement of the senses... an activation of the space around you and the inhabitants sharing that space with you”.
While they have also created single channel films and pieces for gallery installation, they describe their live performances as their prime mode of “open(ing) up the possibilities of cinema”. They describe a Parasitic Fantasy Band performance as “an active, energetic and truly experiential platform for engaging with people, minds and imaginations”.
Their live performances include a variety of modes, methods and equipment - “multiple film projectors, bending mirrors, light fracturing objects, organic materials, gongs, electronics, activations and interventions, droning resonating strings on projectors, textural electronics, computational story telling and forest field recordings hand collected from the Amazon jungles of South America.”
They cite cinematic reference points for their work including “Metamkine, Guy Sherwin and the London Film-Makers Co-op, Tony Conrad, Len Lye, Harry Smith, Abject Leader, Arthur and Corrine Cantrill. Most of whom we have been excited to personally work with" via collaboration, hosting, screening or workshops.
The Parasitic Fantasy Band have performed internationally at venues including “cinema houses, scummy city service alleyways, art galleries, museums and the Outback desert of Australia.” The Parasitic Fantasy Band are also active organisers and curators of experimental film activity in Auckland.
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