Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #16: Hans Diernberger - Hundstein
--empyre- soft-skinned space--A lone woman climbing a mountain. She stops occasionally (e.g. at 1:11) to rest and drink. Through the wash of thumbnails that Vimeo picks, we get a timeline of her walk. Why this walk? This red poncho? The performance belongs first to the camera and secondly to a body. Could this be an elegy to the material constraints of image production? A take two hours and forty-eight minutes long, in 2010 (when this was shot) was on the edge of being remarkable. The peak, when the woman arrives at 1:34, is much the same. In eight years prior, a two-hour take was a spectacle: In The Russian Ark (2002), a single traveling shot through the Hermitage in St Petersburg attempted to bend the conventions of film grammar, requiring the daisy-chaining of BOTH hard drives and bodies. This sketched out a new sacred for cinema that survived about three years under the onslaught of new sensors and codecs (e.g. the Red, The GoPro). Though Hundestein reduces the daisy chain of the Russian Ark to a single body and a camera, might some of the grandiosity be preserved? Who has the bandwidth to know?? On Sun, Jul 29, 2018 at 9:32 PM Daniel Lichtman wrote: > --empyre- soft-skinned space-- > Hans Diernberger > Hundstein > > Video link: https://vimeo.com/24724442 > > Hans Diernberger (Munich,1983) studied Media Art at the Academy of Media > Arts in Cologne (2004-09) and accomplished the MFA in Fine Art at > Goldsmiths College, London (2009-11). His work has been shown at several > shows throughout Europe, the USA and Japan. Hans has received the > Spiridon-Neven-DuMont Prize in Cologne (2009) and a DAAD grant for 2010. In > 2012 he has been invited to do an artist residency at Villa Aurora in Los > Angeles. Since then, he works on collaborative installations with sound > artist Will Saunders. In 2018, they were invited to do a three months > residency in Tokyo to work with The Only Male Geisha in Japan, funded by > the German Ministry of Culture and Arts Council England. They also got > invited to do a residency at Vila Sul, Goethe Institute Salvador (Bahia), > Brazil later that year. > ___ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #11: Beny Wagner - We're All Here
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- Three minutes into Beny Wagner's "We're All Here" we, or rather 'you' are invited by a reverb-heavy voice to "Come into the world, my child". A lone figure in camouflage crawls between rocks. The landscape is a kind of archetype-- regularly spaced boulders raked as though on a proscenium stage. As the figure becomes more salient, this landscape becomes more and less legible: Video mattes and masks emerge. The landscape becomes camouflaged to itself. Amid these visual inversions, the voice seems increasingly certain that this is not an imagined space, but a real one. Is this a visual pun? A camouflaged body, trying to enter the work by disappearance? The body multiplies, following its echo across the erratic second-person imperatives. Come into the world? Profane to sacred, ok, but now sacred to... what? The voice-over stops. An ear, a threshold, and then a drone moving through the forest canopy. Like a screen saver for a user that has forgotten how to see the forest/trees. Selective focus seems to say that this data is not for you. Is this what the world looks like after the invite has been accepted? Are we now 'in the world', having hitched our perceptions to a quad-copter? Cut again to a chimp caught on some power lines. This is Japan, a quick google reveals. The chimpanzee escaped from a city zoo. An army of city employees gathers to invite this one animal back into their world. The animal, not surprisingly, does not want to go. Eventually, the chimp grabs the wrong wire and convulses. Beautifully, it hangs on to the same infrastructure that has immobilized it: it was electrocuted. The chimp, on last iconic glance at the sky, falls to the waiting humans. Now, coming into which world? Again a moving camera, blurrier yet. We hear the hiss of a soda can tab that opened the film. What can we conclude about the moving camera only being used for non-sentient landscapes? Where is cognition in these assemblages that Wagner presents us with? On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 11:38 PM Daniel Lichtman wrote: > --empyre- soft-skinned space-- > -edit, music, sound effects tell me to read this as a film, and tell me to > try to understand the narrative of this work, whatever that may be and > however it works. > -unfocused image of older woman in beginning strongly reminds me of the > extremely amazing work of Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, > Commensal, which I saw at Documenta 14. It documents a very slow, often > silent, conversation between a man and his brother who murdered a fellow > student and then ate that person. It is shot fixed focus—only in focus > whens subjects happen to be the right distance from the camera lens. > -after the opening sequence of ‘mum’s last words’: is the rest of the > video her dying dream? “complete immersion in its [the landscape’s] > materiality”—is that what’s happening to her?. The sound of the soda can > opening cues the next scene—“I turned every leaf into an eye” > -of course the question: who is “I”? And where’s this forest? Who’s the > man narrating “come into the world my child”? How does his accent prompt > the viewer to interpret his message? > -flash of green—then green screen editing, multiplying the body moving > through the forest, which has become ‘camouflage’, for forest, perhaps, > rather than ‘just’ forest. > -relieved by the closeup shot of camo being applied to the face and ear—a > body feel available for immediate relation (even though it isn’t; as if HD > video were not a mediating medium) vs. filmic cutting of scenes in the rest > -gorilla (ape?) on the wire—interesting to put found video into this work > (unless artist had big budget and access to animals/trainers). first time I > watched this scene choked me up. felt bad for the ape. this scene has it > all—nature vs. human. human infrastructure and power on view; the will of > nature on view. > -decent into the ear, and subsequent footage feels like entering a dream > of media-consciousness (maybe drug induced). is this where human and nature > meet? self and other? human and animal? material and immaterial? > -soldier in grass seems to be the protagonist, if the protagonist is not > the video editor. > -i was wondering if credits would say music or sound—they say sound. > > On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 7:13 AM Daniel Lichtman > wrote: > >> Beny Wagner >> We're All Here >> >> Video Link: >> http://impakt.nl/channel/videos/beny-wagner-were-all-here-united-statesthe-netherlands-2016-1202-mins/ >> >> Beny Wagner is an artist and writer based in Berlin. Working in moving >> image, text, installation and lectures, he constructs non-linear narratives >> which investigate ecological, linguistic, and technological modes of >> mediation and how these give shape to the parameters of consciousness and >> perception. >> > ___ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au >
Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #9: Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh - Donkey rhubarb (speculative massage tools for a family of donkeys)
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh - Donkey rhubarb (speculative massage tools for a family of donkeys) --A rough draft. A draft animal. Maybe start: How is the conceit of speculative design rendered lame by the blank gaze of a donkey? Innovation, no matter how luminous, reduced to a simple question of whether or not to bear it. Donkey Massage-- How is that bearing out for you? has it already borne itself out? Pro Forma: Au Hazard Balthazar (1966), Robert Bresson’s meditation on the possibility of a perfectly indexical performance. Truth in the indifference of the draft animal to his narratives. The method actor can not, in the end, prepare. And now here, with some of Bressons's austerity Ciarán throws opacity of sensors into relief against the image of donkey. Speculative designs’s beast of burden? Ceramic, primal shapes enter the frame to do something for these animals, but, ‘massage’...? The POV shot- The sad quality of the ego shooter/ point of view shot as it attempts to become our perception--to tell us that we are massaging a beast of burden. And then is gets light, at 2:27, soundtrack syncopates, comes clean to itself. The giddiness with which the film recruits /renders this 'family' in a narrative? The hands of a mickey mouse- druid, plugging hole in a rock/ holes in the cosmos. And then (duh): redemption. The donkey finally turns away from this slight of hand. The hand asks the beast of burden to out it as disingenuous. Or wait, is the filmmaker just as much a draft animal-- bearing our projections one mise en abyme? Au Hazard Balthazar- ly On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 11:40 AM Daniel Lichtman wrote: > --empyre- soft-skinned space-- > Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh > Donkey rhubarb (speculative massage tools for a family of donkeys) > > Video Link: https://vimeo.com/258391233 > > Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh is an interdisciplinary visual artist with an > interest in materiality and material and immaterial processes. Ciarán is a > PhD researcher in the art department at Goldsmiths. His research explores > complexities inherent within rurality and regionalism and in particular > investigates the hidden epidemic of Lyme disease and its relationship to > late stage capitalism. Ó Dochartaigh has an ongoing research relationship > with a family of donkeys, exploring interspecies relationships and kinship. > > Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh is currently undertaking an art practice Ph.D. at > Goldsmiths and graduated with an MFA in Goldsmiths in 2013. Recent shows > include They Call Us the Screamers, Tulca international festival (2017); > Vanishing Futures: Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art, Golden > Thread Gallery, Belfast, (2015); Lofoten International Art Festival (LIAF), > Norway, (2015). Ó Dochartaigh was awarded a residency at Residency > Programme / curated by CCA at CIAP, Ile de Vassivie re, France, (2016). He > received an Artists International Development Fund, Arts Council England / > British Council, (2015). > ___ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
